Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

So we repeatedly mull it over until we can no longer put it off, and then finally stumble through the confrontation. Difficult Conversations, by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen, offers advice for handling these unpleasant exchanges in a manner that accomplishes their objective and diminishes the possibility that anyone will be needlessly hurt. The explanations and suggested improvements are, admittedly, somewhat complicated. --Howard Rothman. And they certainly don't guarantee positiv

Based on fifteen years of work at Harvard Negotiation Project and consultations with thousands of people, the authors answer the question: When people confront the conversations they dread the most, what works?Difficult Conversations walks you through a proven, concrete, step-by-step approach for understanding and conducting tough conversations. It shows you how to get ready, how to start the conversations in ways that reduce defensiveness, and how to keep the conversation on a constructive track regardless of how the other person responds.Whether you're dealing with your baby-sitter or biggest client, your boss or your brother-in-law, Difficult Conversations can help.. Dealing with your ex-husband, who can't seem to show up reliably for weekends with the kids; navigating a workplace fraught with office politics or racial tensions; saying "I'm sorry" or "I love you".We all have difficult conversations, no matter how confident or competent we are. And too often, no matter what we try, things don't go well. Should you say what you're thinking and risk starting a fight? Swallow your views and feel like a doormat? Or should you let them have it? But--what if you're wrong?Difficult Conversations shows you a way out of this dilemma; it teaches you how to handle even the toughest conversations more effectively and with less anxiety

CGL said Help using my anger more productively and peacefully!. For several years I've been working in psychotherapy to actually feel my anger - and use it productively so that people don't walk all over me. I used to be such a people-pleaser, i didn't even know when I was angry and then I would unknowingly turn all my anger on myself - in the form of depression and self-criticism.. Billy Bear said Too simplistic.. It didn't help me. Really very simplistic. Almost all the advice could be summed up in a few sentences: "See both sides. Don't judge. Admit your own responsibility. Ask how you could do better.". definitely helpful, worthwhile read, but. I have to agree with a number of other reviews that the examples given, or at least the amount of them, is overkill. Those probably added 20% of additional material that made the really really good findings/insights/lessons harder, for me at least, to digest. I'm not critic or scholar though. Please read this, you'll f