Crucial Conversations is my favorite book on communication. I just finished reading it a few weeks ago and it absolutely blew me away. It contains the combined wisdom of authors Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and the many situations they studied to learn how powerful effective communication can be. Here are the things that stuck with me the most.
The core of the book is about making it safe for everyone in a conversation to share their thoughts. This requires stepping out of the content of the conversation and looking at the conditions when trouble arises. What are you feeling when you’re talking or listening to someone else? How do the people you’re around come across to you: happy, frustrated, disinterested, impatient, downtrodden, etc? If things appear to be going downhill, then now is the time to restore safety in order to get the conversation back on track. Some ways to restore safety include doing your best to understand others by giving them plenty of time to speak without interruption, looking at not just what they’re saying but at the underlying feelings that they’re trying to convey, repeating back certain key words, and asking questions to clarify how they’re feeling and where they’re coming from. It can be difficult to restores safety when a conversation becomes heated but doing so is crucial for keeping things from going any further off the rails.
The authors also discuss the “Path to Action”, which goes as follows: we observe something, tell ourselves a story about it, feel one or more emotions based on that story, and then act based on those emotions. Almost everyone does this, even if it’s quickly and on a subconscious level. It’s incredibly difficult to avoid telling ourselves stories but that isn’t the main problem. The real problem comes when those stories are inaccurate; this results in a lot of emotions, many of which are often negative, that can make us act in destructive ways. Noticing the tendency to tell ourselves stories (which becomes easier by regularly practicing mindfulness) allows us to ignore harmful stories by rewriting them as positive stories or, perhaps with enough practice, even stop telling ourselves stories altogether. Either one will result in massively improved communication.
Everyone should read Crucial Conversations, especially those who, like myself, grew up with many horrible communication habits. Although it’s much easier to learn good habits than to try unlearning bad habits, it’s still possible to learn good habits later in life. This book has tons of great communication habits. Even with all my struggles, what I’ve learned from my first reading of this book has already made a positive difference. So many problems could be solved or even prevented from manifesting in the first place if most people read this book at an early age and practiced its lessons throughout their lives. I highly recommend reading Crucial Conversations and I think even the best communicators could still learn a thing or two from checking it out. I’d love to hear what you think of it if you decide to give it a read.