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702 reviews for:
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
Ron McMillan, Kerry Patterson, Al Switzler, Joseph Grenny
702 reviews for:
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
Ron McMillan, Kerry Patterson, Al Switzler, Joseph Grenny
I had to read this for a management assignment in school and was initially determined to not learn anything because I thought this material didn't apply to my life. I was wrong. In fact, this book can apply to anyone who wants to improve their communication skills. Perhaps what I appreciated most about this book is that the authors explain concepts with examples in a wide variety of situations: a parent-teacher meeting, conversations between couples, family issues, as well as many workplace scenarios. Though I was not excited to read this book in the beginning, I am now glad I did.
Required reading for work. Not my favorite read. The acronyms they developed didn’t work for me. I felt like they were contrived to make mnemonic devices. Some of the material is very helpful, but overall I feel like a majority is common sense. But maybe in a world where people are ever connected to their phones and don’t know how to interact with other humans in real life conversations we need a book like this.
Great book, the tools are a list of things you already know but the technique is explained brilliantly. There's a bit too much self-advertising in the book about the book to my liking.
informative
slow-paced
Truly insightful. Might read it over and over to become a communication superhero.
Needs to be read repeatedly.
Practicing the skills takes effort, and the difference it makes is profound.
I found the STATE approach valuable.
Practicing the skills takes effort, and the difference it makes is profound.
I found the STATE approach valuable.
I absolutely loved this book and really took the time to digest every chapter. My favourite chapter was called Retaking your pen. The examples were fantastic with real world examples. This is a must book for those who want to have better conversations.
Such an important book! I'm so glad this exists. Heard about it from Chris and I've utilized some of the tools already in daily life. Especially just being curious and not assuming the worst of the other person or getting defensive so quickly. Their questions, examples, and models are so helpful. The Path to Action model, which is similar to a coaching model I use in coaching, is especially useful for more people to know and understand. It's our stories that bring us down!
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that is has taken place.” — George Bernard Shaw, pg. 1
“Decades of research have led us to conclude that:
You can measure the health of relationships, teams, and organizations by measuring the lag time between when problems are identified and when they are resolved.
The only reliable path to resolving problems is to find the shortest path to effective conversation.” pg. 5
“When Kevin spoke up, his implicit question was, ‘How can I be 100 percent honest with Chris and at the same time be 100 percent respectful?’” pg. 24
“When it comes to Crucial Conversations, skilled people find a way to get all relevant information (from themselves and others) out into the open.
That’s it. At the core of every successful conversation lies the free flow of information. People openly and honestly express their opinions, share their feelings, and articulate their theories. They willingly and capably share their views, even when their ideas are controversial or unpopular. It’s the one thing that Kevin and the other extremely effective communicators we studied were routinely able to achieve.
What they do is effectively create a dialogue [the free flow of meaning between two or more people]” pg. 25
“As they began to understand the whys and wherefores of different proposals, they built off one another. Eventually, as one idea led to the next and then to the next, they came up with an alternative that no one had originally thought of and that all wholeheartedly supported. As a result of the free flow of meaning, the whole (final choice) was truly greater than the sum of the original parts. In short: The Pool of Shared Meaning is the birthplace of synergy.
As people sit through an open discussion, they understand why the shared solution is the best option, and they’re committed to act. Kevin and the other VPs didn’t buy into their final choice simply because they were involved; they bought in because they understood.” pg. 27
“Remember, if you don’t talk it out, you’ll act it out. And virtual relationships leave much more room for acting it out!” pg. 47
“Creating a simple problem sentence helps you both start with a clear purpose and hold yourself accountable. It gives you a standard by which to measure whether you told your full truth. Don’t worry about how you’ll say it. Just tell yourself the truth about what you want to say.” pg. 49
“When you place a bookmark, you make a conscious choice about what you want to talk about. And you register clearly with the other person that you will return to the bookmarked issue later. Never allow the conversation to shift or the topic to change without acknowledging you’ve done it.” pg. 53
“Those who are skilled at Crucial Conversations present their brains with a more complex question. They ask, ‘What do I want for myself, the other person, and the relationship?’” pg. 68
“EMOTIONS DON’T JUST HAPPEN
To answer these questions, we’ll start with two rather bold (and sometimes unpopular) claims. . . .
