Why I Always Come Back to Crucial Conversations

Tips for Applying Cruicial Conversations to you daily life. Image create on Canva.

I always find myself coming back to Crucial Conversations because it feels relevant to every moment I have in both my professional and personal life. I have been here countless times — whether it’s a colleague I struggle to connect with, or meetings I dread because of conflict, pushback, or lack of progress. In honor of moving through these conversations regardless of the challenges, I’m reviving this from one of my LinkedIn posts last year, giving it a fresh glow-up. I hope it’s just as helpful to you as it’s been to me.

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I firmly believe that every interaction within your personal or professional life is an opportunity to make a meaningful difference in both your life and someone else's life. Whether we like it or not communication is the most important part of both our lives and in business. This also happens to include the challenging conversations that inevitably arise - all of those often painful moments we are all acutely aware of. Recently, I was having a email exchange with a customer where they appeared to be very unsatisfied with my team's responses. I quickly coordinated a call to get to the bottom of their displeasure. I prepared notes and even practiced the steps from Crucial Conversations to ensure I was prepared for the conversation. To my surprise, this person wasn't angry at all when I got on the phone. We had already solved their issue and they quickly wanted help with the next set of problems they were facing. Nevertheless, I was happy that I came prepared to ensure I was ready for anything that got thrown my way! The Crucial Conversations framework (Patterson et al, 1) has been a game-changer in helping me improve my ability to navigate and resolve difficult conversations. It's supported me both planned and unplanned conversations - from challenging customers to surprise promotion requests. Even if I don't get all the steps right, operating with a baseline of empathy and communicating openly with others allows me to show up authentically when the difficult conversations happen. Here's is a quick review of main tenants of Crucial Conversations that you can apply today in your life. This only scratches the surface of this book - so I highly recommend that you find yourself a copy to fully dive in. See how you can apply this framework to your next business interaction:

💘 Start with Heart: It helps to prepare for a conversation if you know it may be a difficult one. Start by reviewing what you want to get out of the conversation. Take a moment to create positive thought processes about your team member or your customer's needs and aspirations. Prepare a follow up questions and prepare to actively listen to the other person. 

👀 Learn to Look: Pay attention to non-verbal cues and emotions to understand the underlying issues while you are in conversation. Is your team member not making eye contact with you? Is the customers arms crossed or is their tone upset? If the dialogue is breaking down, take a breathe. Its your job to continue to work to understand with the other person your are in conversation with and how you can get it back on track

🤗 Make it Safe: Create a safe environment for the conversation where both parties feel respected and valued. Validate what the other person is expressing by repeating back what you think you heard.  When responding, share that you care about their concerns (this creates a mutual purpose) and you care about them (this creates mutual respect). Share good intent, and apologize when appropriate.

📔 Master Your Stories: Be aware of the stories you tell yourself about the other person's behavior. Its easy to fall into negative thought patterns and tell ourselves negative stories about others. Its important to understand these stories can explain why people react emotionally, and why the same circumstances may trigger different responses in different people. Stay curious and open-minded to understand their perspective fully.

🛣 State Your Path: Share you story using persuasion and storytelling. The best way to be prepared for this is to practice your story before you are in a crucial conversation. What makes you different, what drives or motivates you? Share your facts, tell your story, ask about the other person;s path, talk tentatively and encourage testing of paths together. 

👂 Explore Others' Paths: Explore the other person's path by asking questions, mirror what you are seeing and hearing. Paraphrase what you understand their story to be. Help encourage constructive conversation by sharing a safe way to start the conversation. 

🤝 Move to Action: Empower the other person to be an active participant in crafting a resolution that exceeds their expectations. Be clear about who will own each step after a decision has been reached. Always follow up with an email or message that summarizes your conversation and outlines the actions that you will take to support them. 

With the above helpful tips, you will have the basic skills to handle any difficult conversation when you remember to use empathy and professionalism. The hardest part is to have the courage to try something different. If you do, the outcomes can be career or even life-changing.

Have you used these principles in your customer support or other STEM based interactions? I'd love to hear about your experiences.

This blog post references the following book:

Patterson, K., Grenny, J., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2002). Crucial Conversations. McGraw-Hill Contemporary. This article is was first published on my LinkedIn  on May 19th, 2024.