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"Keep your cool and get the results you want when faced with crucial conversations. This New York Times bestseller and business classic has been fully updated for a world where skilled communication is more important than ever. The book that revolutionized business communications has been updated for today's workplace. Crucial Conversations provides powerful skills to ensure every conversation-especially difficult ones-leads to the results you want. Written in an engaging and witty style, the book teaches readers how to be persuasive rather than abrasive, how to get back to productive dialogue when others blow up or clam up, and it offers powerful skills for mastering high-stakes conversations, regardless of the topic or person. This new edition addresses issues that have arisen in recent years. You'll learn how to: Respond when someone initiates a crucial conversation with you Identify and address the lag time between identifying a problem and discussing it Communicate more effectively across digital mediums When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong, you have three choices: Avoid a crucial conversation and suffer the consequences; handle the conversation poorly and suffer the consequences; or apply the lessons and strategies of Crucial Conversations and improve relationships and results. Whether they take place at work or at home, with your coworkers or your spouse, crucial conversations have a profound impact on your career, your happiness, and your future. With the skills you learn in this book, you'll never have to worry about the outcome of a crucial conversation again"--… (more)
User reviews
The first few chapters do a good job at explaining their definition of what makes a conversation "Crucial" by presenting some key identifiers and using some "real world" examples. For example, what color shirt to wear or what to have for dinner may not be a crucial conversation…unless you're having that conversation on your anniversary with your spouse and even then, depending on your relationship with your spouse, that may not be a "crucial' conversation. Other examples include providing negative (or "constructive") feedback to a co-worker or (even more crucial) a boss, discussing sensitive lifestyle choices of a sibling/child/friend, etc. As the book continues, the authors make a point of teaching readers to look at themselves as much as they look at others…or even more, since the only person we can directly change/influence is ourself.
So once the book explains WHAT a crucial conversation is and how to recognize it, the authors proceed to give methods for identifying our personal way of dealing with the stress of crucial conversations (do we move to Violence or Silence…do we lash out at others with hurtful accusatory language, or do we pull back and refuse to add anything helpful to the conversation?). They also help provide insight into recognizing the dialogue styles of others. Once the dialogue styles are identified, then the task is to bring the Crucial Conversation to a healthy middle ground where thoughts and ideas can and will be presented without driving any of the participants to Violence or Silence and as a result, the participants can move towards a healthy resolution. The authors also provide examples of how to identify that successful outcome (because we may feel like the conversation ended well, when in reality the other person is now off sulking silently).
Overall, I felt like the book was an insightful and intriguing read. As I mentioned at the onset, many (or at least the better ones) business/self-help books are presented in such a way that it's easy to accept the concepts as logical and true. I felt like this book did a good job doing just that. The concepts and ideas presented may not be easy to adhere to (especially in the heat of an emotionally stressful discussion), but they are good ideas and I do believe that if a person could, at the very least, keep them in mind, that person would likely have more successful interpersonal interactions. The authors make some pretty audacious claims about things that will come if we master Crucial Conversations (ranging from being more successful at work or having a happier home life or a healthier body) and once again, they back their claims up in logical ways. I would be skeptical of their claims to the extent that they are based on becoming a "Master" of Crucial Conversations and so the caveat is that the definition of "Master" may not be possible to fully achieve. Still, I do believe that any progress along the trajectory will be beneficial and will help you make strides towards reaching the outcomes they claim.
I felt like this was a worthwhile read. It moves pretty quickly and has some humorous anecdotes to keep the reading fresh and accessible. If you're interested in communications, have your own "crucial conversation" coming up, or are just looking for some general advice that may help you relate better to others around you, go ahead and pick this book up. It had good advice and ideas that would help in both personal and professional venues.
***
3 out of 5 stars
“Nothing gives on person so much
I picked up this book hoping to help me be able to better converse with my co-workers, who declared that I was rude, confrontational and unapproachable. While I may not be quite where I want to be, this book did not disappoint in providing me with helpful hints and tools to use to better converse with everyone in my life - from loved ones to managers to peers. It's going to take me some time to master these skills, but at least understanding some of the issues I face and how to initiate overcoming them is half the battle.
The authors freely admit that this book is not meant to be read in a short time frame but meant to be absorbed chapter by chapter. The goal is to get the reader to master each skill and build upon it. In order for me to best be able to absorb these lessons, I will definitely have to revisit each chapter. But I did come away with some initial lessons that emotions are our biggest downfalls when it comes to conversations that matter. Knowing how much my heart pounds and the blood rushes when I get truly upset or nervous, this definitely touched a cord. Being cognizant of the damage emotions do to conversations will help me be able to take steps to minimize their impact. In fact, I've already started incorporating this lesson and hope to remain cognizant of my emotions in all of my conversations. Some days I will do better than others, but at least I am trying.
