Dear Crucial Skills, I’ve been with the same company for twenty-five plus years. It is a good company. We have had three “workforce reductions” in the past six years. I feel another one coming. I am fifty and therefore vested. However, at fifty-five, my early retirement pay would go up. Even though I have always …
Dear Crucial Skills, I am writing to request a little verification about feelings. In a previous column, Ron suggested that one way to phrase the interpretation of what happened was as follows: “I felt insulted, disrespected, and falsely accused.” My question is this: Feeling insulted or disrespected is creating a story of the speaker’s intentions, right? …
Dear Crucial Skills, My eighteen-year-old daughter is beautiful, with lots of talents and a cheerful personality, but in the last two to three years she has become quite overweight. I know this is making her unhappy, but every time I attempt to talk to her about it, we end up in an emotional conversation. How …
Dear Crucial Skills, I have been in two situations which completely took me by surprise where a person in leadership unloaded on me and berated me for something I didn’t do. Both times, the leader did not even pause long enough to let me explain my side. Receiving this unproductive criticism from an individual in …
Dear Crucial Skills, After ten years of not speaking, I made the crucial call to my sister-in-law. Even though I wrote down what I wanted to say, my voice still cracked when I said, “I need to level with you about something and I feel bad about doing it so late. I had concerns and …
Dear Crucial Skills, Recently, my teenage daughter got her first “real” job as a dog washer at a pet store. She has been deliriously happy with the job and has worked very conscientiously at it (as far as I can tell). However, last weekend, she was reprimanded by her manager. A customer complained about two …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ron McMillan is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I supervise a qualified employee with an attitude problem. She can easily do the work required of her and do it well—if she’s in the right mood. I have …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ron McMillan is coauthor of four bestselling books, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE The following article was first published on August 31, 2005. Dear Crucial Skills, I suspect one of my direct reports (my assistant) has an issue with me that she is unwilling or unable to …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ron McMillan is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, How do I have a crucial conversation with people who have very low self esteems? I work in a fast-paced office, full of nurses, all of whom have been …
Dear Crucial Skills, Yesterday I led a discussion on crucial conversations with my ten-member corporate and public affairs team. When we examined everyone’s “Style Under Stress,” eight out of ten of my teammates discovered they go to silence. Do these results indicate a big concern for us because there is not an equal distribution of …