Claim one. Emotions don’t settle upon you like a fog. They are not foisted upon you by others. No matter how comfortable it might make you feel to say it, others don’t make you mad. You make you mad. You make you scared, annoyed, insulted, or hurt. You and only you create your emotions.
Claim two. Once you’ve created your upset emotions, you have only two options: You can act on them or be acted on by them. That is, when it comes to strong emotions, you either find a way to master them or fall hostage to them.” pg. 75
“Even if you don’t realize it, you are telling yourself stories. . . . When we believe we’re at risk, we tell ourselves a story so quickly that we don’t even know we’re doing it.” pg. 80-81
“If we take control of our stories, they won’t control us. People who excel at dialogue are able to influence their emotions during Crucial Conversations. They recognize that while it’s true that at first we are in control of the stories we tell, once they’re told, the stories control us. They first control how we feel and then how we act. And thus they control the results we get from our Crucial Conversations.
The good news is we can tell different stories and break the loop. In fact, until we tell different stories, we cannot break the loop.” pg. 81
“Actually identifying your emotions is more difficult than you might imagine. In fact, many people are emotionally illiterate. When asked to describe how they’re feeling, they use words such as ‘bad’ or ‘angry’ or ‘scared’—which would be OK if these were accurate descriptions, but often they’re not. Individuals say they’re angry when, in fact, they’re feeling a mix of embarrassment and surprise. Or they suggest they’re unhappy when they’re feeling violated. Perhaps they suggest they’re upset when they’re really feeling humiliated and hurt.” pg. 86
“Since life doesn’t consist of a series of vocabulary tests, you might wonder what difference words can make. But words do matter. Knowing what you’re really feeling helps you take a more accurate look at what is going on and why. For instance, you’re far more likely to take an honest look at the story you’re telling yourself if you admit you’re feeling both embarrassed and surprised rather than simply angry.” pg. 86-87
“When you take the time to precisely articulate what you’re feeling, you begin to put a little bit of daylight between you and the emotion. This distance lets you move from being hostage to the emotion to being an observer of it. When you can hold it at a little distance from yourself, you can examine it, study it, and begin to change it. But that process can’t begin until you name it.” pg. 87
“We call these imaginative and self-serving concoctions ‘clever stories.’ They’re clever because they allow us to feel good about behaving badly. Better yet, they allow us to feel good about behaving badly even while achieving abysmal results.
When we feel a need to justify our ineffective behavior or disconnect ourselves from our bad results, we tend to tell our stories in three very predictable ways.
Victim Stories - ‘It’s Not My Fault’
Villain Stories - “It’s All Your Fault’
Helpless Stories - ‘There’s Nothing Else I Can Do’” pg. 91-93
“We sell out when we consciously act against our own sense of what’s right. And if we don’t admit to our errors, we inevitably look for ways to justify them. That’s when we begin to tell clever stories.” pg. 95
“When you find yourself labeling or otherwise vilifying others, stop and ask: Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do what this person is doing?” pg. 98
“What should you be doing instead? Openly, honestly, and effectively discussing the problem—not taking potshots and then justifying yourself. When you refuse to make yourself helpless, you’re forced to hold yourself accountable for using your dialogue skills rather than bemoaning your weakness.” pg. 100
“Safety isn’t synonymous with comfort. At this point, it is worth noting that feeling safe in a conversation is not synonymous with feeling comfortable. We’ll define safety more in the next chapter. But for now we want to be clear about what safety isn’t. Crucial Conversations are, by definition, hard conversations. We and others have to stretch in these conversations, often venturing into new territory and feeling some degree of vulnerability. The measure of whether a conversation is safe is not how comfortable I feel. It is whether meaning is flowing. Do I, and others, feel like we can share our meaning, have that meaning heard, and also listen honestly and respectfully to each other? If you can do that, if meaning is flowing honestly and respectfully, you know safety is there.” pg. 113
“How do you expand your data stream? Start by asking for more data. For example:
- Email. ‘I haven’t heard back from you in a couple of days in response to the email I sent you. I am not sure how to interpret your silence. How are you feeling about the proposal?’
- Telephone. ‘I wish I could see your face right now. I don’t know how you’re hearing my message, and I would hate for you to misinterpret it. Can you help me understand what you’re thinking right now?’
