Crucial Conversations

Not the whole story, but an interesting and effective system for engaging when communication is difficult. May not always work for all people all the time, but definitely worth applying the principles when otherwise at an impasse.

I prefer Just Listen by Mark Goulston much more

A must read!

A must read

I also happened to be listening to the 7 Habits by Stephen Covey simultaneously and found a lot of compatibility in the ideas of both books.
Crucial Conversations is an excellent read. I could relate to several parts of the book.
I did feel overwhelmed by it but I also feel like trying to practice even some parts of it will be helpful. It's definitely a read over and over kind of book.

Not the kind of books that I usually read but it was ok, I think I learn a few things from it.

I got some out of this, but I just didn't feel like the intended audience. I almost never pick up a self-help book, let alone one with a focus on business. I'm wary of popular science. However, I did gather a few key takeaways:

- Don't be fooled into thinking you have to pick between two suboptimal outcomes. Changing how you communicate allows you to generate alternative, mutually beneficial solutions.

- When a conversation becomes heated, instead of funneling energy into “winning,” take a moment to remind yourself what you ultimately want to accomplish.

- There are ways to voice criticism in a less combative manner, without diluting what you think.

- We regain the capacity for productive dialogue by asking questions that humanize the other person(s), like “Why would a reasonable and decent person do this?”

I did not care for the constant testimonials. It was like the book had commercials for itself peppered throughout. I also would have liked to see more variety in the hypothetical scenarios. It was mostly administrative office settings, where the person trying to better communicate is The Boss. The focus on the workplace is fair, but they could have shown more situations with lower-ranking employees, or some interactions between staff and clients.

I can see how a book like this could make a big impact on people, but I am not that people, at least in this moment.

This is a wonderful book, which elaborates priceless technics and principles about Crucial Conversations.
Crucial Conversations have described as dialogs with three characteristics. First is high emotion, second is high steak and third is opposing opinion. Any conversation with mentioned characteristics, are marked as crucial conversations. As human being we have a propensity to use our worst and rustiest tool to deal with crucial conversation which is fight or flight; the tool that our ancestors were using as a survival strategy. This book illustrates several cases how we are fall pray of serval fallacies and new tools and technic, and how we could tackle them.

Principles, methods, strategies provided within this book are amazingly useful. One can learn a lot about what is going on when we lose control and get to a direction, that we least want when dealing with crucial conversations. Organizations, families as well as individuals could learn a lot from principles and strategies provided within the book and they could improve immensely if they could master all these skills. I would argue this book could be hard to digest without extremely helpful examples provided for each scenario.

There are plenty of good examples provided within this book, so one could comprehend how technics discussed could be leveraged to our advantage. I might not be so impressed if I read the book, however the audio book is quite something. Examples are performed by multiple people with enough tension to get the listener on board. I highly recommend this book and I believe all the technics will be applicable forever.

3.5 stars

This book started slow. Then it picked up with some great advice. Then it started to drag again.


Long story short.... there is some great advice in this book. To capitalize on it, you need to think of ways to apply it in your daily life. You also need to carve out a good amount of time to read this. At times it drones on. I've read a few other career books and the better ones condense the information into smaller, more manageable chapters. I'd like to see this book rewritten for today's audience. (In other words, for people who only have 10 minutes a day for themselves)

Concise and practical reminder of the social skills that you already exibit during the best of your conversations. There aren't a whole lot of new concepts in here, but this book really helps tease out successful conversational strategies out of the morass of crappy tactics that we use every day. How to stay cool and not burn bridges during even the most trying of conflicts? Talk about important.