Thesis: Master crucial conversations and you’ll kick-start your career, strengthen your relationships and improve your health.
Things to Remember:
- Start with heart
- What is it you really want?
- How would I behave if I wanted these results?
- Refuse either/or thinking
- Learn to look
- At content AND conditions
- Recognize when things become crucial
- Watch for safety problems
- Notice if people are moving toward silence or violence
- Look for outbreaks of your style under stress
- masking, withdrawing, attacking (all mine,
- labeling, controlling, avoiding
- Make it safe
- Step out of the situation. Make it safe. Then step back in.
- Apologize
- Contrast – take their fears and voice them, showing them you are not reinforcing it
- CRIB
- Commit to mutual purpose
- Recognize the purpose behind the strategy
- invent a mutual purpose if there is no apparent one
- Brainstorm new strategies
- Establish mutual purpose
- Project respect for the other party
- Master my stories
- Notice your behavior
- Am I being silent or violent?
- What emotions are driving me?
- What STORY is creating these emotions?
- What evidence do I have to support this story?
- STATE my path
- Share facts: start with least controversial and most persuasive
- Tell your story: explain what you’re beginning to conclude
- Ask for others’ path: encourage others to share
- Talk tentatively: it’s a story, not a fact
- Encourage testing: make it safe to have differing views
- Explore others’ paths
- Ask: express interest in others’ views
- Mirror: respectfully acknowledge the emotions others are feeling
- Paraphrase: restate their side to show them you understand
- Prime: if others hold back, take your best guess at naming their thoughts and emotions
- Agree: agree readily when you do
- Build: if others leave something out, agree where you do, then build
- Compare: don’t suggest others are wrong, compare your two views
- Move to action
- Decide how to decide
- Command – decisions made without consulting others
- Consult – input gathered from a group
- Vote
- Consensus
- Finish clearly – decide who does what and when. Then set a follow up time.
- Change your life
- Master the content
- Do something
- Discuss the material
- Teach the material
- Master the skills
- Rehearse with a friend
- Practice on the fly
- Practice in a training session
- Enhance your motive
- Apply incentives
- Apply discincentives
- Go public
- Talk with your boss
- Remember the cost but focus on the reward
- Think “things.” How can things help to motivate you?
- Watch for cues
- Mark hot spots
- Set aside a time
- Read reactions
- Build in permanent reminders
- Carry a reminder