Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking when the Stakes are High Create Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Material originally from Crucial Conversations. Material Produced by NCSU Software Engineering Faculty.

The Problem A school example A teammate hasn’t committed to your team repo in the last two weeks. He is cooperative during meetings, but is non-responsive the rest of the time, and always has some excuse. He’s probably thinking that you and the rest of the team will do all the work for him and that he doesn’t care about his grade. You confront him at the next meeting, give him a piece of your mind, and the situation escalates. He fails the course. A work example You’re working for a small startup of about a dozen people. The founder has a vision for the product, but you think his plan for implementing it is flawed; it will take too long to implement a technology stack that doesn’t separate you from the competition. You’re frustrated, but you keep your mouth shut. It’s his company, he can do what he wants, right? You’ll trudge through this until something better comes along.

Crucial Conversation Definition: a discussion between two or more people where 1.Stakes are high 2.Opinions vary 3.Emotions run strong Other examples: Ending a relationship Talking to a coworker who behaves offensively or makes suggestive comments Asking a friend to repay a loan Asking a roommate to move out Confronting a loved one about a substance abuse problem Giving an unfavorable performance review Asking in-laws to quit interfering Talking to a coworker about a personal hygiene problem

Failures in Crucial Conversations You confront him at the next meeting, give him a piece of your mind, and the situation escalates. He fails the course. Failure: Violence. You keep your mouth shut. It’s his company, he can do what he wants, right? You’ll trudge through this until something better comes along. Failure: Silence Success in these discussions is an honest but respectful dialog. It makes a difference: Notarius and Markman researched couples who: Digress to threats and name calling Reverted to silent fuming Spoke honestly, openly, effectively Successfully predicted relationship failure in a 10 year window with 90% accuracy

How to Have Open, Honest Dialog It’s not obvious Most people are really bad at this These lectures (based on the book) will give you some tips for doing so effectively Take a minute to think of how you normally would have handled the two examples. Then think of how you should handle them.