Handling Make-or-Break Conversations

Take control of a contentious conversation before it loses you a client, spouse, or job

By Joseph Grenny

We all have lapses of sanity. That’s normal.

But the bad news is these lapses tend to come at the very moments when they can cause the most damage to both our results and our relationships. These are moments when you and I face a crucial conversation.

For example, in a recent poll, we asked readers of our book Crucial Conversations to identify the worst moments of public communication from the previous year. Top vote getters included Charlie Sheen’s comment about his bosses, “These guys are a couple of AA Nazis and just blatant hypocrites.” Charlie was fired afterward. And Anthony Weiner’s communication about sexting allegations. He said roughly, “No. No. No. No. No. Oh. Yes.” Weiner ultimately resigned.

Twenty-five years ago, my colleagues and I discovered that some of the most influential moments of our lives come when we must discuss high stakes topics with those who vehemently disagree with our views. But we also found that not everyone performed at his or her very worst when it mattered most.

SUCCESSES AND FAILURES

We recently studied singular conversations that had life-long effects for 525 people. Participants identified high-stakes interactions that went either surprisingly well or terribly badly—and that changed the course of their lives to some degree. For example, on the positive side, one woman shared her conversation with an out-of-control airplane passenger that helped avert an emergency landing. Another respondent spoke up effectively to doctors and nurses to ensure a loved one received vital medical treatment. And another saved his job by threading his way through dicey issues with his boss.

But more often than not, subjects reported on conversations that left lingering pain and damage—one was disowned by her family, many ended up divorcing or otherwise dissolving a precious relationship, and others triggered the termination of long-standing business partnerships. Overall, two-thirds said the few minutes of these conversations led to permanent damage in a relationship. One in seven reported it crippled his or her career. And more than a third said that even many years later, they are still feeling effects from these crucial moments.

Our central question in studying these 525 conversations was the same one that led us kicking and screaming into a study of communication 25 years ago. Ironically, my colleagues and I had no interest in communication because we considered it soft and overstudied. But we wanted to know whether or not there were moments of disproportionate influence that profoundly affect people’s ability to achieve results.

In one early experience, we looked at manufacturing productivity in a factory. We identified supervisors who maintained stellar performance in an organization characterized by chronic mediocrity. In a matter of days, it was clear that the moments when these high performers deviated from the norm were moments when a vendor, another team, or a senior manager failed to perform. The majority of supervisors either blew it off or blew up. In contrast, these gifted few handled these performance conversations by candidly expressing their concerns in such a remarkably respectful way that the conversation actually strengthened the relationship rather than tearing it down. The way these supervisors consistently dealt with these frequent interactions separated them so dramatically from their peers that we were left wondering exactly what they did that set them apart.

EFFECTIVE SKILLS

Twenty-five years later, we continue to refine those findings as part of our study of crucial conversations. And yet, regardless of the field of choice, power, or position of the individuals in question, or the topic by which two parties may be at odds, we find that top performers demonstrate a consistent set of skills the rest of us lack.