If you’ve taken Write Better-Faster, you know that I recommend this book heartily to people who need to learn tools for communicating when the stakes are high. Just in general, I think this book can help everyone, but when I looked back through the archives, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t done a non-fiction-book-review on this one, so here we go. (Thanks, Elli, for the reminder!)
First, here’s a link to the book in case you want to look/buy.
The way this book was first introduced to me was by a former boss (in my early 20s) who noticed my Woo (without realizing it) and recognized that I was having a hard time in conflict situations because I wanted everyone to like me all the time. So I was consistently backing down from conflict because I didn’t want to seem difficult. But it got me into some trouble (see: burnout) because I wouldn’t say no to one particularly demanding coworker who had big dreams and loved to work with me. I was getting overloaded and I didn’t know what to do about it. So he recommended this book to me.
The book itself is called “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High” and I feel like highlighting the when stakes are high part of the book. A lot of us think we’re very good at communicating (especially people like me who have high Communication), but talking well and talking well when stakes are high are two completely different things. Because: adrenaline.
That was the a-ha I had when I read this book. The way that chemicals in my brain (which were meant to protect the species–good things) were being triggered when they didn’t need to be. I would kick into fight-or-flight without realizing it, and really, without super high stakes. Like, this wasn’t life and death. I wasn’t in any danger. But my lizard brain didn’t know that.
The way I always used to describe this when I would teach this to students (which is what a lot of us Learners do when we learn something seminal) is: if you imagine there’s a lion at your front door, you want the adrenaline to be present in that situation because we don’t want to be thinking, “hmmm, is this a friendly lion?” Nope. You just want to run. Or fight. Or call 911.
We shouldn’t be logically engaged when the stakes are that high.
But the problem is, our brain can’t tell the difference between the lion at the mouth of the cave and the boss who thinks we’re doing a bad job at work. Because we’re not consistently fearing for our lives, our brain has normalized “normal” conflict into the adrenaline-producing kind of fear, and once our brain is awash in adrenaline, it can take 20 minutes to calm down from that.
And that’s the other thing I noticed when I was first reading this book. I would pay attention to when I felt the adrenaline pulse (because at first, I had to just walk away from those situations, until I could learn the process better) and I would go away to calm myself down, and I’ll be darned if it didn’t actually take me about half an hour to be completely cool again. Turns out these brain scientists really know what they’re talking about. Who knew.
Once I realized how right they were about my brain doing things I wasn’t controlling, I started to really put into practice the methodology in this book. And I’ll warn you, it does take some practice. Being constantly aware, in a tense situation, of whether I’m creating safety for myself and the other person all the time… it’s a lot of awareness. This is definitely a book that I don’t recommend you read for knowledge and then put away.
This is a book you should practice. This is a book that’s worth taking some time out of your personal development schedule and just focusing in hard on learning this process.
I won’t walk through the whole process, because it’s much better to read the book itself. But I will start with what I think is the most important part of the hook into this book:
Imagine the last argument you got into.
Remember when it went off the rails?
What would you say, if you had to attribute the “off the rails” to a particular cause, what would you say it was? Would you assume that the person didn’t understand what you were saying? That they were wrong about some logical concept? That they were misunderstanding you? That you disagreed on a particular topic/piece of content?
What if I told you that none of that was likely true?
The most mind-blowing (and also, scarily, the most accurate) piece of information in this book is that: when stakes raise, when emotions flare, when opinions differ… the content of the conversation becomes almost irrelevant. It’s the conditions of the conversation that will determine the spiral down into that “off-the-rails”-ness. Once your adrenaline kicks in, the content stops mattering. You’ll say anything (or withdraw as fast as you can) to end the conversation. Once your adrenaline kicks in, you’re not truly operating in your logical brain anymore. Once the need to win or lose kicks in, you become an emotional animal.
How many times have you said things you didn’t mean? How many times have you called someone a name? How many times have you withheld your opinion? How many times have you agreed just to get someone to shut up? How many times have you looked back on a conversation and wondered who had taken over your brain?
Well… that’s the right question to ask. Because something did take over your brain. The lack of safety kicked in a protective response that made you more concerned with re-establishing safety (with fighting or flying or freezing) in order to stop the flood of adrenaline.
In any crucial conversation (when emotions flare, when stakes are high, when opinions differ), only 10% of the conversation is about the content and 90% becomes about the conditions or about either winning (being right) or escaping (letting the other person be right) without getting hurt.
This book addresses why that happens and how to manage it. I think it might be the absolute best book on conflict that’s ever been written.
So that’s Becca’s nonfiction book review of the month. I highly recommend, if this resonated (especially if you find yourself in workplaces or relationships where these kinds of conversations often happen) that you read this book. And if you do, or if you have, please comment here. I love to talk about this process and see how other people have resonated with it. I think it’s genuinely one of the best books in the world.
And on a side note, I find that Strengths is especially applicable to work in Crucial Conversations. A lot of what I do when I’m entering a crucial conversation now is to think about the other person and how they’re wired for success and how I can honor that, even when our opinions differ. If I love the person, or if I want to continue a relationship with them, then it’s important for me that they always know that. They’re always safe with me.
Or they’re not. And when they’re not (when I don’t need to maintain a relationship with them), then I just don’t have the conversation.
So I’m gonna challenge you to something right now. Even as you start to think about the people you’ve had crucial conversations with–people you want to maintain or have to maintain relationship with–I want you to think about what happens when you start to approach a situation where your emotions rise and where opinions differ. And QTP your own emotions when they come up. I’m angry… but am I? Do I need to be? Are the stakes really high here? Or do I need to just walk away from the conversation? Our opinions differ on the surface, but is there a possibility that we’re both just doing our best right now? Is there a possibility that we don’t really mean what we’re saying (and we’re either trying to win and assert dominance, or we’re trying to escape and be safe again)? I know that, because of the pandemic, we’re probably more often in crucial conversations than we used to be and I want to remind us: adrenaline is exhausting. Our bodies are not meant to be in states of fight-or-flight on a constant basis. And when there’s actual danger externally, we need even more to protect ourselves from that adrenaline brain. Is there a way to QTP a crucial conversation? Is my response really coming from something in me, or has my adrenaline been kicked up? Specifically, think about this when it relates to the people you care the most about.
Anyway. Much love to all of you. 2020 has been a hard year. We’re going to get through this together.
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