Excellent tips for dealing with the most difficult conversations

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	• Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss what Matters Most Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, ... Penguin (Non-Classics), 2000 - 250 pages average customer review:based on 133 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent tips for dealing with the most difficult conversations

Difficult conversations is a book from the Harvard Negotiation Project (of which "Getting to Yes" is probably best known) and is about the conversations we need to have, but we are afraid of them or they always blow up in our face. How to handle such conversations.

The book essentially consists of two parts (plus an intro, plus an end). The first part of about the problem and the different conversations happening when involved in a difficult conversation. The second part is concrete about, what to do.

The first part describes three ongoing conversations:
- The "What Happened conversation"
- The "Feelings conversation"
- The "Identity conversation"

The "what happened" conversation is about ... what happened. Trying to understand what happened. Not necessary finding "the truth" since with multiple people involved, there will be multiple viewpoints. It's important to accept that and just learn perspectives.

The "feelings" conversation relates to the feelings underlying the conversations. Many conversations are not really about the things, more about the feelings underlying the discussion. These feelings are often not discussed, so it's very hard to talk about them. Some insights here, for me, related to the intentions and how other people assume bad intentions and especially how you yourself can talk everything ok by thinking that the intentions were good.

The "identity" conversations is the deepest one. We think we are a certain way and thats why we need to act a certain way. This has a strong influence in every conversation.

After the first part and diving quite deep in the three different conversations, the authors move on and look at the how to deal with it. It starts with a chapter on finding out the true purpose of the conversation and if you really need to have it. From there it looks at how to begin a conversation. Begin it from the third person so that you can look at both persons perspectives. After this it moves into listening and discusses active listening techniques. A key point here is to be sincere about your wanting to listen, though difficult to change. How to express yourself is the topic of the next chapter and it ends with a discussion on together solving the problem. This is where the influence of the Harvard Negotiation Project becomes very visible.

The last chapter is a funny and very smart put together dialog which puts all the ideas together. I really enjoyed reading this.

The books is very well written, clear and especially concrete. The authors use many example conversations and analyze them, and explain their concepts using these concrete conversations. This made the book really useful and applicable to real life.

If you are ever in difficult conversations (everyone), I'd recommend to have a look at this book. It's been very useful to me.

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Amazing insight into Human Communications

This book offers incredibly helpful information about dealing with those conversations we all dread having--the ones that are typically the most important and potentially life-altering. The authors were part of the Harvard Negotiation Project(and helped with the Iran Hostage Crisis, among other major negotiations). I found this to be the most helpful, insightful, and cogent presentation of how we screw up the very conversations in which we want to be at our best--and how to overcome our tendency to be operating from our reptilian brain during our body's physiological "fight or flight" response to stress. This hit home for me in so many areas. I have a degree in psychology (with an emphasis on neuropsych),and an MBA, and over 25 years professional sales experience. I have been through many communications trainings, and I have read most of the books of this ilk out there, including Getting to Yes and Crucial Conversations, which are both excellent books as well. I highly recommend this book.

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read it

I had to fire someone. I read this book. It made having the conversation easier and more civil.

Dragged a little, but overall good content!

I think the book would have probably suited me a little better because the CD seemed to drag a little here and there, but overall the content was great!

Difficult to tell . . .

In Difficult Conversations, the authors Stone, Patton and Heen set out to de-mystify the problems we get into in our daily conversations.

I found this book both enlightening and difficult. Enlightening because of the simple concepts and principles one should adopt when handling difficult conversations. For example, classifying all conversations into:
* The "What Happened ?" Conversation
* The Feelings Conversation
* The Identity Conversation

All of these made sense and will be very useful for me from now on. There were also plenty of examples to illustrate. And that's where I found this book difficult. For me, there were too many examples and sub sections of sub sections - I had to go back a number of times to make the various connections.

Having said that, conversations are a difficult topic to write about. Once a spoken sentence is put onto a page, it can be interpreted in a number of ways. I would have liked to have seen more "big picture" frameworks and diagrams to keep me on track and connected to the author's current point or topic.

Recommended for serious students of communication.

Bob Selden, author What To Do When You Become The Boss: How new managers become successful managers

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