- Direct messaging. ‘When I read the comment that you posted on my social media account, I wasn’t sure how to take it. It seemed like you might be upset. Are you?’
When you see signs of silence or violence in virtual communication, ask for more data. When you do, either people will add meaning to the pool about what they’re feeling or thinking, or they’ll hold back. If they don’t disclose more about how they’re feeling, that is its own confirming data. Then it’s time to Make It Safe.” pg. 126-127
“You first need to understand why someone feels unsafe. People never become defensive about what you’re saying (the content of your message). They become defensive because of why they think you’re saying it (the intent). Said another way, safety in a conversation is about intent, not content. When people become defensive, it is because either:
1. You have a bad intent toward them (and they are accurately picking up on that).
OR
2. They have misunderstood your good intent.
If it’s the former, you need to go back and Start with Heart. Remember, it’s easy for our motives to degrade in a Crucial Conversation. Check yourself by asking, what am I acting like I want? This question helps us see ourselves as other people are seeing us. Then ask yourself, what do you really want? For you? For them? For the relationship? If your motives have degraded, step back and refocus on what it is you really want.” pg. 133
“TWO CONDITIONS OF SAFETY.
In order for people to feel safe with you, they need to know two things about your intent. They need to know that:
- You can about their concerns (Mutual Purpose).
- You care about them (Mutual Respect).
We call Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect the conditions of dialogue. Only when these two conditions are met, when there is Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect, will you have the safety needed for meaning to flow into the pool.” pg. 135
“But don’t mistake your responsibility to create safety in the dialogue as meaning you should not expect the other person to acknowledge your needs. Mutual Purpose must be mutual. Yes, you need to care about the other person’s purpose. But the other person also needs to care about your purpose. You don’t need to subordinate your purpose to that of others just to create a veneer of safety for them.” pg. 136
“What are you supposed to actually do? Here are four skills that the best at dialogue routinely use to build safety up front in a conversation and rebuild safety when it’s been lost:
- Share your good intent.
- Apologize when appropriate.
- Contrast to fix misunderstandings.
- Create a Mutual Purpose.” pg. 141
“Start with Heart. Think about what you really want and how dialogue can help you get it. And master your story—realize that you may be jumping to a hasty Victim, Villain, or Helpless Story. The best way to find out the true story is not to act out the worst story you can generate. That will lead to self-destructive silence and violence games. Think about other possible explanations long enough to temper your emotions so you can get to dialogue. Besides, if it turns out you’re right about your initial impression, there will be plenty of time for confrontations later on.
Once you’ve worked on yourself to create the right conditions for dialogue, you can then draw upon five distinct skills that can help you talk about even the most sensitive topics. These five tools can be easily remembered with the acronym STATE. It stands for:
- Share your facts.
- Tell your story.
- Ask for others’ paths.
- Talk tentatively.
- Encourage testing.
The first three skills describe what to do. The last two tell how to do it.” pg. 166
“‘Talk tentatively’ is not about softening the message; it’s about strengthening it. Remember, your goal is to add meaning to the pool. And it won’t make it into the pool unless the other person consents to it. If you attempt to disguise your conclusions as facts, the other person is likely to resist rather than consider them. Then nothing gets into the pool. One of the ironies of dialogue is that when there’s a difference of opinions, the more convinced and forceful you act, the more resistant others become. Speaking in absolute and overstated terms does not increase your influence; it decreases it. The converse is also true—the more tentatively you speak, the more open people become to your opinions.” pg. 175
“While it’s natural to move quickly from one thought to the next, strong emotions take a while to subside. Thoughts are all electricity. Emotions add chemistry. Once the chemicals that fuel emotions are released, they hang around in the bloodstream for a time—in some cases, long after thoughts have changed. So be patient while the chemistry catches up with the electricity. Allow people time to explore their path and then wait for their emotions to catch up with the safety you’ve created.” pg. 193
“Ironically, when you sincerely acknowledge someone is angry with you, the person often begins to feel less angry. When you validate someone’s nervousness, the person feels less need to be nervous. Mirroring can help others begin to talk out rather than act out their emotions.” pg. 198
