The Style Under Stress Test asks participants to pick a specific person or situation where they have a hard time staying in dialogue, and then directs them to answer all the questions in regards to that specific person or situation. The results of the test are not a measure of personality i.e., scoring high on …

When people outside of work find out that I spend a lot of time teaching groups, they often ask about the more challenging situations I encounter. “What are the biggest pitfalls? And how do you recover when you run into these problems?” I tell them, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Some time ago, …

Most of us who teach Crucial Conversations love to coach our trainees. Often this happens in the classroom during the training process, but sometimes we get the opportunity to coach one-on-one after the primary learning has taken place. This can be a great opportunity for us and the trainee if we approach it correctly. There …

What should I do if I have an entire group/team attending the training that is very bitter and angry with management and resistant to change? This is a great question. Let me share a few tips that may be helpful to think about. 1. If you have the opportunity to work with this group in …

In a perfect world, Crucial Conversations would always be held face-to-face. The benefits of immediate feedback and nonverbal communication makes dialogue much more rich and accurate. However, today’s global and distributed workforce doesn’t always allow for face-to-face interactions. When you’re in Singapore and need to communicate to co-workers in Germany, Brazil, and the United States, …

I hear this question from participants almost every time I facilitate Crucial Conversations. Here are some thoughts: I often ask participants, “When you are trying to push (interesting choice of words) your purpose? What is your strategy?” The common response, in one form or another, is usually “verbal persuasion.” At that point, I usually pull …

The U.S. Women’s Ski Jump team made their Olympic debut in the 2014 Socchi Games. While they did not medal (the three members of the team placed 10th, 15th, and 21st), they had thousands of fans cheering them on, including the youngest member of the U.S. Women’s Ski team—twelve-year-old Zia Terry. Two years ago at …

When trying to commit to seek mutual purpose, what if the other person refuses to open up and share his or her meaning to find and/or create a mutual purpose? It can be difficult when the other person seems to be holding back what it is they really want. There are a couple of things …