Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
Kerry Patterson
Turn your most dreaded conversations into your most productive ones.
The higher the stakes, the worse we tend to communicate. Patterson's framework rewires that instinct, showing you how to stay composed, speak honestly, and actually get heard when it counts.
Everything Patterson wants you to walk away with
You can measure the health of any relationship, team, or organization by the lag time between identifying a problem and discussing it. The longer you act out feelings instead of talking them out, the more damage you do.
Most people believe they must pick between telling the truth and keeping a friend. Skilled communicators refuse this trade-off and find ways to be 100% honest and 100% respectful at the same time.
Adrenaline diverts blood from higher reasoning to large muscles. You end up facing the hardest conversations of your life with the intellectual equipment of a fight-or-flight animal — not a thoughtful adult.
The larger and more accurate the shared pool of meaning, the better the decisions and the stronger the relationships. When people withhold meaning through silence or force it through violence, everyone loses.
If you make it safe enough, you can discuss almost anything. Without safety, even well-intended words become weapons. People need to know you care about their concerns and that you respect them.
Before opening your mouth, ask three questions: What do I really want for myself? For the other person? For the relationship? Then refuse the Fool's Choice by asking how you can be both candid and respectful.
Between observing what someone does and feeling an emotion, you tell a story. You add meaning, guess at motives, and pass judgment. Since you're the storyteller, you can retake control by telling a more accurate story.
Problems operate on three levels: content (the specific incident), pattern (this keeps happening), and relationship (it's now about trust or respect). Most people stay stuck on content when the real issue is deeper.
Use contrasting — a don't/do statement — to fix misunderstandings. The 'don't' addresses their fear about your intent, and the 'do' clarifies your real purpose. Once safety is restored, you can return to the topic.
Researchers predicted 90% of divorces by watching how couples argued — not what they argued about. The same principle applies at work: in the best organizations, everyone holds everyone accountable regardless of title.
These notes are inspired by direct excerpts and woven together into a readable guide you can follow from start to finish.
By Kerry Patterson and Joseph Grenny
The root cause of many human problems lies in how people behave when they disagree about high-stakes, emotional issues. This guide distills the book’s framework for handling those moments with both candor and respect.
”The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” — George Bernard Shaw
Definition Crucial Conversation: A discussion between two or more people in which they hold (1) opposing opinions about a (2) high-stakes issue and where (3) emotions run strong.
Three conditions make a conversation crucial. First, opinions vary—you and your boss disagree about whether you’re ready for a promotion. Second, stakes are high—your team must choose a new marketing strategy or the company is in trouble. Third, emotions run strong—a casual discussion with your spouse suddenly turns to an ugly incident from yesterday’s party. What makes these conversations crucial, not just frustrating or annoying, is that the outcome could have a huge impact on relationships or results that affect you greatly.
The list of topics that can lead to conversational disaster is enormous: ending a relationship, giving your boss feedback about her behavior, confronting a loved one about substance abuse, addressing racist or sexist behavior, discussing problems with sexual intimacy, talking to a colleague who hoards information, giving an unfavorable performance review, asking in-laws to stop interfering, dealing with a rebellious teen, and many more.
What happens in the absence of candid dialogue? Contention, resentment, gamesmanship, poor decisions, spotty execution, and missed opportunities. You can measure the health of relationships, teams, and organizations by measuring the lag time between when problems are identified and when they are resolved. If you fail to discuss issues with your boss, partner, neighbor, or peer, those issues will not magically disappear. They become the lens through which you see the other person—and how you see always shows up in how you act. You’ll snap at them, spend less time with them, withhold information or affection. The longer you act out your feelings rather than talk them out, the more damage you do to both relationships and results.
Key Insight Your natural tendency in threatening moments leans toward fight or flight rather than listen and speak. Two tiny organs atop your kidneys pump adrenaline into your bloodstream. Your brain diverts blood from higher-level reasoning to the large muscles of your arms and legs. You end up facing challenging conversations with the intellectual equipment available to a rodent—your body is preparing for a saber-toothed tiger, not your boss or loved ones.
This creates self-defeating spirals. The more you snip and snap, the less your loved one wants to be around you—so they spend less time with you, you become even more upset, and the spiral continues. Your behavior creates the very thing you didn’t want.
In the worst companies, poor performers are first ignored and then transferred. In good companies, bosses eventually deal with problems. In the best companies, everyone holds everyone else accountable, regardless of level or position.
Research bears this out in personal relationships as well. When psychologist Howard Markman examined couples in heated discussions, he found people fall into three categories: those who digress into threats and name-calling, those who revert to silent fuming, and those who speak openly, honestly, and effectively. Markman and his partner Clifford Notarius predicted nearly 90 percent of the divorces that occurred over the following decade. More importantly, they found that helping couples hold crucial conversations more effectively reduced the chance of unhappiness or breakup by more than half. Mountains of research also suggest that the negative feelings we hold in and the emotional pain we suffer during unhealthy conversations slowly eat away at our physical health.
”Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
Skilled communicators don’t resort to silence or force their arguments on others. They achieve absolute candor while showing deep respect. Most people believe they face a Fool’s Choice—two bad alternatives:
The mistake most of us make is believing we have to choose between telling the truth and keeping a friend. We learn this early—when Grandma asked “Do you like it?” she really meant “Do you like me?” From that moment on, we stay alert for moments when we must choose between candor and kindness. The real question skilled communicators ask is: “How can I be 100 percent honest and at the same time 100 percent respectful?”
Definition Pool of Shared Meaning: Each person enters a conversation with their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences—their personal pool of meaning. Dialogue is the process of making it safe for everyone to add their meaning to a shared pool, even ideas that seem controversial or wrong. Not everyone agrees with every idea; the goal is ensuring all ideas find their way into the open.