“Rather than trying to get to the source of the other person’s emotions, we either gracefully exit or ask what he or she wants to see happen. Asking people what they want helps them engage their brains in a way that moves to problem solving and away from either attacking or avoiding. It also helps reveal what they think the cause of the problem is.” pg. 199
“Think of your pen as the power to define your worth. When you hold your pen, you get to author the terms. Is your worth intrinsic to you? Is it about how you look? Is it contingent on how much you achieve, how many people admire you, or whether a certain person returns your love?” pg. 218
“How you experience feedback has more to do with the location of your pen than the content of the message.” pg. 219
“Let’s elaborate a bit on the idea of the pen. Feedback only hurts when we believe it threatens one or both of our most fundamental psychological needs: safety (perceived physical, social, or material security) and worth (a sense of self-respect, self-regard, or self-confidence.” pg. 222
“As we grow to adulthood and gain greater resources to care for ourselves, we fail to update our assumptions about our safety. And those assumptions control our lives. When our boss, our life partner, our neighbor, or a passenger on a subway starts to criticize us, we react emotionally far out of proportion to the real risk. Why? Because we’ve equated approval with safety and disapproval with danger. And we’ve failed to update the equation as our capacity to take responsibility for our safety has increased.” pg. 223
“In most cases, it is our defensive, combative, or resentful response to feedback that puts us at risk more than the feedback itself. And one reason we become so defensive is that we underestimate our capacity to protect ourselves. You don’t get angry when you’re confident. You get angry when you’re scared.” pg. 223
“Instead, whether it’s [the feedback] true, false, or a combination, we react to it indiscriminately with hurt, shame, fear, or anger. Why? Because we live with an undercurrent of worry that we aren’t worthy. It is our fear that we’re inadequate, unlovable, or worthless that makes the opinions of others so threatening. When others hold our pens, we live with a constant gnawing fear of their disapproval. Their feedback is no longer an indictment of our behavior; it is an audit of our worth.” pg. 223-224
SUMMARY: MASTER MY STORIES
If strong emotions are keeping you stuck in silence or violence, try these steps:
Retrace Your Path
- Examine your behavior. If you find yourself moving away from dialogue, ask yourself what you’re really doing.
- Put your feelings into words. Learn to accurately identify and name the emotions behind your story. Ask: “What emotions are encouraging me to act this way?”
- Spot your story. Identify your story.
- Ask: “What story must I be telling to create these emotions? What story is creating these emotions?”
- Separate fact from story. Abandon your absolute certainty by distinguishing between hard facts and your invented story.
- Ask: “What evidence do I have to support this story?”
- Watch for clever stories. Victim, Villain, and Helpless Stories sit at the top of the list.
Tell the Rest of the Story
- Ask:
- “What am I pretending not to notice about my role in the problem?”
- “Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do this?”
- “What do I really want?”
- “What should I do right now to move toward what I really want?” pg. 104
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that is has taken place.” — George Bernard Shaw, pg. 1
“Decades of research have led us to conclude that:
You can measure the health of relationships, teams, and organizations by measuring the lag time between when problems are identified and when they are resolved.
The only reliable path to resolving problems is to find the shortest path to effective conversation.” pg. 5
“When Kevin spoke up, his implicit question was, ‘How can I be 100 percent honest with Chris and at the same time be 100 percent respectful?’” pg. 24
“When it comes to Crucial Conversations, skilled people find a way to get all relevant information (from themselves and others) out into the open.
That’s it. At the core of every successful conversation lies the free flow of information. People openly and honestly express their opinions, share their feelings, and articulate their theories. They willingly and capably share their views, even when their ideas are controversial or unpopular. It’s the one thing that Kevin and the other extremely effective communicators we studied were routinely able to achieve.
What they do is effectively create a dialogue [the free flow of meaning between two or more people]” pg. 25
“As they began to understand the whys and wherefores of different proposals, they built off one another. Eventually, as one idea led to the next and then to the next, they came up with an alternative that no one had originally thought of and that all wholeheartedly supported. As a result of the free flow of meaning, the whole (final choice) was truly greater than the sum of the original parts. In short: The Pool of Shared Meaning is the birthplace of synergy.
