Crucial Conversations | Joseph Grenny

so we know from our research that one of the most powerful predictors of quality safety productivity diversity you name the result area in organizations is people's capacity to hold crucial conversations but what predicts your capacity to hold those crucial conversations in an effective way let me describe an experience I'm sending a group of executives with whom I worked for about six months I'm watching the CFO in particular because he's been strangely silent for the entire six month period no no that would bother you but for me it was kind of troublesome that here's this organization making enormous capital decisions and the CFO is entirely silent as I asked around about this I found out that this had happened about ten years prior the man had shut up in executive meetings for ten years the incident that started all of this was an argument between the CEO and the CFO the two of them differed on some important strategic point the argument got a little bit heated but it was okay everybody was weighing in everybody was pushing their point until one crucial moment at one point the CFO and exasperation said to the CEO I just don't get it I don't understand why you think what you think there twich the CEO said the reason I think this is because unlike you I've been working in this industry for the past 15 years that was the moment when the CFO shut up for 10 years here's what we know about Crucial Conversations what we know is that one of the greatest barriers to your capacity to talk about emotionally and politically risky issues is the degree to which you start to move to silence or violence and feel good about it so often during Crucial Conversations what happens is we shut down like the CFO or we start to move to what we call violence we start to press our point start to compel convince control I took my son on a wonderful trip a few years back I had a speech I was doing in Pebble Beach so I asked him he was kind of interested in golf if he wanted to come along he says oh dad that would be wonderful we had a wonderful golf vacation and and since the client was picking up the tab I thought you know I got a little loose change in my pocket he's looking around in the golf pro shop and and I watch him looking longingly at these wind breakers with a little cypress tree on them and so I walked over to him and I said so Samuel would you would you like one of those windbreakers and he looks up at me with big doe eyes and says Oh dad he said could I possibly have one of these I said yeah yeah let's so let's go and try one on he finds one that fits we go up to the cash register I handed my American Express card it cost something like nine million dollars and you should always check the price first but I thought you know it's once-in-a-lifetime and so we finished the day the next morning we get up early drive to the airport we got up too early for breakfast so when we get to the airport he goes to one of these fast-food places and he gets this box full of french toast sticks and a big giant tub of maple syrup he's wearing his windbreaker we board the plane he puts down his little tray he sticks the French toast sticks on there he grabs ahold of the foil top to this maple syrup tub and he pulls and he pulls any poles wearing his nine million dollar windbreaker he's pulling and pulling and finally happening Yanks whoa all of this maple syrup sprays up into the air and drops down on top of his windbreaker well I'm sitting here in the seat next to him and I I looked over and I'm waiting for some reaction some acknowledgement of the the horror and devastation that's just taken place there's none he grabs a french toast stick jams it down into the maple thing starts sloshing it into his mouth drooling down the front of his windbreaker I'm sitting here thinking to myself you ungrateful brat and I'm about to say something so here's the moment the moment that predicts how well you do in a crucial conversation is that moment right before you open your mouth our tendency during those moments because of the emotional content of the crucial conversation is to be tempted to move toward some form of silence like the CFO or the direction that I'm heading right now why well here's what we've learned through 10,000 hours of observation of people who are magnificently gifted during those moments here's what we know what we know is that the way you are about to act during your crucial conversation is going to be largely and profoundly affected by how you feel right now no big surprise there that's not rocket science but here's the big insight the huge concept which if you can absorb it if you can embrace this if you can deeply understand and learn to master this concept will give you enormous influence during your Crucial Conversations the insight is this how you feel during a crucial conversation is not a direct function of what you just saw heard or experienced notice the model what I see in here does not create an emotion me seeing my son jamming french toast sticks into the middle of this giant tub and ruling it over at nine million dollar windbreaker does not create anger it doesn't a CFO being condescended to and shut down during an executive team meeting in a public setting is not necessarily going to be able going to take offense because of what just happened what he just experienced does not create the emotion there's an intervening variable called your story before you can experience an emotion you have to tell yourself a story about what just happened to you now the problem is you and I are hardwired to tell certain kinds of stories and to the degree you can start to recognize your tendency to tell these types of stories challenge and change these stories you gain enormous control over your own emotions let me tell you a quick example here I'm gonna ask you to play with this one for a second I was asked to question a while back from a woman who was struggling with a crucial conversation with her husband she said I want you to follow this here she said I just found out that over the past six months my husband has had lunch with his ex-girlfriend now the question I want to ask you is as I start to describe some of that information what story are you tempted to tell yourself think about it for a moment what sorts of things did you add to the information that I just shared some obvious concerns might be is he having more than lunch is he having dessert all right is there more going on are they fooling around is there a relationship is he doing something behind my back but look how even more subtly we start to add so much to what's going