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Crucial Confrontations: Tools for talking about broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior | 
| Authors: Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron Mcmillan, Al Switzler
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $11.53
You Save: $5.42 (32%)
Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 1556
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 284
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 0071446524
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.69
UPC: 639785390756
EAN: 9780071446525
Publication Date: August 26, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
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 bad 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 steps 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 30 more reviews...
 Peril or Opportunity? October 14, 2004
56 out of 60 found this review helpful
As I read this exceptionally informative book, I was again reminded of the fact that the Chinese word for "crisis" has two meanings: peril and opportunity. As those who have been or are now involved in process simplification initiatives already know, every problem encountered offers a valuable learning opportunity. The same is also true when encountering "broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior" either within or beyond the workplace. The authors of this volume address questions such as these:
What's a "crucial confrontation"?
What to do before one occurs?
How to know when -- and when NOT -- to initiate one?
How to "get your head right before opening your mouth"?
How to begin a crucial confrontation?
How to involve and engage others to take appropriate action?
How to make keeping commitments (almost) painless?
What to do when others "get sidetracked, scream, or sulk"?
What to do after a crucial confrontation?
How to gain commitment and move to action?
How to solve "big, sticky, complicated problems"?
How to deal with the truly tough? (i.e. the twelve "yeh buts")
The authors also provide four appendices: A self-assessment for measuring confrontation skills, "The Six-Source Model," "When Things Go Right," and discussion questions for reading groups. Although any one of the appendices is worth far more than the cost of this book, their greatest value will be derived when the information and counsel are correlated with the material which the authors share in the nine chapters.
My own rather extensive experience in the business world suggests that "broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior" really do offer both perils and opportunities. A careful reading of this book and then an equally careful application of the advice which the authors offer will, in my opinion, reduce (if not eliminate) the former while helping to achieve effective fulfillment of the latter.
 Re-Hashed but Good March 18, 2005
46 out of 49 found this review helpful
If you have read Crucial Conversations, then you are already very familiar with this book and its contents. The fact is, this book is a re-hashing of Crucial Conversations; however, this time, the principles shared seem more applicable than they were before.
I think that this book is the real and better application of the authors' main principles. It is an easy and quick read and the language is very simple and direct. The book discusses ways to have a confrontation in which results are gained and friendships are not lost. It is a win-win approach. I do believe that this book can and does help. I did not particularily like the Crucial Conversations because it wasn't real earth shattering and seemed to simple. This time, however, the subject of "confrontations" seems more open to the authors' intentions-- thus a better read.
This is a good book to read and a better book to apply.
The Essential Guide to Confrontation September 23, 2004
29 out of 33 found this review helpful
We all have confrontations to deal with in our daily lives, both at work and at home. I head technology audit for a company and confrontation is a daily fact of life. Holding people accountable for actions, inactions and trying to change behavior is a stressful part of many people's jobs. This book provides an effective approach to handling all aspects of confrontation.
It even provides the often overlooked need for (effective) confrontation. Book illustrates this point with the example of the Challenger space shuttle tragedy (could have been averted had known issues been raised) and the tragic-comic example of a patient who went into hospital with an ear ache and came out with a vasectomy - because he wouldn't speak up!
Importantly, the authors provide practical approaches that can be applied in the real world in everyday life. This book's lessons can be applied in both professional and personal life. Wish I had it years ago.
This is a field guide for generating postive outcomes from confrontation in all aspects of life. An excellent what, when and how guide.
Speak up and maybe save your life December 2, 2004
19 out of 21 found this review helpful
I surprised myself by reading almost the entire book during a two-week trip to Thailand w. The authors do a great job of showing how NOT stepping up has allowed catastrophic consquences to result. For example, the co-pilot who chose not to speak up when the pilot was preparing to take off in freezing weather with ice building up on the wings. All that survived was the cockpit tape that has the copilot hinting at the danger and not taking a powerful stand with the pilot. Our circumstances are not likely to be that drastic, but it is really very serious business.
I like that the book recognizes that speaking up can be risky and talks about how to make reasonably sure that you won't hurt your career or relationship when you choose to speak up.
The keys to managing the conversation so you don't get off in the weeds and get a valuable result begin with stepping back for a moment and remembering how you got to your reaction. The authors say we start by seeing or hearing something, draw come conclusions, react and then take action. If you review what exactly are the facts you started with and what are the interpretations or conclusions you came to, you are free to share it as a story the other person can understand. If you speak as if your conclusions are facts, you can lose the rapport you need to have a good outcome.
I like the question the authors suggest asking yourself to get to how to start a conversation that doesn't amount to an attack: "What would cause a reasonable, rational and decent person to act like this?" Answering that question puts me in a frame of mind to begin with an attitude of mutual respect.
The other major key for me that I got out of the book is realizing that when someone does react badly during a conversation like this is that two key safety issues could be percieved as missing: mutual respect and mutual purpose. If you are ready to restore a sense of mutual respect and mutual purpose, then you can get back out of the weeds of someone reacting in ways you don't intend or that surprise you.
Providing a way of knowing what to do if things go wrong in the conversation is key to my being willing to take on having the conversation in the first place. Most people just keep quiet and there is a cost to that. Some people hold back until they blow up and that doesn't work very well either.
That is my three paragraph teaser about the book. I like that the book is based on over 20 years of studying people who excell at this type of conversation and distilling how they do it.
 Wasn't Impressed October 22, 2004
18 out of 35 found this review helpful
Lots of diagrams and drawings, pointing arrows, etc. I felt as though I were back in class and was missing the required supplementary workbook.
This book seems to address mainly work situations where the reader is the boss and having difficulty with a recalcitrant employee. There just wasn't much for me here to apply to my own life.
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