As people sit through an open discussion, they understand why the shared solution is the best option, and they’re committed to act. Kevin and the other VPs didn’t buy into their final choice simply because they were involved; they bought in because they understood.” pg. 27
“Remember, if you don’t talk it out, you’ll act it out. And virtual relationships leave much more room for acting it out!” pg. 47
“Creating a simple problem sentence helps you both start with a clear purpose and hold yourself accountable. It gives you a standard by which to measure whether you told your full truth. Don’t worry about how you’ll say it. Just tell yourself the truth about what you want to say.” pg. 49
“When you place a bookmark, you make a conscious choice about what you want to talk about. And you register clearly with the other person that you will return to the bookmarked issue later. Never allow the conversation to shift or the topic to change without acknowledging you’ve done it.” pg. 53
“Those who are skilled at Crucial Conversations present their brains with a more complex question. They ask, ‘What do I want for myself, the other person, and the relationship?’” pg. 68
“EMOTIONS DON’T JUST HAPPEN
To answer these questions, we’ll start with two rather bold (and sometimes unpopular) claims. . . .
Claim one. Emotions don’t settle upon you like a fog. They are not foisted upon you by others. No matter how comfortable it might make you feel to say it, others don’t make you mad. You make you mad. You make you scared, annoyed, insulted, or hurt. You and only you create your emotions.
Claim two. Once you’ve created your upset emotions, you have only two options: You can act on them or be acted on by them. That is, when it comes to strong emotions, you either find a way to master them or fall hostage to them.” pg. 75
“Even if you don’t realize it, you are telling yourself stories. . . . When we believe we’re at risk, we tell ourselves a story so quickly that we don’t even know we’re doing it.” pg. 80-81
“If we take control of our stories, they won’t control us. People who excel at dialogue are able to influence their emotions during Crucial Conversations. They recognize that while it’s true that at first we are in control of the stories we tell, once they’re told, the stories control us. They first control how we feel and then how we act. And thus they control the results we get from our Crucial Conversations.
The good news is we can tell different stories and break the loop. In fact, until we tell different stories, we cannot break the loop.” pg. 81
“Actually identifying your emotions is more difficult than you might imagine. In fact, many people are emotionally illiterate. When asked to describe how they’re feeling, they use words such as ‘bad’ or ‘angry’ or ‘scared’—which would be OK if these were accurate descriptions, but often they’re not. Individuals say they’re angry when, in fact, they’re feeling a mix of embarrassment and surprise. Or they suggest they’re unhappy when they’re feeling violated. Perhaps they suggest they’re upset when they’re really feeling humiliated and hurt.” pg. 86
“Since life doesn’t consist of a series of vocabulary tests, you might wonder what difference words can make. But words do matter. Knowing what you’re really feeling helps you take a more accurate look at what is going on and why. For instance, you’re far more likely to take an honest look at the story you’re telling yourself if you admit you’re feeling both embarrassed and surprised rather than simply angry.” pg. 86-87
“When you take the time to precisely articulate what you’re feeling, you begin to put a little bit of daylight between you and the emotion. This distance lets you move from being hostage to the emotion to being an observer of it. When you can hold it at a little distance from yourself, you can examine it, study it, and begin to change it. But that process can’t begin until you name it.” pg. 87
“We call these imaginative and self-serving concoctions ‘clever stories.’ They’re clever because they allow us to feel good about behaving badly. Better yet, they allow us to feel good about behaving badly even while achieving abysmal results.
When we feel a need to justify our ineffective behavior or disconnect ourselves from our bad results, we tend to tell our stories in three very predictable ways.
Victim Stories - ‘It’s Not My Fault’
Villain Stories - “It’s All Your Fault’
Helpless Stories - ‘There’s Nothing Else I Can Do’” pg. 91-93
“We sell out when we consciously act against our own sense of what’s right. And if we don’t admit to our errors, we inevitably look for ways to justify them. That’s when we begin to tell clever stories.” pg. 95
“When you find yourself labeling or otherwise vilifying others, stop and ask: Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do what this person is doing?” pg. 98
“What should you be doing instead? Openly, honestly, and effectively discussing the problem—not taking potshots and then justifying yourself. When you refuse to make yourself helpless, you’re forced to hold yourself accountable for using your dialogue skills rather than bemoaning your weakness.” pg. 100
“Safety isn’t synonymous with comfort. At this point, it is worth noting that feeling safe in a conversation is not synonymous with feeling comfortable. We’ll define safety more in the next chapter. But for now we want to be clear about what safety isn’t. Crucial Conversations are, by definition, hard conversations. We and others have to stretch in these conversations, often venturing into new territory and feeling some degree of vulnerability. The measure of whether a conversation is safe is not how comfortable I feel. It is whether meaning is flowing. Do I, and others, feel like we can share our meaning, have that meaning heard, and also listen honestly and respectfully to each other? If you can do that, if meaning is flowing honestly and respectfully, you know safety is there.” pg. 113
“How do you expand your data stream? Start by asking for more data. For example:
- Email. ‘I haven’t heard back from you in a couple of days in response to the email I sent you. I am not sure how to interpret your silence. How are you feeling about the proposal?’
