The authors start the chapter by asking the questions, “How can you speak the unspeakable and still maintain respect?” This capability requires confidence, humility, and skill. The goal of dialogue in a crucial conversation is the ability to state your mind completely while respecting others and making it safe for them to hear and respond. In many circumstances, this is actually where the wheels actually come off! The authors present five skills for talking when what you have to say could make others feel defensive. Chapter 7 of Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler, is where the rubber hits the road. For example, even if he intended to be honest and answer both of your questions, your son might get overwhelmed and only tell you the truth about where he went, completelyforgetting the part about the money.We worked on getting ready to talk, now it is time to get into the meat of a dialogue. As a result, most people will struggle to keep up with both parts of the question and are likely to only answer the one part they can remember. For example, if you were angry at your teenage son for sneaking out of the house and stealing money from your wallet, you might ask a compound question like, “Where did you go and how much money did you take?” Although they might not sound too confusing to read, compound questions can feel very confusing if they’re being fired at you in an accusatory manner. Just as a compound sentence is a sentence with more than one subject or predicate, a compound question is a question which has more than one part. For example, a negative question might say something like, “So, am I not correct in assuming that you have never not said you don’t support America?” Would you instantly understand the meaning of that question? Or would you need to run it over in your mind a few times first, carefully unpacking the confusing verbiage? The latter is true for pretty much everybody, so you can see why negative questions are problematic.Īnd last but not least, we have compound questions. Instead, negative questions are those which are confusing in their organization because they rely heavily on the use of double negatives. Negative questions are not questions that are negative in tone or questions that don’t sound very friendly. A good example of a vague question might be, “How do you feel about war?” Because there have been multitudinous wars throughout history, some of which have wreaked horrific destruction, and some of which have saved the world, that question is overwhelmingly vague. Vague questions are exactly what they sound like: questions that are too open-ended and undefined for any real clarity to be achieved through conversation. Vague questions are next on the list because they’re also a repeat offender. In fact, they might even feel so resentful that they might spit in your drink or make your coffee incorrectly again to pay you back for being rude to them. And they certainly won’t be motivated to help you get what you want. After all, if you yell at someone and call them stupid, they probably won’t like you very much. But even if you don’t care about being compassionate towards others, that response is also unhelpful because it’s counterproductive. For starters, that response isn’t kind and it isn’t treating other people the way you would want to be treated. But is it the right response? Not really. Is that an understandable response, given your frustration? Sure.
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Maybe you called them stupid and told them they were doing a terrible job and demanded a refund and a free coffee.
Imagine that you really did yell at that Dunkin Donuts employee. To understand why, let’s consider a different version of this scenario. Your gut instinct says that you’re upset and you have the right to tell the world about it! But the author observes that acting on that gut instinct is actually counterproductive.