Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition Audio CD – Abridged, August 1, 2013

Truly one of the most practical and brilliant business books, and this from someone who loathes the average "New York Times best-selling business book!". This book offers deep insights into the human psyche around relationships and interactions, communications and relating to one another and the world of things that can go wrong - that does go wrong - on a daily basis. It applies to your relationship with your boss, business colleagues, partner, spouse, co-worker, friends, and your entire ecosystem. If you want something, you need to be able to communicate it. If you don't want something, you must be able to say it and every interaction has consequences. Do you want to keep the relationship? Do you want to be liked, trusted, loved, adored and still firm in your views? Or do you want to stay in the constant prison of power struggle, victim mindset, false stories and breakdown of communication with roller coaster of emotions?I've already started using the tools in Crucial Conversations with my spouse. Right now, I'm happy to say that my relationship is in a very good place, but as I read the book, I reflected on years of misunderstandings and jumping to conclusions and seeing where I would often take the doomed route to nowhere, rather than the safe and smart path to a place of mutual understanding, trust and love. So I've started applying these principles and teaching my husband how to look for signs and how to communicate to me when he feels unsafe or unhappy in a conversation, or as the authors put it, when "dialogue" stops, because when you step out of dialogue, all breaks down, so the goal is to stay in dialogue when stakes are high, when emotions are strong.Another great tool you learn in this book is to state the mutual purpose and draw from that to bring yourself and the other person to the same side. As you begin the process, you can create safety and trust by doing this very early on.If you believe that communication is at the heart of getting things done, building relationships, creating an impact, as I do, then this is one of the BEST books on communication when stakes are high, and if you are able to have a powerful crucial conversation, if you can train yourself to do this with the help of the amazing techniques in this book, then you have a rare gift that helps you in all areas of life.I've started recommending this book and even sending it to my clients, and teaching the principles in my coaching sessions. It is even worth a re-read. Highly recommended.

I ordered this book because it seemed useful and I could see one of my friends behaving differently. I bought this in mind that a big storm was coming. I have made mistakes during emotionally charged conversations/arguments before and didn't want to go down the same path again. Not too soon after I purchased it, that friend brought the storm.I took my time to read this and skim over it again before I entered the conversation because I didn't want to go in feeling attacked, defensive, or angry. I wanted to know how I could handle things. I didn't want to talk and head into a storm in the first place, but reading this book helped me feel less apprehensive about talking. I didn't want to go in ready to fight, I took my time talking on my own terms because I didn't want to lose my friend while feeling hot-headed. I explained my intentions on why I took long to not give off the impression that I didn't care.The book took me about 6 hours to read but I didn't really count. I flagged many pages to the point when I almost ran out of flags. There were very few parts I skipped towards the end (of examples/possible scenarios that I didn't think related to me), but most of the book seemed very relevant. The many examples helped. I think as a reader it helps to take written/typed notes of your own as you go, but I did not take much (I will though).When I felt I was ready to talk, I went in. I tried utilizing what I remembered. I did look at the smaller details to address them and tried not playing "trivia pursuit" on things that that were brought up. I got more of my friend's perspective. After we talked about our concerns, we found our misunderstandings and similarities regarding situations, as well as our viewpoints on both. I also brought up some possible agreements on how to avoid disrespecting each other in the future and if we did, the topic is left open so we can revisit our misunderstandings or perspectives again without making an ultimatum and to communicate more healthily if we think something is off between us. I didn't want to just get things off our chest, I wanted to make it easier for us to communicate in a similar manner (finding solutions) in the future. I wouldn't have gotten to this point if it weren't for this book. I honestly was prepared to lose a friend and in that scenario, none of us wins because we learned nothing about ourselves and others, we only saw our own viewpoints. By the end of our conversation, my friend seemed satisfied. We both have our similarities, though we handled things differently, this book played a part in bringing things up to light and how to go about it.There are other things I am going to work on tackling, such as things in the workplace and not in my personal life and hope it turns out okay for everyone too.I only read this once and skimmed it once after that, yet it helped me get this far. I really recommend this book to anyone who wants to get better at such conversations and arguments. It's worth rereading, not a read-once-and-drop-it kind of book.

Excellent book. Good tips offered when trying to continue dialogue, maintain or increase safety and being aware if the conversation is becoming conducive or not.The biggest takes I got from the book were:1. Dialogue. When you talk to people, it's usually transaction based. When you're having an important conversation with someone say your superior, a friend who needs to hear something important or someone you're in a relationship with, you and them want to share both your ideas this "pool of ideas."2. Safety first. If one person is becoming defensive or using cheap shots or being passive aggressive, then ideas are no longer being shared on one or both ends. This is not a good sign if the two of you are trying to figure out a solution to something.3. Taking responsibility/accountability for your own actions. It's easy to play the victim card and say, "Well if so and so were more open/less defensive/listened more then etc..." Reading this book empowered me to believe that now if the relationship did not turn what I wanted to be, then it is because I was not able to communicate properly/therapeutically to the other person.4. Imitating a crucial conversation by starting out with what you think is causing them to be defensive. i.e "You probably think I'm going to be upset about what you did last night but.."5. Contrasting to disarm defensiveness: "I don't want you think that I am trying to hurt your feelings. I do want to see from your perspective what happened and figure out a solution to all of this."If you want to learn how to deliver effective communication then this book is for you.