Someone somewhere recommended that someone read Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
, and we thought that was a good idea, so one of us checked it out from the library. She had to recall it, and it has been recalled on her, so up on her Amazon wishlist it goes.
We think this is a great book, and wish everybody would read it. As #1 was reading it, she thought back to previous crucial conversations and how the ones that went well tended to follow their advice and the ones that went off the rails really could have benefited.
The basic premise of the book is that if you pretend to (or actually believe in) give (ing) the benefit of the doubt to people and keep your thoughts focused on the end goals with that in mind, attacking problems instead of people, you’re more likely to get what you really want, make good decisions, foster a positive environment, deescalate potentially fraught situations, and get a reputation for being professional and reasonable that will help you in the future.
They summarize their technique with the following steps:
1. Start with heart. Focus on what you really want, and what you really don’t want.
2. Learn to look. Pay attention to emotions, problems, silencing, and the conversation no longer feeling safe for at least one party.
3. Make it safe. Fix misunderstandings, apologize as necessary. (I’ve found this step incredibly helpful in blaming things on miscommunications and going back to the big goal– what we both want– really does seem to defuse situations.)
4. Master my story. Separate facts from narrative– know which is which. State the facts. Choose a good narrative. (This is where you give the best possible story behind the other person’s actions rather than the one that may actually be true. I have found that occasionally when I ascribe positive motives to people, they tend to start believing those motives themselves.)
5. STATE my path. Share your facts. Tell your story. Ask for other’s paths. Talk tentatively. Encourage testing. These are all things a good leader will do– you’re more likely to accept a decision you don’t agree with if you trust the process that came to it. (The difference between our provost saying, “I’m the decider” and a better communication of, “Here are the pros and cons of each choice. These are the reasons I made this choice over the other choice.” I really wanted to send hir a copy of this book. BTW, hir decision was terrible and has already had some pretty nasty consequences.)
6. Explore other’s paths. Ask. Mirror. Paraphrase. Prime. Agree. Build. Compare. These are ways of talking about alternative views and coming to the best decision for your main goal while making people with other views feel validated and focused on their main goals.
7. Move to action. Decide how you will decide. Document decisions and follow up. (A meeting in which you discuss, come to an agreement and then don’t do action items is a waste of time.)
They share a lot of really helpful language along with their process. While reading the book, I thought back to good bosses I’ve had and bad bosses I’ve had, and the good bosses almost instinctively use these techniques. Heck, my father-in-law uses these techniques. It’s been helping me a lot with some of the dramatic fall-out of the provost’s bad decision.
It’s not a perfect book– it almost seems like there’s some victim-blaming in the middle, and it isn’t until very near the end of the book that the book specifies that no, a woman does not have to put up with sexual harassment on her own. This is a shame because some of the examples they use are very close to sexual harassment, and although the actions they suggest are appropriate, they come too close on the heels of admonitions to accept the role you had in whatever tragedy is going on. Their example seems to suggest that muggings are the only crimes in which the victim is not at fault. Sexual harassment is never the victim’s fault, and they would do well to point that out far earlier.
The book doesn’t separate by gender. It tells everybody to use some of the softening language that Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office
tells women to avoid, which may be problematic. We know that people have different reactions to male and female managers saying the same thing in the same way– are the suggestions in this book truly gender neutral? We don’t really know.
An interesting thing to note– in the back of the book one of the authors mentions that they get fan mail from people who have only read the introduction and the first chapter. Apparently those first ideas of just giving people the benefit of the doubt and focusing on the big goals make a huge difference for some people. We do think the rest of the book is worth reading through because it gives helpful language that does deescalate situations.
Also: We’ve posted this on a Monday because it’s about work and career, but many of these techniques also work well in personal relationships. They also give examples from marriages and dealing with teenagers.
What do you find works for dealing with other people at work? Do you have recommendations for books on communication or otherwise dealing with coworkers? Have you read this one?
(particularly the early ones on phonics) were super popular at Casa Grumpy. Dora the Explorer, also popular. Closer to 3 ze picked up Caillou (one of DC2’s current picks) and Kipper and Blues Clues and Word World (though many parents dislike Caillou because in the earlier episodes he’s kind of a brat).
. Inequality is getting worse, not better, in this country. And we’ve had periods of time in which it was getting better. It’s not impossible to make things better, even if we might never get to perfect, there’s a heck of a lot more we could be doing, and a lot we could stop doing, to bring back the American Dream for everyone.
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
