What If The Other Person is a Bully, Lying, or Trying to Derail While it does happen, most of our evaluations about the other person are...
Step One: Prepare By Walking Through The Three Conversations Stories What’s my story? (information, past experiences, rules?) What’s his...
Most people don’t have the conversation skills. You’ll talk about understanding and they’ll talk about who’s right. You’ll talk about...
Don’t just listen - you need to share your side of the story. Orators Need Not Apply Do not try to be eloquent or witty. Do not try to...
People have a deep desire: To be heard To know that others care enough to listen Listening Transforms The Conversation Mother has...
A bad beginning can crater the conversation. But a good one helps you immensely. Why Our Typical Openings Don’t Help Don’t dive in with...
Pick your battles! You can’t have every difficult conversation you come across. Deciding whether to raise an issue or not torments us....
Difficult Conversations Threaten Our Identity Sometimes the anxiety is not due to facing others, but facing ourselves. The conversation...
Don’t focus on just the objective facts. Feelings have to be part of the conversation. At the same time, having them explode is...
Someone screws up, which causes you to screw up. You can blame him/her explicitly (“You screwed up!”) or implicitly (“Let’s do better...
Intentions strongly influence our judgments. Watch your sentences and notice how often you are attributing intentions to the...
At the heart of the What Happened conversation is a disagreement. Argument is the natural outcome of disagreement. But it is...
You need to understand what people are thinking and feeling, but not saying. Every difficult conversation is really a mix of...
What makes a conversation difficult? Usually it is the fear of consequences. If we avoid the conversation, we feel taken advantage of,...