Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior

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More About This Book

Overview

The authors of the New York Times bestseller Crucial Conversations show you how to achieve personal, team, and organizational success by healing broken promises, resolving violated expectations, and influencing good behavior

Discover skills to resolve touchy, controversial, and complex issues at work and at home—now available in this follow-up to the internationally popular Crucial 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 Confrontations teaches 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 Confrontations teaches 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 Confrontations borrows 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.

Editorial Reviews

Soundview Executive Book Summaries
Behind the problems that regularly plague families, teams and organizations are individuals who either can't or won't deal with failed promises. The reason is that they're afraid to talk face to face about difficult but important issues - and as their fear of confrontation prevents them from resolving these issues, simple problems grow into chronic problems.

By learning how to deal with challenging confrontations, you'll learn to avoid the typical, but unconstructive, response of slipping either into awkward silence or embarrassing violence.

Mastering crucial confrontations requires a skill set. In Crucial Confrontations, consultant Kerry Patterson and executive coach Joseph Grenny join forces with their fellow researchers and trainers Ron McMillan and Al Switzler to help others develop the skills it takes to resolve the most pressing problems, including quality violations, safety infractions, cost-cutting mistakes, and medical errors. The authors write that their research shows that most organizations are losing between 20 and 80 percent of their potential performance because they have not mastered crucial confrontations.

The skills for mastering crucial confrontations can be learned; the authors of Crucial Confrontations show you how.

What Is A Crucial Confrontation?
Sarah, the head nurse at the Pine Valley Medical Center in northwestern Washington, stands frozen as doctors discuss the treatment of an elderly patient. Years of experience have taught Sarah two things: One, the patient probably needed an immediate and large dose of antibiotics, and two, even though the doctors were discussing a treatment that didn't involve antibiotics, Sarah would keep her mouth shut.

Years earlier, fresh out of college, Sarah had cheerfully disagreed with the three doctors she had been assisting. They stopped dead in their tracks and looked at her as if she were a cockroach on a wedding cake. In one poignant moment that was forever burned into her psyche, the rules had been made clear to Sarah: Don't disagree with a physician - ever. Now, nearly two decades and hundreds of confirming incidents later, she stands by wondering: Will the doctors do what I believe they should do, or will they come to the same conclusion too late? She doesn't wonder if she should speak up. Sarah's expectations weren't met, and in response she has resorted to silence.

Silence and Violence
Staring into the face of a possible disaster, some people are caught in agonizing silence. Rather than speak directly and frankly about the problem at hand, they drop hints, change the subject, or actually withdraw from the interaction altogether. Fear drives them to various forms of silence and their point of view is never heard - except maybe as gossip or rumor.

Others break away from their tortured inaction only to slip into violence. Frightened at the thought of not being heard, they try to force their ideas on others. They cut people off, overstate arguments, attack ideas, employ harsh debate tactics, and eventually resort to insults and threats. Fear drives them to do violence to the discussion and their ideas are often resisted.

We all face crucial confrontations. We set clear expectations, but the other person doesn't live up to them - we feel disappointed. Lawyers call these incidents breaches of contract. What do you do when someone disappoints you? You could choose violence, or you could opt for another choice, like Sarah, and choose silence. But there is a method that falls somewhere between the polar worlds of fight and flight. Mastering crucial confrontations allows you to deal with failed promises, disappointments and other performance gaps.

Unless you step up to and master crucial confrontations, nothing will get better. It will be a skill set, not a policy, which will enable you to solve pressing problems.

If you can't effectively confront violated expectations, you eventually experience massive personal, social and organizational consequences. If you can't deal with performance gaps, you'll either fight or take flight. Productivity will run at half of what it should.

If you learn how to hold people accountable in a way that solves problems without causing new ones, you can look forward to significant and lasting change.

When you confront, you hold someone accountable, face to face. When confrontations are handled correctly, both parties are candid, open, honest and respectful. As a result, problems are resolved and relationships benefit. Crucial confrontation skills offer the best chance to succeed - no matter the topic, person or circumstance.

Learn how to hold crucial confrontations and you'll never have to walk away from another conflict again.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780071446525
  • Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies, The
  • Publication date: 8/26/2004
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 284
  • Sales rank: 29,385
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 0.71 (d)

