"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
Crucial conversations are ones that happen to everyone. They are the day-to-day conversations that affect your life. You may be wondering, what makes a conversation crucial vs. plain vanilla? A crucial conversation is a discussion between two or more people where the stakes are high, emotions run strong and opinions vary. Everyone has encountered situations where promises have been broken, expectations have been violated and people have just flat out acted inappropriately. These are actions that trigger the need for a crucial confrontation, or holding someone accountable. Most of us are letting our emotions, past experiences and stories drive our actions. These actions trigger the need for a crucial conversation, or holding someone accountable for their actions face-to-face. From this book you can learn how to identify crucial confrontations, decide whether it should be addressed or not, create a sense of safety for everyone involved to discuss the situation openly and honestly. Then you can establish and carry out an appropriate action plan to resolve the issue.
There are three ways that most people handle crucial conversations; we avoid them, face them and handle them poorly or face them and handle well. This seems like a simple enough concept but it seems that when it matters the most, we do our worst. Why is this? Perhaps we are designed wrong; our emotions don't always allow us to converse effectively. Many times we are caught off guard, not prepared to have a crucial conversation. The pressure of being caught off guard with no coaching, no preparation and a brain that is drunk on adrenaline renders us almost incapable of having a rational thought, much less a crucial conversation. When we fail a crucial conversation it can affect every aspect of our life, from our careers to family relationships, our health and those with our community.