Dear Joseph, How do I talk to my father after not communicating with him for four years? I feel resentful that he has not supported my two younger brothers. My mom has had to take the brunt of whatever issues they have faced: lack of motivation, dragging them through high school so they graduate, drug …
Visit the Crucial Skills blog to read Joseph Grenny’s answer to this question: “How can I help my family overcome past fights and come together for the holidays?”
Visit the Crucial Skills blog to read Joseph Grenny’s answer to this question: How can I forgo a family tradition without hurting feelings or continue the tradition without hating the experience?
This has been the most disturbing and divisive election cycle either of us can remember. We began writing this piece by assembling a list of sound bites that ought to be consigned to a political “Hall of Shame.” But as we did so, we began to realize we’ve made our own contributions to that hall …
Dear Crucial Skills, I was just diagnosed with a non-contagious medical condition. Now I know why I have been so fatigued these past months. Though my condition can be life-threatening, after having a pity party, I’ve decided to move forward and be as positive as I can. I told my supervisor and co-workers about my …
Dear Joseph, My boss is a big fan of yours, but I think he’s misusing his understanding of your material to bully people then patting himself on the back for being a great communicator. I might approach him and say, “When I said [blank] in that meeting, you cut me off and responded in a …
Dear Joseph, I have an employee who is not aware of conversation protocols we all take for granted. He talks on and on without noticing the other person wants to leave the conversation. He questions people excessively, demanding exact details and when they don’t provide what he wants, he tells them how disappointed he is. …
The following article was first published on May 5, 2015. You and I are shockingly easy to manipulate. Decades of social science experiments show that we can be induced to donate or steal, stand for justice or proliferate racism, vote or stay home, torture or pity. It’s time we stopped reading social science for fascinating …
The following article was originally published on September 8, 2004. Dear Crucial Skills, My boss has started micromanaging me. She constantly asks me for updates. One morning, by 10 o’clock, I had already received ten e-mail messages from her and it took me an hour and a half just to reply to her requests for …
Dear Joseph, I have a great family that I love. Individually, I have rewarding relationships with my father, my mother, and my sister. But put the three of them together in a room and the results are explosive. Things seemed to come to a head this year when my sister spent the entirety of Mother’s …
