In 1998, my colleagues and I, swept up in the excitement and uncertainty of the dot-com boom, sold our small company to a firm that was madly acquiring training companies with interesting intellectual property. Within two years, the rocket ship we boarded crashed into reality. Suddenly a decade of my life’s work was locked up in a complex bankruptcy. I felt paralyzed and disoriented. For months I was unable to earn money to support my young family, and I suspected everything I had worked for was gone forever. That bankruptcy was a crucial event.

Crucial Conversations asserts that if we improve how we communicate, we can improve our relationships and results in every facet of our lives. This assertion has strong implications for the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) effort that has grown significantly in recent years.

The outcomes of your Crucial Conversations are largely determined by what you do before you even open your mouth. To hold a successful Crucial Conversation, we need to Start with Heart. And by “heart” we mean intent or motive.

If people don’t feel safe to engage in dialogue, they won’t. And when conversations turn crucial, a sense of safety is the first thing to go. When stakes are high, emotions run strong, and opinions vary, we often feel threatened. This is why we often resort to silence or verbal violence when faced with a …

To ‘Master My Stories’ means to take control of our stories so they don’t take control of us. It is the key to preventing strong emotions from taking control of a Crucial Conversation.

People often ask what it was like to write Crucial Conversations with four authors. Sometimes it’s asked with a voyeuristic fascination, as though the unstated question is, “Were there some knock-down, drag-out fights along the way?” The truth is it took a lot of Crucial Conversations to write Crucial Conversations.

For more than three decades we have operated as a corporate training firm that helps people and organizations achieve important goals using the skills taught in our courses and bestselling books. We are proud of our history as VitalSmarts. And we believe there’s much more yet to do.

One of the most critical skills in every field is the ability to communicate. Your company thrives when it’s packed with team members who trust one another and can share meaningful messages and creative ideas freely. When you are an expert communicator yourself, your career will flourish. If you are interested in learning how you …

Communication is constant in the workplace, but is it working for your business or against it? To help you decide, ask yourself if any of these nine workplace communication scenarios could apply to your team: No matter what your manager is trying to tell you, it sounds either sarcastic or condescending. You feel like nothing …