“Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes are High”. Summary of the book Essay

Communication skills are essential to developing relationships. Human nature makes us yearn to have positive relationships, but building a relationship requires the skills and ability to communicate effectively in all circumstances. Although we know how to speak in a calm setting, our defense mechanism can lead us to destructive behaviors during crucial moments. Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler collaborate to provide tools that facilitate high-stakes crucial conversation.
Summary
Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes are High is a book written to teach the reader how to better communicate in crucial moments, where adrenaline can cause insensible actions. According to Patterson et al, we are built to react when emotions run high, our defensive mechanism takes over and blinds the actions we take. Actions that would normally not occur seem reasonable in a moment of rage, but they only lead to bad habits.
The authors break down the book into sections, which facilitate mastering crucial conversations. Chapters 1 and 2 explain what crucial conversations consist of and the different outcomes. The next two chapters shift the focus to the reader, how the person communicates, the relationships one builds, the role one has in a conversation, and understanding how one responds under stress. The focus on these two chapters is to determine what the end goal is and stay focused during the conversations. Chapter 4 presents a quiz that helps the audience understand how they would respond, allowing the reader to zone in on those skills in the next five chapters. Chapters 10 through 12 present a summary of strategies and provide a guide of the different skills crucial to conversations (Patterson et al., 2012, track 35).
Crucial Conversations allows the reader to analyze different situations and learn how to prepare to have a dialogue that will be full of mutual respect, values opinions and refocuses the purpose of the conversation. By refocusing, the reader will learn how to control feelings of anger and create an environment where stakeholders feel safe to voice opinions, concerns or provide alternatives.
Critique
The authors of Crucial Conversations provide many solutions and present many arguments that positively correlate with the examples. One of these examples that I agreed with was that we may want to change others, but in reality, we cannot change others, only ourselves (Patterson et al., 2012, track 15). How we respond in a crucial conversation will influence how others respond. In the case of Greta, she could have intensified the situation by reacting with anger or defensively. Instead, she accepted that there was an issue to address. She did not get defensive she thought about what her goal was and focused on it. This is a very helpful point in maintaining a positive conversation. When we feel accused, we may lose sight of what we want. This tip can help when conversing with parents who are hostile, staff who is in disagreement over changes or even to superiors when the issue is contradictory to the goal of the district.