Crucial

I wanted to actually finish the book before I wrote about it but I’m super close and feel like I need to write tonight, even if I don’t exactly know the topic.

Crucial Conversations is a book I have heard about for years. My company has a class that they teach about it and the timing never worked out to take it in my first year.

I read Making of a Manager (listened) last May when I had a long road trip. I really enjoyed it. I wish I took notes on it but alas. I read it right before I took on a new team member and I remember making notes SOMEWHERE because it really helped me with our meetings.

But I had 3 credits from Audible and downloaded Crucial Conversations to listen to next.

May… September… close enough! I have 50 minutes left and I’ve been listening while I walk at night.

I actually started last week on Tuesday because I was in the car for FIVE HOURS, ZOMG, SO LONG. I had some great convos with friends but I probably listened to this for a whole two hours. It was helpful.

Pretty good stuff. At one point, it encouraged to take their quiz, “Style under Stress” assessment. Which, of course.. I love taking a quiz!

How often do you move towards silence?

Huge shocker! I often move towards silence! Masking? Check. Avoiding. Always. Withdrawing. Heck yes.

Whoops.

I was a little happier that I escaped violence! Except the huge checkmark next to “Controlling”.

haha

How often do you move towards verbal violence?

It then gave me my readout:

Dialogue Skills Score

Now look at how well you use the Crucial Conversations skills. If you scored one or two, you’re doing alright in this area—at least in the scenario you had in mind when answering the questions. If you scored zero, you should pay special attention to the corresponding chapter in the book.

• Choose Your Topic (Chapter 3): 1
• Start with Heart (Chapter 4): 2
• Master My Stories (Chapter 5): 0
• Learn To Look (Chapter 6): 0
• Make It Safe (Chapter 7): 0
• STATE My Path (Chapter 8): 2
• Explore Others’ Paths (Chapter 9): 1
• Retake Your Pen (Chapter 10): 1
• Move to Action (Chapter 11): 2

The ones I hit a zero with I was definitely resonating with.

The one thing that I had a good moment with was APOLOGIZING.

I am admittedly completely, horribly, awful at apologizing. I will always find an excuse. Always.

I’m trying to recognize it more. I think that was in the Make it Safe section.

I have a quick 15m alignment meeting tomorrow at… 6am… where I am sooo irritated at this team. My team member is irritated. We’ve had multiple talks with them. We’ve discussed the plan for months. We had an alignment with them in June.

But one of the mistakes is mine. The timeline moved up slightly because of Black Friday and we had to change a date to make it two weeks before.

So I will APOLOGIZE first. And genuinely compliment. And start with the facts.

STATE my Path, I actually scored a 2 on. But i feel like I don’t nicely share the facts first thing. I guess I sometimes do it okay but I feel I do not. State the Facts, Tell your Story… Ask for… a few other things. Anyway.

The Learn to Look and Make it Safe I can do much better on.

I am always usually trying to be efficient and get my goal accomplished and I really need to consider other people more.

I love these books as I know the information gets embedded in my brain somewhere even if I can’t remember the exact details. It’s always coming together and mixing around and coming out somewhere else.

Somehow.

One of the points it made was about respect.

“Respect is like air, as long as it’s present, you don’t think about it. But when it disappears, it’s ALL you can think about.”

Why yes. Yes, that is true. I feel that so deeply.

It was also a good lesson to talk about finding some aspect to respect others on. Even if it’s simply that they are a human being.

The other thing I wrote down was finding a mutual purpose. When talking, can we come up with a shared purpose that we want? Some of that feels hard. It’s a really good thinking exercise. For business and personal.

We were having listening sessions at work last week with my boss. I was in one with him (and 8 others) on Friday and ended up having a brainstorm session with him a few hours later and I brought it up. He had said one of his previous sessions was where he was “raked over the coals” and I asked him about it. He said he was being dramatic (or I said that – honestly I need to pause more when I’m talking with him, the guy takes forever to spit out his thoughts – it’s SUCH a learning moment for me) and then he went on to talk about two of the people who I have issues with.

He was saying they have so many talents between them but they are getting in their own way. He wants to help them but if they don’t change, they aren’t going to go anywhere. When my boss has people coming up to him saying “I’m not going to work with these people” they are missing opportunities. But it’s a tough relationship and when they make it tough, it’s easy to get defensive.

And he really does a great job at NOT getting defensive. I’ve seen him answer a lot of questions in the last few weeks and he does such a good job. And I complimented him on it because I have a lot to learn there.

I want to explain and justify. I want to be right.

Part of the book was relating a story in how we have all grown up to know that being “right” means you get to be the teachers pet. And being right “first” means you are first in line to be that teachers pet. And no one likes that. It’s also very short-term thinking and we have to constantly be thinking about, “What do we want”. What do I want? What do you want?

So it’s figuring out how to tell your story, how to find the areas of agreement… “Yes, I agree with you in this aspect…” AND… let me point out this other thing and turn the conversation around.

Good lessons. Good learnings.

Good progress.