Crucial Confrontations: Tools for talking about broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior

by Patterson, Kerry; Grenny, Joseph; McMillan, Ron; Switzler, Al

• ISBN13: 9780071446525
• ISBN10: 0071446524
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-08-26
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Summary

The authors of theNew York TimesbestsellerCrucial Conversationsshow you how to achieve personal, team, and organizational success by healing broken promises, resolving violated expectations, and influencing good behaviorDiscover skills to resolve touchy, controversial, and complex issues at work and at home--now available in this follow-up to the internationally popularCrucial Conversations.Behind the problems that routinely plague organizations and families, you'll find individuals who are either unwilling or unable to deal with failed promises. Others have broken rules, missed deadlines, failed to live up to commitments, or just plain behaved badly--and nobody steps up to the issue. Or they do, but do a lousy job and create a whole new set of problems. Accountability suffers and new problems spring up. New research demonstrates that these disappointments aren't just irritating, they're costly--sapping organizational performance by twenty to fifty percent and accounting for up to ninety percent of divorces.Crucial Confrontationsteaches skills drawn from 10,000 hours of real-life observations to increase confidence in facing issues like: An employee speaks to you in an insulting tone that crosses the line between sarcasm and insubordination. Now what? Your boss just committed you to a deadline you know you can't meet--and not-so-subtly hinted he doesn't want to hear complaints about it. Your son walks through the door sporting colorful new body art that raises your blood pressure by forty points. Speak now, pay later. An accountant wonders how to step up to a client who is violating the law. Can you spell unemployment? Family members fret over how to tell granddad that he should no longer drive his car. This is going to get ugly. A nurse worries about what to say to an abusive physician. She quickly remembers "how things work around here" and decides not to say anything.Everyone knows how to run for cover, or if adequately provoked, step up to these confrontations in a way that causes a real ruckus. That we have down pat.Crucial Confrontationsteaches you how to deal with violated expectations in a way that solves the problem at hand, and doesn't harm the relationship--and in fact, even strengthens it.Crucial Confrontationsborrows from twenty years of research involving two groups. More than 25,000 people helped the authors identify those who were most influential during crucial confrontations. They spent 10,000 hours watching these people, documented what they saw, and then trained and tested with more than 300,000 people. Second, they measured the impact of crucial confrontations improvements on organizational and team performance--the results were immediate and sustainable: twenty to fifty percent improvements in measurable performance.

Author Biography

Kerry Patterson has consulted with hundreds of Fortune 500 companies using his award-winning training program to teach development and maintenance of healthy organizations.

Joseph Grenny has 20 years of experience coaching thousands of corporate and government leaders around the world in the art of communication.

Ron McMillan cofounded and was the vice president of research and development of Covey Leadership Center.

Al Switzler is currently on the faculty at the Executive Development Center at the University of Michigan.

Together these authors have founded VitalSmarts and have trained more than 500,000 people world wide. They live in the greater Salt Lake City area.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xiii
Preface	p. xvii
Acknowledgments	p. xviii
Introduction: What's a Crucial Confrontation? And Who Cares?	p. 1
Work on Me First: What to Do before a Crucial Confrontation	p. 23
Choose What and If: How to Know What Crucial Confrontation to Hold and If You Should Hold It	p. 25
Master My Stories: How to Get Your Head Right before Opening Your Mouth	p. 55
Confront with Safety: What to Do during a Crucial Confrontation	p. 81
Describe the Gap: How to Start a Crucial Confrontation	p. 83
Make It Motivating: How to Help Others Want to Take Action	p. 113
Make It Easy: How to Make Keeping Commitments (Almost) Painless	p. 145
Stay Focused and Flexible: What to Do When Others Get Sidetracked, Scream, or Sulk	p. 171
Move to Action: What to Do after a Crucial Confrontation	p. 199
Agree on a Plan and Follow Up: How to Gain Commitment and Move to Action	p. 201
Put It All Together: How to Solve Big, Sticky, Complicated Problems	p. 217
The Twelve "Yeah-Buts": How to Deal with the Truly Tough	p. 231
Where Do You Stand? A Self-Assessment for Measuring Your Crucial Confrontation Skills	p. 253
Six-Source Diagnostic Questions: The Six-Source Model	p. 258
When Things Go Right	p. 262
Discussion Questions for Reading Groups	p. 269
Notes	p. 271
Index	p. 273
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