Working Notes: a commonplace notebook for recording & exploring ideas.
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Crucial Conversations

• "Crucial": high stakes, differing opinions, and strong emotions
• Choices: avoid, do badly or do well
• Humans default to self-defeating ways/first order/adrenaline based thoughts
• When actions disproportionately have an impact
• Predict success or failure = 5 conversations [?]
• Change relies on holding one another accountable to the change
• "Fool's choice"
  • choose between telling the truth and keeping a friend
• "Dialogue"
  • Get all the relevant information out into the open
  • Allow everyone to add their meaning to the shared pool
• Establish a shared pool of meaning up front
• "Start with heart"
  • Stay focused on your true goal
  • Don't rush into looking for ways to win/punish/keep the peace
  • Questions
    • What do I want for myself
    • What do I want for others
    • What do I want for the relationship
    • How would I behave if I really wanted these results?
      • Find bearings / direction
      • Take charge of my body
    • Clarify what I don't want
• Resisting the fool's choice by setting up new choices
• Pay attention to the
  • content of the conversation
  • condition of the conversation
    • look for when it turns crucial
      • emotional, behavioral, physical
    • safety
      • people stop talking because they feel unsafe
      • people move to silence or violence
  • /what/ and /why/
• Silence
  • masking -- understating/selectively showing opinions
  • avoiding -- steering away
  • withdrawing -- leaving a conversation altogether
• Violence
  • controlling -- coercing
  • labeling -- dismiss with a stereotype
  • attacking -- making the person suffer
• Building safety
  • Requirements
    • Mutual purpose: working towards a common outcome -- entrance
    • Mutual respect: to be able to continue talking
  • Skills
    • Apologize
    • Contrast
      • Emphasize that you don't have a malicious purpose
      • Confirm respect and real purpose
    • Create a mutual purpose
      • Commit to seek a mutual purpose
      • Recognize the purpose behind the strategy / true intent
      • Invent a mutual purpose
      • Brainstorm new strategies
    • Explore others' paths
• Monitor yourself
• Mastering stories
  • REBT/Path to action
  • There's the stimulus, and our reaction to it
  • Mastering stories
    • Act - notice behavior
    • Feel - feelings encouraging behavior
    • Tell story - story creating emotions
    • See - evidence behind story
  • "clever stories" justify bad behavior -- incomplete
    • victim - exaggerate our innocence / counter by adding own role
    • villain - overemphasize other's guilt / humanize the other person
    • helpless - powerless to do anything / determine core motivation
  • triggered because they're true, we're explaining our actions (elephant in the brain), free us from regret
• State my path
  • Work with
    • confidence - say it to the right person
    • humility - express /and hear/ opinions
    • skill
  • "STATE"
    • Share facts -- least insulting/raw data backing story
    • The story -- conclusions; use contrasting
    • Ask for other people's paths
    • The how -- talk tentatively
    • Encouraging testing -- check against reality
• Strong belief
  • Expressing strong beliefs forcefully
  • Look out for this happening
  • Tone down the approach
• Explore others' paths
  • Make a place of safety
  • Listen
    • Be curious / stay curious
    • Retrace their stories / path
    • Be patient / let emotions subside
    • Inquiry - invite people to share their story
  • Listening well
    • Ask
    • Mirror to confirm feelings
    • Paraphrase to acknowledge the story
    • Prime -- add some meaning yourself
  • Follow up
    • Agree -- look for violent agreement, agreeing but for details
    • Build -- start from the core and build out elements of agreement
    • Compare -- compare the path with ohers'
• Move to action
  • Dialog is not decision making -- dialog is building shared understanding
  • Explain decision making / line of authority
  • Mechanisms of decision making
    • Command -- we decide how to make it work
    • Consult -- collect information
    • Vote -- selecting from good options, need efficiency
    • Consensus -- everyone agrees; only for high stakes/everyone must agree
  • Deciding
    • Who cares?
    • Who knows?
    • Who must agree?
    • How many people are needed?
  • Assignment
    • Who / does what / by when
      • no "we" -- needs a name
      • exact deliverable / use contrasting to explain what you don't want
      • assignments without deadlines produce guilt not action
    • Follow up mechanism -- progress checks / milestones
  • Document the work
    • review what was supposed to be completed
• Adopting crucial conversations
  • Learn to look -- identify true dialogue
  • Make it safe
• Preparing for ccs -- review skills
• It's not about communication but about results ** **
• Misc :collapsed: true
  • Style under stress: :collapsed: true
    • 1 T
    • 2 T
    • 3 T
    • 4 T
    • 5 T
    • 6 T
    • 7 F
    • 8 F
    • 9 F
    • 10 F
    • 11 F
    • 12 F
    • 13 T
    • 14 T
    • 15 F
    • 16 F
    • 17 F
    • 18 T
    • 19 T
    • 20 T
    • 21 F
    • 22 F
    • 23 F
    • 24 F
    • 25 T
    • 26 F
    • 27 T
    • 28 T
    • 29 F
    • 30 F
    • 31 T
    • 32 T
    • 33 T
  • Results
    • scores point to silence
    • no particular strengths

— Kunal