worth listening to | Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High

Great toolkit for difficult situations | Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High | Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, ...

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	• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, ... McGraw-Hill, 2002 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 137 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Must-Read

I was told about this book by a colleague at work, and I am very glad I took her advice in reading it. It offers steps and strategies to effectively communicate and have important discussions without causing unnecessary conflict and hurt feelings. I have already found this to be helpful in my conversations at work, school, and in my personal life.

worth listening to

I'm not a fan of self-help books or motivational speakers. Usually I'm driven off by the smarmy tone or self-serving verbal gimmicks. But that's not what you get with Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High.

The purpose of this book is to teach skills for managing verbal dialogue in the face of emotional conflict. The authors stay focused on this topic, teaching a series of behavioral, planning, and interpretive techniques for developing a more effective communication style. They are NOT selling happiness, fulfillment, total quality satisfaction, competitive transformation, etc.

Crucial Conversations uses a variety of instructional methods (examples, diagrams, memory devices, and repetition) to reinforce a modest set of techniques. It avoids gimmicks and hyperbole. The writing is smooth enough to be readable, without diluting the message with entertainment.

Probably I should wait a few months before writing this review. The authors point out that their dialogue skills can't be mastered without sustained practice and review. But already the book has made me more aware of my own conversational habits and responses. I've got some "crucial conversations" coming up and I'm looking forward to trying some techniques to ratchet down the emotion and cultivate information flow.

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Great toolkit for difficult situations

This book has provided me with an outline to understand and share tools to help manage difficult conversations. I've found myself learning many of the lessons this book has nicely detailed the hard way, and find that owning this book helps re-enforce lessons I've learned (and learning new lessons) on handling difficult conversations both in the workplace and at home. I would encourage anyone interested in handling their relationships with others better to take a serious look at this book.

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Fluffy, but very good

This is kind of a fluffy business book... I generally hate these books, but this one has a creamy nougat center of knowledge that I've never encountered before. At 200 pages, its a must read. Please ignore the Franklin Covey vibe: the authors really have something important to say.

This book solidifies what many have said before: those who genuinely understand how to communicate have all the power in this world. It's not about knowledge, skills, manipulation, or strength... Those who can get groups of people who distrust each other to come to genuine consensus will always have power. Why? Because its so incredibly difficult... and its so incredibly important.

This book helps you identify the behaviors that help -- and the behaviors that hurt -- when building consensus. Make no mistake about it: human beings are poorly designed to get along with each other. Our brains are wired for competition. At most we co-operate with genetically similar groups. Evolution has wired us to not want to work together with people too different from ourselves, lest we threaten our own survival.

That may have been useful 2000 years ago in highly competitive tribal cultures, but in the modern world such prejudice is usually counterproductive.

This book helps you identify which behaviors may be hindering you. When confronted, a human's instinct is fight or flight. In a conversation, the fight instinct comes out in argument, sarcasm, or belittling. Likewise, the flight instinct comes out as keeping quiet and doing nothing, or totally ignoring what the other person said... typical passive-aggressive behavior.

This book also presents exercises to help you keep a cool head, communicate clearly, and get things done... despite your evolutionary wiring.

If you read this book, and practice their exercises a lot, you will slowly gain a reputation as somebody who can really make things happen.

Highly recommended!

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Business Leadership

Learn which behaviors help you get ahead in the business world. This book is perfect for anyone looking to develop leadership skills.

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