- Telephone. ‘I wish I could see your face right now. I don’t know how you’re hearing my message, and I would hate for you to misinterpret it. Can you help me understand what you’re thinking right now?’
- Direct messaging. ‘When I read the comment that you posted on my social media account, I wasn’t sure how to take it. It seemed like you might be upset. Are you?’
When you see signs of silence or violence in virtual communication, ask for more data. When you do, either people will add meaning to the pool about what they’re feeling or thinking, or they’ll hold back. If they don’t disclose more about how they’re feeling, that is its own confirming data. Then it’s time to Make It Safe.” pg. 126-127
“You first need to understand why someone feels unsafe. People never become defensive about what you’re saying (the content of your message). They become defensive because of why they think you’re saying it (the intent). Said another way, safety in a conversation is about intent, not content. When people become defensive, it is because either:
1. You have a bad intent toward them (and they are accurately picking up on that).
OR
2. They have misunderstood your good intent.
If it’s the former, you need to go back and Start with Heart. Remember, it’s easy for our motives to degrade in a Crucial Conversation. Check yourself by asking, what am I acting like I want? This question helps us see ourselves as other people are seeing us. Then ask yourself, what do you really want? For you? For them? For the relationship? If your motives have degraded, step back and refocus on what it is you really want.” pg. 133
“TWO CONDITIONS OF SAFETY.
In order for people to feel safe with you, they need to know two things about your intent. They need to know that:
- You can about their concerns (Mutual Purpose).
- You care about them (Mutual Respect).
We call Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect the conditions of dialogue. Only when these two conditions are met, when there is Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect, will you have the safety needed for meaning to flow into the pool.” pg. 135
“But don’t mistake your responsibility to create safety in the dialogue as meaning you should not expect the other person to acknowledge your needs. Mutual Purpose must be mutual. Yes, you need to care about the other person’s purpose. But the other person also needs to care about your purpose. You don’t need to subordinate your purpose to that of others just to create a veneer of safety for them.” pg. 136
“What are you supposed to actually do? Here are four skills that the best at dialogue routinely use to build safety up front in a conversation and rebuild safety when it’s been lost:
- Share your good intent.
- Apologize when appropriate.
- Contrast to fix misunderstandings.
- Create a Mutual Purpose.” pg. 141
“Start with Heart. Think about what you really want and how dialogue can help you get it. And master your story—realize that you may be jumping to a hasty Victim, Villain, or Helpless Story. The best way to find out the true story is not to act out the worst story you can generate. That will lead to self-destructive silence and violence games. Think about other possible explanations long enough to temper your emotions so you can get to dialogue. Besides, if it turns out you’re right about your initial impression, there will be plenty of time for confrontations later on.
Once you’ve worked on yourself to create the right conditions for dialogue, you can then draw upon five distinct skills that can help you talk about even the most sensitive topics. These five tools can be easily remembered with the acronym STATE. It stands for:
- Share your facts.
- Tell your story.
- Ask for others’ paths.
- Talk tentatively.
- Encourage testing.
