4. Start With Heart

Crucial Conversations 4. Start With Heart

Welcome back!

Over the last three lessons, we’ve covered: what crucial conversations are, how they can go wrong, and why mastering dialogue can transform your personal + professional life.

We’re now on Lesson 4. Start with Heart. Up until this point, we’ve focused primarily on understanding crucial conversations.

Now, it’s time to get tactical by looking at the how of dialogue…

Start With Heart.
How to stay focused on what you really want.

🎧 PRESS PLAY TO START THIS LESSON

“Skilled people Start with Heart. That is, they begin high-risk discussions with the right motives, and they stay focused no matter what happens.”
^{— Joseph Grenny, et al., Crucial Conversations}

How do you encourage the “flow of meaning” or facilitate open and productive discussions in the face of differing opinions and strong emotions?

How do you navigate a touchy discussion, without hurting your conversation partner(s), all while still getting the outcome you want?

Well, it isn’t easy. It requires practice.

But it’s more than possible.

And it all starts with YOU.

In fact, it’s the very first principle of dialogue: Start with Heart—that is, your own heart… If you can’t get yourself right, it’ll be a challenge getting dialogue right.

And when conversations take a crucial turn, you’ll resort to the same old communication tactics you’ve observed your entire life: debating, manipulating, freezing people out with the silent treatment, etc.

But these tactics are ineffective and harmful. They also rely heavily on blaming and shaming others, rather than starting with ourselves.

So, let’s look at the Crucial Conversations framework to discover a better way.

To Start with Heart, Start with You.

A father and his two daughters just got back to their hotel room after a long, hot day at Disneyland. They’ve been drinking water all day to beat the heat and stay hydrated—so as soon as they opened the door to their room, the two sisters started racing for the bathroom.

But before either of the sisters could relieve themselves, a fight breaks out. They start arguing and pushing each other, fighting over who gets to go first.

Eventually, one of the girls yells out to their father for help.

“Dad! I got here first!” Says one sister.

“I know, but I need to go worse than you do!” Says the other.

“How do you know!? You’re not in my body! I didn’t even go when we left this morning!”

“Ugh! You’re so selfish!”

Then Dad interrupts and offers up a plan.

“Girls, I’m not going to fix this for you. You can both stay in the bathroom and figure out who goes first and who goes second. There’s only one rule: no hitting.”

As the two sisters with bursting bladders enter into a crucial conversation, their father hangs out nearby, wondering how long it’ll take them to resolve their “who pees first” issue.

Several minutes go by, and he still hears his daughters arguing and slinging sarcastic one-liners at each other in the bathroom.

Finally, after twenty-five minutes, he hears the toilet flush. One daughter comes out. A couple of minutes later, another flush, and out walks her sister.

Now, with both of his children in the room, the father asks, “Do you know how many times each of you could’ve gone to the bathroom in the time it took to work that out?” Both of the girls paused. They hadn’t thought about that while they were arguing.

“Lots of times, if SHE wasn’t being such a jerk!”

“Did you hear that, Dad!? She’s calling ME names when SHE could’ve just waited. She always has to have her way!”

Truth be told, these two kids aren’t behaving much differently than the rest of us.

When we’re faced with a failed conversation, most of us are quick to blame, shame, and point fingers at anyone but ourselves…

If others would just change, then we’d all be happy. If others weren’t so manipulative, we wouldn’t have to resort to playing politics in the first place. It’s their fault, not ours. It’s her fault, not mine. They started it. He started it. And on and on.

Of course, it’s true that sometimes, we’re just bystanders as life throws a barrage of challenges our way.

But you know what else is true? More often than not, we’ve done something to contribute to the challenges we’re experiencing.

Here’s how the authors of Crucial Conversations put it,

“People who are best at dialogue understand this simple fact and turn it into the principle ‘Work on me first.’ They realize that not only are they likely to benefit by improving their own approach, but also that they’re the only person they can work on anyway. As much as others may need to change, or we may want them to change, the only person we can continually inspire, prod, and shape—with any degree of success—is the person in the mirror.”

Stay focused

Skilled people Start with Heart. That is, they begin high-risk discussions with the right motives, and they stay focused no matter what happens.

They maintain focus in two ways.

1. They know what they want. Despite constant invitations to slip away from their goals, they stick with them.

2. Skilled people don’t make “Sucker’s Choices” (either/or choices). Unlike others who justify their unhealthy behavior by explaining that they had no choice but to fight or take flight, masters of conversation believe that dialogue, no matter the circumstances, is always an option.

To illustrate, let’s look at an example.

Carolyn is the CEO of a mid-sized company, and for the last two hours, she’s been in a tense meeting with her top managers, directors, and leaders. Their topic of discussion? Cutting costs.

Over the last six months, Carolyn’s been on a personal mission to cut costs, company-wide. But so far, there hasn’t been much progress on that front. So she decides to call a meeting to find out why they haven’t started cutting costs.

After she finishes sharing her concerns, Carolyn opens the floor to questions.

One of the managers timidly stands up, and nervously asks if he could ask a very difficult question. He receives a quick nod of approval from Carolyn, and then he starts.

“Carolyn, for the last six months, you’ve been pushing us to find ways to cut costs, and I know we haven’t made much progress in that regard. If you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you about one thing that’s making it tough for us to push for cost cuts.”

“Go for it!” Says Carolyn, with a bright smile.

“Well, while you’ve been asking us to use both sides of our paper and forego costly improvements, you’re having a second office built.”

Carolyn freezes and her face turns bright red. Everyone’s eyes dart up in anticipation of what will happen next. The manager then continues.

“I overheard some of the directors mention that the furniture alone was around $150,000. Is that true?”