The beauty is that these skills have their place in your professional and personal life. The concepts are presented in an easy-to-understand manner, and the authors provide many mnemonic devices that help the reader remember the skills. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to improve their ability to converse and field their way in the trickiest, most sensitive of conversations.
Thank you to Anna Suknov at FSB Associates for the opportunity to review this book!
The basic lessons are also rather simple and explained quickly, though not necessarily *easy* to really grok. And here is where I felt the book didn't do a
This became especially apparent in the chapter on "tough cases", where the standard advice seems to be "this actually isn't a special case, just do what we have adviced to do in earlier chapters" - just in more words.
Still, a very valuable read, with good, sound advice.
One of the major problems that has plagued me all my life was becoming too emotional when things were important to me. This book has helped me recognize that I was getting upset and helped me deal with my emotions so I could come
The book is written in simple language with lots of repetition and stories to make it easy to read and understand. The authors also use a lot of acronyms to help people remember what to do. Some of the reviews have complained about this. I have no complaints on this issue. The book is intended to accessible to low level readers. There are some areas where I don't feel they were simplistic or clear enough. I made myself flash cards of the basic principles to use during group discussion to keep myself on track.
I didn't find chapters #9 or #11 very helpful. I expected more practical advice on "moving to action" and "putting it all together". But just looking at the table of contents reminds me off all the skills and tools I need to keep a productive discussion from becoming a heated argument.
I wish they had an even more simplistic version of this book intended for teenagers. These are the sorts of emotion regulating skills teenagers could really benefit from.
I buy copies of this book to give to my friends. I know that giving other people a self-help book is rarely helpful but I just hope if there are enough copies of this book floating around out there more people will read it and become better at discussing instead of fighting or withdrawing. The more information in the pool of shared knowledge the better!
"Emotions don't exactly prepare us to converse effectively."
Recommended to anyone.
It's longer than it needs to be, a good portion of the book is common sense, it creates silly jargon and refers back to little trite anecdotes over, and over,
I reread it a few years later, and I got the newer edition from the library and I reread it this year.
All of the downsides of this book are still there. It's still longer than it needs to be, has a good amount of information that seemingly anyone reaching adulthood would already know, they still create silly management theory jargon, and refers to Kevin and other anecdotes over and over and over.
On the other hand, ten years later, I've worked in more teams, and been in more types of situations. I've worked with people who certainly don't know the information in this book, and I dread working with them. Regarding length--most people can skim and read books like this faster than something dense and heavy. The silly management theory jargon is an artifact of this being part of paid leadership training--fun jargony phrases lend themselves to printouts and documentation they can share to look smart and prepared. The same goes for the anecdata aspect of this.
On the other hand, ten years later, I can unequivocally say that there is useful information in here, potentially even essential information here on how to deal with those emotional conversations where there are multiple sides and high stakes.
We may, but we often don't.
This is a useful set of tools and strategies for having those conversations with loved ones at home and with colleagues at work.
This book came recommended to me as a part of a book club at my workplace. I can see why. It takes the topic (crucial conversations) and parses it from just about every angle. Readers will not only gain self-knowledge and self-awareness; they will benefit from developing skills in handling difficult situations. This mastery will allow its adherents to handle even everyday situations and relationships with greater ease and skill.
It focuses on our ability to “dialogue” openly and honestly – with a free and thorough exchange of information. To some, this skill might seem obvious. For me, however, this skill is tangential to my main work at a computer screen. Relationships still are very important to my work, but I am not able to give prolonged thought to developing these over time. Conversations sort of pop up to me. The skills and concepts in this book empower me to handle those situations better – and with less anxiety.
One concept I find particularly illuminating is that we all have a tendency to either silence (passive) or violence (controlling) in the way that we react. In truth, both of these are enemies of good dialogue because they do not extend the conversation.
As the authors acknowledge, conversation for conversation’s sake seems to be not a great aim, but conversation for the sake of getting things done contains a higher aim. By learning how to work with others better, we learn how to become more effective and have greater influence.
I found myself rolling my eyes a lot at the perceived simplicity
I think I am hesitant a lot of time to these kinds of books and lectures because a lot of the time it feels like a commercial, or that they're persuading the reader that "yes, this does work." I've already bought the book! I'm already here! Perhaps this is a proactive approach to breach listener's defenses since their initial reaction may be negative (like mine is) but I can't shake the feeling that I'm listening to a TED talk in book form, rather than reading something that requires 230 pages.