Crucial conversations is a dialogue style that teaches you to calm your emotions and stick to the heart of the matter during high stake, highly opinionated conversations. For civility, this tool is a game-changer. With this technique, we learn to express controversial topics with respect for one another. New York Times Best Seller, Crucial Conversations, has been used in Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and corporations across the nation.
Our problems with civility come because we are under an immense amount of stress, whether from work or from home. It’s because we are stressed that communication gets strained. As employers, using this model, we can provide the framework for our managers in how to communicate with each other in times of high stress.
What are Crucial Conversations?
Crucial conversations have three critical elements: high stakes, high opinions, and high emotion. During high stake conversations, our emotions cloud our judgment and create a story around the situation. We then respond to this story and pursue a completely different initiative based on an emotional response. It’s actually quite bizarre once you understand what is happening and is very common.
When faced with pressure and strong opinions, we stop adding valuable information to move the dialogue forward and instead turn our attention to seeking ways to win, punish, or keep the peace. These motives come from reactions we make to our strong emotions.
“When adrenaline does our thinking for us, our motives flow with the chemical tide.”
This process is hard to make sense of because it’s happening behind the scenes. For most of us, our brains go into fight-or-flight in a high stressful situation (and have a higher likelihood of doing so when we are under long-term stress). The adrenaline in our body naturally kicks in when we are under stress, hijacking our ability to communicate clearly, and causes the dialogue to become unsafe.
Crucial conversations give us a way to calm down our physical response to proceed appropriately with the situation and get what we want. The process is also about being 100% honest and 100% respectful. It takes individual self-awareness, tact, and our willingness to pivot from our traditional responses.
When emotions take over or we’re speaking from a place of hurt, it can make the conversation murky. The authors recommend taking charge of your body by asking yourself a series of questions. This helps the logical side of our brain come back online. Self inquiry explains to your brain that you are not under any physical threat which sends blood back to the logical side and, most importantly, away from our body’s fight-or-flight response.
The author gives the example of a CEO wanting to set up the new corporate office in his hometown, but everyone knows it would be more economical to set it up on the west coast. Most employees would stay silent to avoid upsetting the power dynamics. Instead, one employee is honest with his boss while maintaining respect for him. This allows his boss to hear the other side. This process takes courage. It’s important for your managers to model a good response when an employee has the courage to speak up. The leader sets the tone and stage to allow for open and honest communication.
Your intention is the foundation for the whole setup. There is a central core question that helps keep your intentions in tack.
The Crucial Question:
What do I really want here? What is the outcome I am seeking? Am I behaving in accordance with that outcome?
If not, it’s time to perform self-inquiry.
The Successful Elements of Crucial Conversations
1. The Shared Meaning
It starts with providing information into the shared pot of understanding. When different perspectives are freely offered and are given with 100% respect and honesty, you have a psychologically safe environment. Patrick Lencioni’s, Overcoming 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, says your employees watch the retaliation and then they will self-preserve and go into Crucial Conversation’s version of silence based on the leader’s reaction.
2. Sharing the Same Purpose
The intention is the same on both sides. This allows for a tough conversation to stay on topic instead of getting sidetracked into personal attacks based on always and never statements about each other. Two people engaged in a crucial conversation should have the same goal: resolution.
This requires that we work on ourselves and examine our own thought processes and styles, catching them before they get out of hand. When high stake conversations go wrong, it’s because our intentions and motives change as the conversation continues. This is subtle and is often missed.
3. Mutual Respect
When you have these dialogues, you show deep respect for the other person in how and what you say in response to their opinions. It’s about your delivery that results in not provoking the other person into a war.
Don’t Fall into the Fool’s Choices
This is a common trap that people get into it during high-stake conversations. They give ultimatums. Either we do this, or we don’t do this—so there is always a loss. We think we have to get results or lose a relationship, for example. This type of black and white thinking prevents the dialogue from moving-forward. People who are good at these conversations believe dialogue is always an option.
When the Dialogue Becomes Unsafe
When you are no longer contributing information, but are retreating to silence or violence, this is a sign the dialogue is becoming unsafe. You want to watch for the moment that the conversation becomes crucial, and signs that people don’t feel safe in the dialogue based on how they are reacting to the conversation.
A good example of feeling unsafe is when employees fall silent in a meeting after the leader makes a decision they don’t agree with. When our stress level get high, we have natural reactions that make up these characteristics such as withdrawing from the conversation, rolling our eyes, or making back-handed comments.
What’s your style under stress? Take the quiz!
There are several ways to get out of the Fool’s Choice. One way is by bringing ourselves back to the heart of the matter. We ask what we want for ourselves, the other person, and the relationship. This is self-inquiry that also conveys to our subconscious that we are safe. Once we are not responding from our emotional side, we clarify what we want and don’t want.
Questions to Break out of the Fool’s Choice:
For the self:
- What do we want for ourselves, the other person, and the relationship?
What to say to others:
- What I don’t want ________________
- What I do want _____________________
This forces your brain into a more complex inquiry that steers you away from your natural stress responses. Here’s the high-level breakdown of how to have a successful dialogue at a crucial time:
People become defensive when they no longer feel safe. The authors say this happens when it stops being about the content and becomes more about the condition of the conversation. When you believe the other person has your best interests in mind, however, you no longer become defensive. We communicate that we have each other’s best interest at heart by speaking respectfully.
People tend to hold back their opinions instead of risk upsetting or angering someone in a position of power. When people sit back, which happens in unsafe psychological workplaces, there is a rarely an investment in the final decision or outcome from the group.
We also may be on the other end of the spectrum where instead of silence we strive towards violence, which is a form of compelling someone else towards our point of view. This is also a tactic that isn’t invested in finding a solution that works for all.
How Do I Integrate Crucial Conversations into My Workplace
Crucial conversations give us a guide on how to bring things back to safety. Psychological safety is the number one cause these days for toxic workplaces. In Overcoming 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni says it’s the foundation.
Through this process, it’s important to clarify what you mean to avoid assumptions and misinterpretations. This is especially common at work, when we don’t feel comfortable being vulnerable. Vulnerability is a key trait also found in healthy teams.
Mutual respect is a critical component which is also lost with civility issues. We must tap into our desire to come to a compromise that works for both parties. During stress, however, our amygdala is hijacked and a fight-or-flight response is triggered, rendering us incapable of no longer being able to think or get our point across in the best way. This process asks that you put aside the story and manage your physical response first to effectively navigate critical conversations.
Like Social Styles and Nonviolent Communication, Crucial Conversations give you a guide on how to act civil at work and stay in communication with one another through times of high stress.
Get Your Team Started:
- Read the book
- Assign the on-demand courses
- Check our resources for your industry
- What’s your stress style? Take the assessment
Providing this resource to your leaders will help them navigate conversations with other leaders and employees. When there is mutual respect, employees stay engaged and your workforce succeeds at civility.