on in this moment I want you to go back to what you experienced in your brain when I first started describing what that woman said I just found out that my husband over the past six months has had lunch with his ex-girlfriend what sort of leaps do we start to make now I don't know if you're like me but when I heard her talking I didn't just hear her say lunch I started to see lunch did you do that I started to imagine what the lunch looked like and there was a certain kind of restaurant was there in your mind was it a restaurant with a drive-through or was it a restaurant that had linen tablecloths and fine silverware was at your restaurant was there a candlestick where there are certain people at the table were there a lot of people or was it just - in that moment we start to make lots of inferences we start to tell certain kinds of stories here's my son with maple syrup drool all over the front of him and the thing that's creating my emotion is not the maple syrup drool it's the story I start to tell myself about the maple syrup drool here's what you and I tend to do the stories that create our emotions come in two flavors if you're the kind of person like I am who frequently feels frustrated in those moments who can immediately feel frustrated in concerns the kind of story you tend to tell yourself that creates that emotion is that people are doing what they're doing because they're stupid or an idiot that's why they're doing that but if you tend frequently to feel deeply offended hurt or even angry there's a different story you're likely telling yourself the story you're telling yourself is that they're doing what they're doing because they're evil not just stupid but evil they have malicious intent they don't care about worthy purposes they don't care about my concerns they have their own selfish motives the problem is they're evil rotten motives that story is what creates that escalated emotion and therefore moves you to either silence or violence if you can learn to intervene and affect that story it changes everything here are the three types of stories you're going to have to learn to watch out for and the problem is you and I are masters at telling these so go back with me to the airplane my son sitting here next to me I'm feeling outraged offended indignant why because the story I'm telling myself is a victim story to begin with look at what he's doing after all I've done for him I spent all this money I go to all this trouble I make this wonderful experience and he doesn't care a whit about any of a look at the poor victim that I've made myself out to be you tell yourself that kind of story and it subtly justifies your moving to silence or violence now I can move to violence with my son I can call him names I can punish him and I don't have to feel guilty about it because after all I'm an innocent victim but the victims story isn't enough you need more to help yourself feel good about silence or violence because for the most part you and I believe we shouldn't do those things we shouldn't withdraw we should speak up we shouldn't sort of move to violence and control and compel but we do anyway so we need a second kind of story to help us out we need a villains story not only am i an innocent victim but look at this kid he is ungrateful he is selfish he is undisciplined he is obnoxious he is the degree to which I can paint him as evil and awful and rotten is the degree to which I can feel justified now in behaving badly as a parent let's move back to the CFO same story he knows as a CFO he has an ethical responsibility to weigh in and have an influence in his executive team meeting so how can he feel good about ten years of silence number one I'm a victim I was mistreated I was condescending I was marginalized number two he's a villain he doesn't care about my opinions he's controlling his obnoxious he's arrogant he's egotistical when I tell myself that kind of story I create a certain kind of emotion and I create a certain kind of action as a consequence and I can feel good about those kinds of actions and finally I tell myself a helpless story there's nothing else I could do now where's the power where's the leverage what if you had the capacity to number one notice when you told these kinds of stories but number two intervene and change them so here I sit on the plane and I'm about to leap into punishment and lecture mode with my son and I bit my lip because I just taught a class on Crucial Conversations and I paused for a moment and I stopped and I asked myself what story am i telling myself that's making me so mad I didn't take long to articulate that he's an ungrateful obnoxious bratty kid as soon as I still told that story I found my self capable of crafting a different story the story sounded a little bit like this the story was not obnoxious brat the story was normal fifteen-year-old kid would that change how you felt now notice what I'm not suggesting is I shouldn't hold him accountable we're going to hold them accountable we need to talk up to the CEO we need to be able to hold peers and others accountable but will I hold them accountable in a better way as soon as I stepped back and came toward him with the story that said normal fifteen-year-old boy here's what my first word sounded like Samuel did you notice that you got maple syrup on your cypress tree jacket here's what he did he pushed the French toast stick away he looked down at his jacket and he went oh started bawling uncontrollably sitting there on the plane and then he turns to me and says dad will it come out and I said hey to the flight attendant will you please you have any club soda can we the whole situation changed in that moment now what was the problem why was he doing what he's doing is it because he's an evil rotten villain or is it because he's a dork is it because he's a normal fifteen-year-old boy and should he learn to be able to manage his goods better than he did absolutely but did he need guilt and punishment no what he needs is ability not motivation if during those moments you gain the capacity to master your story to notice the stories you're telling yourself that are creating your emotional response and intervene and change those you gain the capacity to step up to crucial conversations that will affect results in relationships in every area of your life you

Channel: Crucial Learning Speakers

Views: 245,229

Keywords: VitalSmartsSpeakerVids, vitalsmartsvideos, Crucial Conversations, Influencer, Crucial Accountability, Change Anything, Crucial Confrontations, Joseph Grenny

Id: PuJgqTs-G44

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 14 2012