The first three skills describe what to do. The last two tell how to do it.” pg. 166
“‘Talk tentatively’ is not about softening the message; it’s about strengthening it. Remember, your goal is to add meaning to the pool. And it won’t make it into the pool unless the other person consents to it. If you attempt to disguise your conclusions as facts, the other person is likely to resist rather than consider them. Then nothing gets into the pool. One of the ironies of dialogue is that when there’s a difference of opinions, the more convinced and forceful you act, the more resistant others become. Speaking in absolute and overstated terms does not increase your influence; it decreases it. The converse is also true—the more tentatively you speak, the more open people become to your opinions.” pg. 175
“While it’s natural to move quickly from one thought to the next, strong emotions take a while to subside. Thoughts are all electricity. Emotions add chemistry. Once the chemicals that fuel emotions are released, they hang around in the bloodstream for a time—in some cases, long after thoughts have changed. So be patient while the chemistry catches up with the electricity. Allow people time to explore their path and then wait for their emotions to catch up with the safety you’ve created.” pg. 193
“Ironically, when you sincerely acknowledge someone is angry with you, the person often begins to feel less angry. When you validate someone’s nervousness, the person feels less need to be nervous. Mirroring can help others begin to talk out rather than act out their emotions.” pg. 198
“Rather than trying to get to the source of the other person’s emotions, we either gracefully exit or ask what he or she wants to see happen. Asking people what they want helps them engage their brains in a way that moves to problem solving and away from either attacking or avoiding. It also helps reveal what they think the cause of the problem is.” pg. 199
“Think of your pen as the power to define your worth. When you hold your pen, you get to author the terms. Is your worth intrinsic to you? Is it about how you look? Is it contingent on how much you achieve, how many people admire you, or whether a certain person returns your love?” pg. 218
“How you experience feedback has more to do with the location of your pen than the content of the message.” pg. 219
“Let’s elaborate a bit on the idea of the pen. Feedback only hurts when we believe it threatens one or both of our most fundamental psychological needs: safety (perceived physical, social, or material security) and worth (a sense of self-respect, self-regard, or self-confidence.” pg. 222
“As we grow to adulthood and gain greater resources to care for ourselves, we fail to update our assumptions about our safety. And those assumptions control our lives. When our boss, our life partner, our neighbor, or a passenger on a subway starts to criticize us, we react emotionally far out of proportion to the real risk. Why? Because we’ve equated approval with safety and disapproval with danger. And we’ve failed to update the equation as our capacity to take responsibility for our safety has increased.” pg. 223
“In most cases, it is our defensive, combative, or resentful response to feedback that puts us at risk more than the feedback itself. And one reason we become so defensive is that we underestimate our capacity to protect ourselves. You don’t get angry when you’re confident. You get angry when you’re scared.” pg. 223
“Instead, whether it’s [the feedback] true, false, or a combination, we react to it indiscriminately with hurt, shame, fear, or anger. Why? Because we live with an undercurrent of worry that we aren’t worthy. It is our fear that we’re inadequate, unlovable, or worthless that makes the opinions of others so threatening. When others hold our pens, we live with a constant gnawing fear of their disapproval. Their feedback is no longer an indictment of our behavior; it is an audit of our worth.” pg. 223-224
SUMMARY: MASTER MY STORIES
If strong emotions are keeping you stuck in silence or violence, try these steps:
Retrace Your Path
- Examine your behavior. If you find yourself moving away from dialogue, ask yourself what you’re really doing.
- Put your feelings into words. Learn to accurately identify and name the emotions behind your story. Ask: “What emotions are encouraging me to act this way?”
- Spot your story. Identify your story.
- Ask: “What story must I be telling to create these emotions? What story is creating these emotions?”
- Separate fact from story. Abandon your absolute certainty by distinguishing between hard facts and your invented story.
- Ask: “What evidence do I have to support this story?”
- Watch for clever stories. Victim, Villain, and Helpless Stories sit at the top of the list.
Tell the Rest of the Story
- Ask:
- “What am I pretending not to notice about my role in the problem?”
- “Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do this?”
- “What do I really want?”
- “What should I do right now to move toward what I really want?” pg. 104
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
This is the best self-help / how-to I’ve read. It has very actionable advice you can start using from chapter 1. I highly recommend it.
I think this is a book everyone could benefit from reading, but I would say many people probably have many of these tools in their toolkit already. Much of the advice here doesn't go beyond common sense wisdom but it is valuable to see it all in one place and have a few example dialogues to follow. I think the largest value of this book is by reading it, you're making a commitment to yourself to try and improve your communication skills at work and at home. It is also written in a very 2000s style which hasn't aged very well - it is ripe with ACRONYMS for remembering your ABCs so you can ACE conversations which are too plentiful to be memorable.