Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High

216 CRUCIAL CONVERSATIONS

is mixed at best. This being the case, what are our chances of

improving something as deeply rooted in our psyches as the way

we communicate? Actually, it depends. There are a lot of vari­

ables that affect our chances. Consider the following factors.

SURPRISE
You've been asked to conduct your first meeting. To avoid
embarrassing yourself, you read a book where you learn all about
agendas, pacing, and the like. When it's time to lead your first
meeting, you arrive early, adjust the chairs, set the markers just
so, and lay out an agenda for each participant. As participants
arrive, you greet them cordially. Then you kick off the meeting
with a rousing icebreaker and you're off and running.
Implementing meeting skills is as easy as falling off a log.
That's because meetings are evident. You know when you're in
one. You're seated at a table along with a bunch of other people.
How could you not know you're in a meeting? They're also pre­
dictable. You can plan for them. You even have time to go over
underlined portions from the book.
Crucial conversations, in contrast, are far less evident. You
don't sit in a crucial conversations room. You don't pass around
a picture of your Path to Action. Instead you get thrown into a
heated discussion where you rarely think, "Oh yes, I'm in the
middle of a crucial conversation. That means I need to think
about all that stuff I read last week."
Discussions are also less predictable. Nobody sends you an
invitation stating: "Would you please engage me in a crucial con­
versation next week after the team meeting where you're going
to make a policy that will miff me?" High-risk discussions don't
come with notices and reminders. More often than not, they
come as unwelcome surprises.