Review: “Crucial Conversations”
Earlier this year, I finished reading the “Crucial Conversations” book. A colleague of mine highly recommended that book to me, and at first, I didn’t take it seriously and joked around any time there was a “crucial” conversation. However, I started seeing a lot of references to it when I was building my reading list for this year so decided to give it a try.
It is a great book and in my opinion, it is a must-read for anyone who collaborates with other individuals as it focuses on improving your communication style and skills.
Crucial conversations are defined by three conditions:
- Opinions vary
- Stakes are high
- Emotions run strong
There are three ways to handle crucial conversations:
- they can be avoided
- they can be addressed and handled poorly
- they can be addressed and handled well
Most of the time people end up with the first two choices. The book is focusing on how to handle “crucial conversations” well and gives a very clear framework and tools to be successful with them. It has a lot of real-life situations and examples which makes it very easy to comprehend the material and apply it right away. It might also help to avoid shit-sandwich conversations that are very common when there is a need to give feedback.
The book is structured around core principles and skills that are required to apply them.
- Start with Heart — Focus on what you really want and refuse the Sucker’s choice
- Learn to Look — Figure out when the conversation becomes crucial and safety problems
- Make It Safe — Apologize when appropriate, use contrasting to fix a misunderstanding, create a mutual purpose (CRIB)
- Master My Stories — Separate a fact from a story and retrace your path to Action.
- STATE My Path — Share your facts; Tell your story; Ask for others’ paths; Talk tentatively; Encourage testing
- Explore Others’ paths — Ask; Mirror; Paraphrase; Prime
- Move to Action — come up with a decision, document it and do the follow-up
Verdict: Highly recommended for anyone