And BOOM. The conversation just turned crucial.

The manager just poured something negative into the pool of meaning.

What’s Carolyn going to do?

Will she encourage honest feedback, or will she shut him down?

This is a crucial conversation because what Carolyn decides to do in the moments to come will not only set the tone for her cost-cutting initiative, but it’ll also have a direct impact on how other leaders view her.

Can she walk the talk of being open and honest?

Or is she just another hypocrite like her predecessors?

How Carolyn behaves during this crucial conversation depends on how she handles her emotions while she’s under fire. Sure, she’s big on candor and openness, but what about now? Will she thank the manager for asking a risky question?

If she’s like most folks, Carolyn will jump to her own defense. When we’re in the middle of a high-stakes conversation, our emotions tend to get the best of us, which keeps us from staying focused on our ultimate goal.

This leaves you resorting to old and ineffective patterns of communication.

“Excuse me,” you might respond. “I don’t think my new office is an appropriate topic for this meeting.”

And just like that, you’re done.

Buy-in? Gone. Trust? Gone.

Now, everyone thinks you only want honesty and openness when it makes you look good.

As it turns out, Carolyn didn’t give in to her desire to start defending herself…

After she was accused of not following her own advice, she initially looked surprised, embarrassed, and upset. But then, she took a deep breath and said:

“You know what? I’m glad you asked. Let’s talk about this so everyone knows what’s going on.”

Then Carolyn got real. She shared how she felt the office was necessary but she hadn’t anticipated it would be so costly. So she sent someone to check on the numbers. Meanwhile, she explained how building the additional office space was a response to the Marketing department’s advice to boost the company’s image and boost client confidence. She also explained that, while she would be using the office, it would be used primarily as a hosting location for marketing.

When Carolyn saw the sky-high figures for the office, she was shocked and admitted that she should’ve looked into the costs before signing off on the work order. Having realized all of this in front of a room full of top leaders, she decided to commit to drawing up a new plan that would cut costs by half—or they’d cancel the project entirely.

How do you think Carolyn shifted from angry and embarrassed, to open and grateful?

She asked herself a simple question: “What do I really want here?”

Of course, she initially wanted to put that manager in his place for asking such a disrespectful question.

But that’s not what she really wanted. What she really wanted was to encourage the leaders in the room to embrace her cost-cutting initiative—and to influence thousands of other employees—up and down the company—to do the same.

As she thought about her goal, she realized her greatest challenge was that most of her employees thought she was a hypocrite. On one hand, she’s calling for everyone to cut costs and sacrifice. On the other hand, she appears to be spending insane amounts of money on a new office, which didn’t seem necessary.

This is when she shifted from embarrassed and angry, to open and grateful… Grateful that she had an opportunity to field a crucial question—and to use it as an opportunity to inspire and influence the leaders in the room.

Refocus your brain

Now, let’s look at a situation you might face.

What do you do when your ideas come under fire? What do you do when you’re speaking with someone who disagrees with you completely?

For most of us, it’s hard to stay calm and cool when this happens.

The last time this happened to you, you may have even lost your temper or gotten offended and walked out, or at the very least, felt a degree of negative emotion.

Unfortunately, this accomplishes very little in terms of helping you have a successful dialogue, or getting your ideas to land with other people.

Here is how it could have been different…

Before you have a crucial conversation:

Think about your actual goals by asking yourself the following two clarifying questions:
- What do I want to achieve from this conversation?
- What information do I want to share with the other participants in the conversation?
  👆 Asking yourself these questions will highlight your ultimate goal in a conversation and help you stay focused on the topic at hand.

Also, consider for a moment what you don’t want from a conversation.
- In your professional life, for example, you don’t want a conversation to be vague if it’s about making an important decision.
- In your personal life, you don’t want a conversation to cause bitterness between you and your partner, because a good decision must be agreed upon by both of you.

Once you know what you want out of a crucial conversation, be sure to stay focused on this goal during your actual conversation.

If someone criticizes you, or if any objections annoy you, or if you’re offended about something, pause for a moment and remind yourself of your goal.

And every time the conversation starts to steer away from this goal, gently nudge it back in the right direction.

Asking yourself, “What do I really want?” also lets you overcome any potential emotional outbursts, because it helps you step back and think about the bigger picture.

When you have a solid goal, you don’t want your anger or ego to meddle with that goal.

And no matter how much you’re ‘attacked’ in the conversation, you’ll weather it patiently simply because you don’t want the conversation to fail without achieving its goal.

Let’s say you want to share something with your spouse or partner that may upset them.

Before beginning the conversation, pause and ask yourself these two questions:

What’s my goal (what do I really want)?

What do I want to avoid?

You probably want to convey the information without upsetting your partner, right? So, begin the conversation with this goal in mind and you’ll be more likely to have a calm conversation, patiently weathering your partner’s reaction.

Actionable insights

Next time you’re about to go into a crucial conversation, stop and ask yourself the following questions to bring yourself back to dialogue:

What do I really want for myself?

What do I really want for others? (or the other person)

What do I really want for the relationship?

How would I behave if I really wanted these results?

To Start with Heart, focus on your own motives before going into a crucial conversation. To get this right, you’ve got to clarify your intentions and avoid focusing on “winning” or proving yourself right. Instead, aim to create dialogue and reach a mutual understanding.

Next up, we’ll look at stressful conversations—including how to spot the signals of a potentially stressful conversation, and how to prevent them from taking over and destroying a dialogue.

See you then.

—Dean.

If you enjoyed this free lesson from The Crucial Conversations Course, you’ll love the full version of this training program. Learn more and register below 👇