Meet the Author

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 xiii
Preface xvii
Acknowledgments xviii
Introduction: What's a Crucial Confrontation? And Who Cares? 1
Part 1 Work on Me First: What to Do before a Crucial Confrontation 23
Ch. 1 Choose What and If: How to Know What Crucial Confrontation to Hold and If You Should Hold It 25
Ch. 2 Master My Stories: How to Get Your Head Right before Opening Your Mouth 55
Part 2 Confront with Safety: What to Do during a Crucial Confrontation 81
Ch. 3 Describe the Gap: How to Start a Crucial Confrontation 83
Ch. 4 Make It Motivating: How to Help Others Want to Take Action 113
Ch. 5 Make It Easy: How to Make Keeping Commitments (Almost) Painless 145
Ch. 6 Stay Focused and Flexible: What to Do When Others Get Sidetracked, Scream, or Sulk 171
Part 3 Move to Action: What to Do after a Crucial Confrontation 199
Ch. 7 Agree on a Plan and Follow Up: How to Gain Commitment and Move to Action 201
Ch. 8 Put It All Together: How to Solve Big, Sticky, Complicated Problems 217
Ch. 9 The Twelve "Yeah-Buts": How to Deal with the Truly Tough 231
Appendix A Where Do You Stand? A Self-Assessment for Measuring Your Crucial Confrontation Skills 253
Appendix B Six-Source Diagnostic Questions: The Six-Source Model 258
Appendix C When Things Go Right 262
Appendix D Discussion Questions for Reading Groups 269
Notes 271
Index 273

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
( 21 )

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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 22 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted May 13, 2008

    Tools for Approaching the Issues that Just Won't go Away by Themselves

    Going from clueless to couragous is what I would say this is good for. Getting the fear out of your system so you can find a way to function in environments filled with everything from the overly toucy to the tyranical. Helping you get rid of your 'Wish Bone' and turn it in to a 'Back Bone.' Likewise helping the overly agressive find a way to not drive everyone around them to 'Silence or Violence.' I have listened to the work on CD driving back and forth to work and am working on the second time around.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted April 29, 2010

    I Also Recommend:

    9780972488907 9781598875768

    Speak Up!

    Whether on audio or copy, if you don't have either Crucial Confrontations or Crucial Conversations, you're nuts. Just plain nuts! If you don't have both, you're dialogue is incomplete. Take responsibility for what does or doesn't come out of you when the stakes are high!!!

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted June 13, 2009

    I Also Recommend:

    9780071484992 9780071401944

    Everyone should read this!

    We all communicate. Most of us could use a little help when it comes to communicating with other people, whether it's a co-worker or a friend. The information in the book is helpful and valuable.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted July 30, 2006

    Workable concept

    Because confrontation is often difficult, this book provides a valuable resource. I have tried the authors' suggestions and they worked nicely. Recommended also is Optimal Thinking: How to Be Your Best Self which provides a simple 7 step formula for minimizing unwanted behaviors that works beautifully.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 12, 2006

    This really works!! Buy this book!!

    I have always avoided confrontation in all aspects of my life, from marriage to children and especially at work. This book is unbelievable! It has given me the tools to hold people accountable for promises made, steer conversations and confrontations to a safe place and has moved my career, my marriage and my interactions with my teenaged kids in a completely different direction. This book is a must read for anyone who finds themselves frustrated with unmotivated bosses, co-workers, spouses or children. People want to work with you when they are approached in a safe manner as illustrated in this book. It showed me I can be nice and still hold people accountable. Buy this, read this, practice this and change your life!!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 25, 2005

    Packed with Knowledge!

    Although confrontation is difficult for many people, it is often necessary. Failure to confront someone over bad behavior may be misinterpreted as approval. Confrontations can help bring people back to a better, more productive course. However, confrontations also can go off track and become shouting matches (or worse). Authors Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler outline a method for approaching confrontations when the stakes are particularly high; those are the crucial confrontations. Boiled down to its essentials, the methodology consists of focusing on facts, remaining calm, listening to the other person with respect and working to motivate the other person and to enable a change in behavior. The book is light, anecdotal and easy to read. Yet, we find that it offers so much sound advice that any manager, parent or spouse could find something useful.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 3, 2005

    Tools for Creating a Culture of Performance

    Crucial Confrontations is the perfect companion book to its predecessor Crucial Conversations. Both are indispensable tools in creating a culture of performance. With its universally applicable principles and practical skills for resolving broken promises, violated expectations and bad behavior, it provides the diagnostic keys to unbundling seemingly complex issues that hold individuals, teams and organizations at a distance from their preferred futures. Beyond the welcome relief that comes from just cracking the code on a performance or relationship issue - these tools actually have the power to 'knock people into gear' by making visible some of the long-term (seemingly invisible) costs associated with more typical coping or carping strategies. Without exaggeration, the skills that are suggested in the section entitled: Make it Motivating and Make it Easy can literally 'change the chemistry' of the interaction to make closing the gap between what's expected and what's delivered a reality. The end result of the successful application of these methods is not merely predictable performance but enhamced relationships of accountability and trust.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted October 14, 2004

    Great Book, Bad Grammer

    The book was great and gave some very valuable insight. However, the spelling and grammer needs review. I found about 12 different instances of bad grammer or misspelled words throughout the book. I didn't write down the specific pages, but if you review the book it will come to light. The book follows the same thread as the crucual conversations book, but takes a slightly different approach. It was very useful. I would like to see more information on how to keep a conversation on track when people try to change the subject or take a different path.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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