
A book by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler,
from 2002, about how to keep up constructive dialogue in difficult
situations.
A short and somewhat fragmentary summary:
Crucial conversations are those where the stakes are high, opinions are
different, and emotions run strong. Such conflict situations trigger our
natural fight-or-flight response (releasing adrenaline, increasing blood supply
of the muscles and thus decreasing blood supply of the brain) which makes it
difficult to keep calm and to keep up the level of mental activity that is
necessary in complex communication situations. To keep the dialogue
constructive in spite of this interference, we should learn and practice a set
of supportive skills.
Focus on what you really want, honestly, for yourself, for others,
and for the relations. Think about how you should behave to best reach these
goals. Now, is your current behavior consistent with your true goals, or maybe
your motives have quietly shifted into defending yourself or trying to win at
any cost? If you have managed to keep, or to bring back, your focus on your
real goals, then is this also clearly understandable to the communication
partners, or maybe your behavior tells a different story? Learn to notice when
the conversation turns crucial. Learn to monitor the behavior of yourself and
others, and, most importantly, the level of safety in each participant. When
somebody feels unsafe, they will either start fighting for themselves or close
up, which both stop the constructive dialogue. To maintain the safety, make
sure that you all have some common (possibly higher level) goal in mind and
that you honestly work toward that goal, and also keep up mutual respect, no
matter how different the opinions and personalities. If the other participants
do not engage in constructive dialogue, do NOT blame them -- it is your
responsibility to try to create an atmosphere where they will become more and
more open and constructive.
Separate facts from interpretations. Find out and discuss explicitly how the
participants interpret their observations about the issue under discussion. Be
ready to change your interpretations in the light of the new information and
ideas you get from others. Find alternative solutions that everybody agrees on,
even to those problems that initially seem to have only two mutually exclusive
ones. Honestly apologize for your mistakes, but do not apologize for your
honest standpoints. Fully explain why you have the opinions and standpoints
that you have, but never try to force them upon others -- forcing tends to
automatically create counterreactions, even if your ideas are indeed the best
(but never assume that they are before finding out the others' viewpoints as
well). Beware: if your belief in your ideas is very strong, you might not even
notice that others get the feeling that you are forcing those ideas upon them
-- pay close attention to your tone of voice, posture, talkativeness,
aggressiveness. Calm down and give others enough time to explain their views,
too.
If there is a decision to be made, make sure that everybody understands the
process through which it will be made, and that decisionmaking is a separate
process from the dialogue (which is the process of finding out and discussing
the information and viewpoints that the participants have).
In the book these ideas are, obviously, presented in a more systematic and
detailed way, and there are more of them than listed here.
The only thing that slightly bothered me about this book was the feeling
that it could have easily been condensed down to half of its size -- some of
the ideas were getting a bit repetitive and diluted. On the one hand,
repetition with variations is surely helpful for better understanding, but on
the other a concise presentation might maybe make it easier to imprint the
information into the memory.
But overall I found this book very educative and would recommend it to
almost everybody, because we all have crucial conversations on a daily basis --
with our families and friends, with our coworkers, bosses, clients, opponents,
and so on.
More info at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0071401946
Note: The version that I read was not the English original, but a
translation into Estonian, named "Otsustavad kõnelused":
http://www.raamatuklubi.aripaev.ee/Book.aspx?ID=7d0ffb84-00ed-47eb-b392-a5fb4be3a42a