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One aspect of a manager or director’s job that most wrestle with is how to communicate effectively with staff on difficult subjects or when the topic is loaded for one or more of the participants.  One of the best resources I’ve seen to help directors with this very hard part of their job is Crucial Conversations:  Tools for Talking when Stakes are High (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzer,  McGraw-Hill, New York, 2002).  The authors describe a crucial conversation as a discussion “between two or more people where (1) stakes are high, (2) opinions vary, and (3) emotions run strong.” 

It’s not uncommon for directors to try to avoid or minimize these conversations rather than deal with them in a constructive way, nor is it unusual for a low-stakes conversation to take a sudden turn unexpectedly and suddenly become a high stakes conversation.  Examples of these in the workplace include:  Critiquing a colleague’s work, talking to a team member who isn’t keeping commitments, giving an unfavorable performance review, talking to a coworker about their personal hygiene, or giving feedback to the supervisor who is breaking a policy or safety requirement. 

However, as the authors point out, managers can learn to be effective when engaged in a crucial conversation.  The place to start all crucial conversations is with the heart.  Skilled people always begin high-risk discussions with the right motives, and they stay focused no matter what happens.  This means that they know what they want and resist temptations that may arise to deviate from those goals, and secondly they believe in the power of dialogue as a way for improving the organization.  The authors recommend that you ask yourself three questions whenever you begin to enter a crucial conversation:

• What do I really want for myself?
• What do I really want for others?
• What do I really want for the organization?

Then ask yourself one more question:

• How would I behave if I really wanted these results? 

Asking these questions about what’s really wanted keeps us from taking the wrong path in a conversation despite the fact that we may be tempted by (1) people who are trying to pick a fight, or (2) thousands of years of genetic hardwiring that brings our emotions to a quick boil, and (3) our deeply ingrained habit of trying to win.

Contributed by Joel Gordon

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