Crucial Conversations Full Book Introduction

Crucial Conversations

Crucial Conversations Full Book Introduction

 

Inevitably, there will be “crucial moments” in our lives that are difficult to solve but will have a significant impact on the overall course of our life. However, most people handle these moments poorly, and even choose to avoid them. This book teaches us practical skills to handle crucial conversations, avoid unnecessary arguments, and achieve effective communication. This book is based on over 20 years of empirical research and data gathered from more than 100,000 people around the world. The skills described here have been adopted by more than 300 of the Fortune 500 companies, and the book has sold 3 million copies in the United States.

 

Author : Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

The four authors of this book are Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. This group of authors includes researchers at Stanford University, corporate lecturers, and senior consultants. In addition to this book, the team also published Crucial Confrontations—Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior, Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success, and Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, which all made the New York Times Bestsellers list and had a positive impact in various fields.

 

Overview | Chapter 1

Hi, welcome to Bookey. Today we’ll unlock the book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High.

 

When people first hear the term “crucial conversation,” it may conjure up images of Apple and Google’s lawyers fighting a patent dispute in court, or politicians from various countries gathered at a round table in Geneva to hold an international conference. Although discussions like these indeed have a wide-sweeping impact, they’re not the subject of this book. The crucial conversations we’re referring to are interactions that everyone experiences. They’re the day-to-day conversations that affect your life, such as the following scenarios: Imagine that you are facing harassment from your boss, and if you choose to tolerate it, he will continue; if you fight back, the next day, he may fire you for walking into the office with your left foot first. Or at home, imagine that your spouse intentionally or unintentionally alienates himself or herself from you. If you choose to let the situation escalate to a cold war, then your marriage will be on the rocks. But if you fight back, it may just make your spouse withdraw even more. These situations are actually crucial moments in our lives, and the result of these conversations will have lasting positive or negative effects, leaving a huge impact on the quality of our lives. Unfortunately, most people do not handle crucial conversations in the right way. In this case, the book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High proposes two principles: clarify what you really want and create a safe atmosphere that helps us seize every crucial moment in our lives.

 

This book is co-authored by a team of four authors. Kerry Patterson did doctoral work in organizational behavior at Stanford University. He is a recipient of the 2004 William G. Dyer Distinguished Alumni Award from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management. Joseph Grenny has been a senior consultant in the field of corporate change research for more than 30 years. He is also a co-founder of a non-profit organization, which works to eradicate poverty around the world. Ron McMillan, an acclaimed speaker and senior consultant, is the co-founder of the Covey Leadership Center, where he serves as Vice President of Research and Development. Al Switzler is on the faculty of the Executive Development Center at the University of Michigan and has helped dozens of Fortune 500 companies. After 20 years of research involving more than 100,000 people around the world, the team selected a group of great conversationalists, analyzed their common characteristics and behaviors in crucial conversations, and narrowed down a set of effective methods, which are the basis of this book.

 

Next, we’ll introduce the book in three parts.

 

Part one: The purpose of mastering crucial conversations

 

Part two: The first principle of crucial conversations: focus on what you really want

 

Part three: The second principle of crucial conversations: create safe environment.