In the worst companies, poor performers are first ignored and then transferred. In good companies, bosses eventually deal with problems. In the best companies, everyone holds everyone else accountable — regardless of level or position. The path to high productivity passes not through a static system, but through face-to-face conversations.
So what about you? Is your organization stuck in its progress toward some important goal? If so, are there conversations that you’re either avoiding or botching? And how about the people you work with? Are they stepping up to or walking away from crucial conversations? Could you take a big step forward by improving how you deal with these conversations?
See how Crucial Conversations skills helped a nuclear power plant in Texas become a national industry leader.
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Consider the impact crucial conversations can have on your relationships. Could failed crucial conversations lead to failed relationships? As it turns out, when you ask the average person what causes couples to break up, he or she usually suggests that it’s due to differences of opinion. You know, people have different theories about how to manage their finances, spice up their love lives, or rear their children. In truth, everyone argues about important issues. But not everyone splits up. It’s how you argue that matters.
For example, when our colleague, Howard Markman, examined couples in the throes of heated discussions, he learned that people fall into three categories — those who digress into threats and name-calling, those who revert to silent fuming, and those who speak openly, honestly, and effectively.
After observing couples for hundreds of hours, the two scholars predicted relationship outcomes and tracked their research subjects’ relationships for the next decade. Remarkably, they were able to predict nearly 90 percent of the divorces that occurred. But more important, they found that helping couples learn to hold crucial conversations more effectively reduced the chance of unhappiness or breakup by more than half!
Now, what about you? Think of your own important relationships. Are there a few crucial conversations that you’re currently avoiding or handling poorly? Do you walk away from some issues only to come charging back into others? Do you hold in ugly opinions only to have them tumble out as sarcastic remarks or cheap shots? How about your significant other or family members? Are they constantly toggling from seething silence to subtle but costly attacks? When it matters the most (after all, these are your cherished loved ones), are you on your worst behavior? If so, you definitely have something to gain by learning more about how to handle crucial conversations.
If the evidence so far isn’t compelling enough to focus your attention on crucial conversations, what would you say if we told you that the ability to master high-stakes discussions is a key to a healthier and longer life?
Immune systems. Consider the groundbreaking research done by Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and Dr. Ronald Glaser. They studied the immune systems of couples who had been married an average of forty-two years by comparing those who argued constantly with those who resolved their differences effectively. It turns out that arguing for decades doesn’t lessen the destructive blow of constant conflict. Quite the contrary. Those who routinely failed their crucial conversations had far weaker immune systems than those who found a way to resolve them well. Of course, the weaker their immune system, the worse their health.
Life-threatening diseases. In perhaps the most revealing of all the health-related studies, a group of subjects who had contracted malignant melanoma received traditional treatment and then were divided into two groups. One group met weekly for only six weeks; the other did not. Facilitators taught the first group of recovering patients specific communication skills. (When it’s your life that’s at stake, could anything be more crucial?)
After meeting only six times and then dispersing for five years, the subjects who learned how to express themselves effectively had a higher survival rate — only 9 percent succumbed as opposed to almost 30 percent in the untrained group. Think about the implications of this study. Just a modest improvement in the ability to talk and connect with others corresponded to a two-thirds decrease in the death rate.
We could go on for pages about how the ability to hold crucial conversations has an impact on your personal health. The evidence is mounting every day. Nevertheless, most people find this claim a bit over the top. “Come on,” they chide. “You’re saying that the way you talk or don’t talk affects your body? It could kill you?”
The short answer is yes. The longer answer suggests that the negative feelings we hold in, the emotional pain we suffer, and the constant battering we endure as we stumble our way through unhealthy conversations slowly eat away at our health. In some cases the impact of failed conversations leads to minor problems. In others it results in disaster. In all cases, failed conversations never make us happier, healthier, or better off.
So how about you? What are the specific conversations that gnaw at you the most? Which conversations (if you held them or improved them) would strengthen your immune system, help ward off disease, and increase your quality of life and well-being?
When stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions start to run strong, casual conversations transform into crucial ones. Ironically, the more crucial the conversation, the less likely we are to handle it well. The consequences of either avoiding or fouling up crucial conversations can be severe. When we fail a crucial conversation, every aspect of our lives can be affected — from our careers, to our communities, to our relationships, to our personal health.
And now for the good news. As we learn how to step up to crucial conversations — and handle them well — with one set of high-leverage skills we can influence virtually every domain of our lives.
What is this all-important skill set? What do people who sail through crucial conversations actually do? More important, can we do it too?
Appendices
Appendix A. Where Do You Stand?
To measure your skill level and see how this book can best serve your needs, candidly review the following statements. Check “yes” if they apply to you. Check “no” if they do not.
A self-scoring version of the following assessment is available at http://www.vitalsmarts.com/bookresources. There you’ll also find tools to assess how well your family, team, and organization handle accountability discussions.