1: There are often tense moments at the beginning of a Crucial Conversation.
The stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions can get intense.
“Others are scanning your every facial tic or leg crossing for evidence of your intentions,” Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, and their co-authors write in their classic book Crucial Conversations
“Do you mean them harm? Are you out to get them?” they are asking.
The bad news?
“All you need to do to destroy safety in a Crucial Conversation is . . . nothing,” the authors note.
“Take a moment to absorb that last sentence,” they write. “It’s not enough for you to have good intentions.”
You must also be proactive. You need to play offense. You must generate “clear and unmistakable” evidence that you respect the other person and have their best interests in mind.
2: So what happens when the conversation takes a turn for the worse?
The worst at dialogue let their emotions rule the day. They get angry. They speak whatever is on their mind.
Or they sulk and withdraw.
“Those who are good at dialogue realize that safety is at risk, but they fix it in exactly the wrong way,” Joseph and his co-authors write.
“They try to make the subject more palatable by sugarcoating their message: ‘Oh, honey, I know you wanted to spend time together, but I was just so tired on Friday.'”
To keep things comfortable, they soften or cover up what they really mean.
“This strategy, of course,” they note, “avoids the real problem, and it never gets fixed.”
The best at dialogue take a different tack.
“They know that in order to solve their problem, they’ll need to talk about their problem—with no pretending, sugarcoating, or faking,” the authors observe.
“So they do something completely different,” Joseph and his co-authors write.
They pay attention to both what is being said and how it’s being said.
What the Crucial Conversations authors call a “dual process.”
When they “notice people moving to silence or violence,” the best at dialogue “step out of the content of the conversation (literally stop talking about the topic of the conversation), make it safe, and then step back in.”
In other words, stop trying to solve the problem until you’ve made it safe to talk about the problem.
3: So how do you make a conversation feel “safe”?
You begin by understanding what is causing the other person to feel unsafe.
And here’s the key: “People never become defensive about what you’re saying (the content of your message),” the authors observe. “They become defensive because of why they think you’re saying it (the intent). . .”
There are usually two possibilities:
- You actually have bad intentions toward them, and they sense it.
- You have good intentions, but they’ve misunderstood them.
Your good intentions can vanish quickly. It’s easy to get triggered and let your emotions take over.
Suddenly, you just want to be right and win the argument.
“If your motives have degraded, step back and ask yourself: What do I really want? For me? For them? For the relationship?
But often, the real problem isn’t that you have bad intentions.
It’s that your intent has been misunderstood. “Remember, human beings are wired to look for threats. When people feel threatened, they move to silence or verbal violence or to flight or fight—none of which are great for problem solving.”
That’s when it’s time to stop talking about the issue itself.
Instead, address what’s happening in the conversation.
Make your intentions clear. Help the other person understand what you want for them, for yourself, and for the relationship.
Don’t assume they know.
Remember, having good intentions isn’t enough. The other person needs to understand what those intentions are.
Once they do, the sense of threat begins to fade. The conversation can shift away from silence or verbal violence and back toward dialogue.
That’s the goal.
Not to make a difficult conversation comfortable.
To make it safe enough to talk honestly about what really matters.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Think about a recent difficult conversation. Did the other person truly understand what you wanted for them, for yourself, and for the relationship?
Action: Before your next Crucial Conversation, take a moment to clarify your intentions. Then, don’t assume the other person knows them. Say them out loud.
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