Influential People Master Crucial Conversations
Build Better Relationships with Proper Dialogue
Apr 15, 2009
People who get things done and people who know how to build and maintain relationships both professionally and personally achieve great levels of success – according to twenty-five years of research of twenty thousand people and hundreds of organizations referenced in a book, Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes are High (McGraw-Hill, 2002).
The book was written by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler to help readers understand the relationship between success with professional and personal relationships and the quality of conversations and the use of good dialogue.
Crucial Conversations
The conversations the authors write about are those that happen day-to-day that affects one’s life. There is a difference between crucial and plain vanilla conversations.
Crucial conversations are those conversations between two or more people that have several distinct characteristics including:
- Having varying opinions.
- High stakes.
- Having a huge impact on the quality of life.
The authors wrote, “When we face crucial conversations, we can do one of three things: We can avoid them, we can face them and handle them poorly or we can face them and handle them well.”
Power of Dialogue
Dialogue is defined as the free flow of meaning between two or more people. The authors believe that at the core of every successful conversation is the free flow of information or good dialogue. When two or more people participate in good dialogue they are honest, open, express their opinions, share feelings, and discuss their theories.
According to the authors, “Not only are dialogue skills easy to spot, but they’re also fairly easy to learn.” The better part of the book details the tools needed to create conditions of dialogue, and to build a model for talking, listening and acting while in crucial conversations.
Improve Crucial Conversations
When a person improves their handling of crucial conversations they:
- Improve their organization.
- Improve their personal and professional relationships.
- Help to revitalize their community.
- Improve their personal health by improving immune systems and effectively fighting life-threatening diseases.
- Kick-start their careers.
The tools presented in the book provide insights into handling life’s most difficult situations and conversations by teaching readers to:
- Properly prepare for high-stake conversations.
- Transform anger into dialogue.
- Make conversations safe to talk about anything.
- Become persuasive in conversations.
Effective Communicator
How many times have smart, talented people failed to reach the top of their professions or become as respected as they should be when they fail to communicate properly? Being able to communicate effectively is the one tool that holds more power than knowledge, experience, or talent.
This book shows how developing and maintaining good relationships are vital to success. Properly handling crucial conversations and actively making a decision to always provide good dialogue can make a difference in anyone’s life.
The authors provide case studies and examples with solid solutions that are especially applicable in today’s stress filled world.
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