Crucial Confrontations

"'We' is too vague. In business, 'we' is usually synonymous with 'nobody.' In accountability there is no 'we.'"

— Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler

The four authors are cofounders of VitalSmarts, today Crucial Learning, a communication and leadership training firm, and earlier wrote Crucial Conversations (2002), which has sold more than two million copies. This book is its sequel and focuses on a specific kind of conversation: the one you have when someone broke a promise, failed to meet an expectation or behaved badly. It's based on research with more than 25,000 people. In 2013 it was reissued, revised, under the title Crucial Accountability.

The authors found that these problems, when nobody faces them, can take between 20 and 50 percent off an organization's performance. Almost all of us handle them badly in one of two ways: we stay silent and put up with it, or we explode and damage the relationship. The difficulty grows when there's a difference in rank between the people, in either direction.

The method follows the order of the conversation, before, during and after:

• Choose what and if. Before speaking, ask yourself what you really want and decide whether the issue deserves the conversation. Use the CPR rule: the first time you talk about the content (what happened), the second about the pattern (what repeats) and, if it continues, about the relationship (the trust being lost).
• Master your story. Separate the facts from the interpretation you put on them. We tend to explain others' behavior by their character and not by the situation; ask yourself why a reasonable person would do what they did.
• Describe the gap. Start by creating safety: make it clear you want the other person to do well, describe with data the difference between what was expected and what happened, and end with a question.
• Make it motivating. If the person can but won't, connect the behavior to consequences that matter to them, not to threats.
• Make it easy. If they want to but can't, keep asking until you find and remove every obstacle. The authors propose reviewing six sources of influence (personal, social and structural, for both motivation and ability) to get at the real cause.
• Stay focused and flexible. If halfway through the conversation another problem appears, an outburst, an excuse or a new topic, decide whether to address it then or note it for later, without losing the original subject.
• Agree on a plan and follow up. Who does what, by when and when you'll review it. A plan without a follow-up date isn't a plan.

The book illustrates the cost of silence with a 1982 plane crash. The cockpit recordings suggest the copilot tried to warn the pilot about ice on the wings, but didn't dare confront him directly. The copilot had the right information and the difference in rank kept him from saying it clearly.

The most common mistake is staying on the content when the problem is already a pattern. If each time you talk only about the latest delay, the other person promises to fix that case and nothing changes; the useful conversation is about what repeats. The other frequent mistake is closing with "we'll take care of it," which leaves the task without an owner.

How to apply it? Think of the broken commitment you've gone weeks without facing, with someone on your team, a supplier who delivers late or a business partner. Write in one line whether it's content, pattern or relationship, and note the facts without adjectives. Schedule the conversation this week and close it with a name, a task, a date and the day you'll review it.

As a founder it will help you build a culture where commitments are kept because they're talked about in time, and to stop carrying alone the pending issues nobody dares to face.