The Pool of Shared Meaning is the birthplace of synergy. When people sit through an open discussion where they understand why the shared solution is the best option, they’re committed to act. Conversely, when people sit back during touchy conversations and their ideas never make it into the pool, they quietly criticize and passively resist. When others force ideas into the pool, people may say they’re on board but then follow through halfheartedly.
Sometimes we move to silence—giving loved ones the cold shoulder, relying on hints, sarcasm, innuendo, or looks of disgust to make our points. We play the martyr, pretend we’re helping, or blame an entire team for one person’s problem. Whatever the technique, the method is the same: we withhold meaning from the pool. To move to our best, we have to find a way to share what is in each of our personal pools—especially high-stakes, sensitive, and controversial opinions—and get others to share theirs.
Seventy percent of the success of a crucial conversation happens in your head, not through your mouth.
”A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.” — Charles Kettering
Crucial conversations are most successful when they’re focused on one issue. Because human interactions are inherently complex, focusing on a single topic takes effort. It requires you to thoughtfully unbundle and then prioritize the issues at hand. Skilled communicators can distill complex situations into a clear, concise problem statement—they take far fewer words to say it than the rest of us. The more words it takes you to describe the topic, the less prepared you are to talk.
Key Insight — Three Signs You’re Having the Wrong Conversation
Content. The first time a problem comes up, talk about the content—the immediate pain. Your co-worker failed to deliver the marketing analytics you needed, and now your report is late. If this is the first occurrence, it’s a content problem.
Pattern. The next time the same problem comes up, think pattern. The concern is no longer a single incident but a developing trend. The first time something happens, it’s an incident. The second time it might be coincidence. The third time, it’s a pattern. Address patterns early and candidly, before they become entrenched.
Relationship. As problems continue, they can begin to impact the relationship itself. You may start to doubt someone’s competence, question whether you can trust them to keep commitments, or conclude they don’t respect your role. These doubts change how you relate to the person, subtly or overtly.
Create a simple problem sentence to start with a clear purpose and hold yourself accountable. It gives you a standard by which to measure whether you told your full truth. Don’t worry about how you’ll say it—just tell yourself the truth about what you want to say.
When new issues emerge mid-conversation, you have a choice: stay on the original issue or move to a new one. In all cases, place a bookmark—verbally acknowledge where you’re going and what you intend to come back to. Never allow the topic to shift without acknowledging you’ve done it.
When contact is infrequent (virtual or remote settings), talk explicitly about how you will communicate: How will you ensure everyone has a turn to speak? How will you make space for people to pause and think? What tools and norms should you establish? What accommodations will you make for different time zones? Start by asking yourself when virtual conversations work well for you—and when they don’t.
Change begins with your heart. The first step to dialogue is to get your heart right. People who are best at dialogue turn this into a principle: “Work on me first, us second.” They realize that they are likely to benefit by improving their own approach, and that the only person they can continually inspire, prod, and shape with any degree of success is the person in the mirror.
Action — Three Questions to Ask Yourself
Present your brain with a more complex problem. Combine the answers into an “and” question that forces you to search for more creative and productive options than silence or violence: “How can we have a candid conversation and strengthen our relationship?”
Principle Emotions don’t settle upon you like a fog. They are not foisted upon you by others. No matter how comfortable it might make you feel to say it, others don’t make you mad. You make you mad. You and only you create your emotions.
Once you’ve created your upset emotions, you have only two options: master them or fall hostage to them. People who stay in dialogue when they have strong feelings do so by thinking their emotions out—influencing and often changing them through deliberate reflection.
Just after you observe what others do and just before you feel an emotion about it, you tell yourself a story. You add meaning to the action you observed, make a guess at the motive driving the behavior, and add a judgment—is it good or bad? Based on these stories, your body responds with an emotion. This intermediate step is why ten people facing the exact same circumstances may have ten different emotional responses. Since you and only you are telling the story, you can take back control of your emotions by telling a different story. Until you tell a different story, you cannot break the loop.
Stories contain conclusions, judgments about whether something is good or bad, and attributions—interpretations of others’ motives. Be careful when you argue for your story that you first examine whether you might be creating the reality you claim to describe. Your actions may have helped the other person tell the kind of story that created their upset emotions—you may be a full partner in the downward spiral.
To slow down the lightning-quick storytelling process and the subsequent flow of adrenaline, retrace your Path to Action one element at a time:
Action — Retrace Your Path
Identifying your emotions is more difficult than you might imagine. Many people are emotionally illiterate. They say they’re “angry” when they’re really feeling a mix of embarrassment and surprise, or “upset” when they’re actually humiliated and hurt. Words matter: knowing what you’re really feeling helps you take a more accurate look at what’s going on. When you precisely articulate what you’re feeling, you put a bit of daylight between you and the emotion. This distance lets you move from being hostage to the emotion to being an observer of it—and from there, you can examine it, study it, and begin to change it. Take the time to get below the easy-to-say emotions and identify those that take more vulnerability to acknowledge, like shame, hurt, fear, and inadequacy.
To avoid confusing story with fact, watch for “hot” terms. Saying “she scowled at me” or “he made a sarcastic comment” sounds like fact, but words like “scowl” and “sarcastic” are hot terms—they express judgments and attributions that create strong emotions. Stories are rarely purely right or purely wrong; they’re more or less accurate. Considering additional context can change how you feel about the situation entirely.
Pay close attention to self-justifying stories. You tell a clever story when you want self-justification more than results.
Villain Stories: You ignore any of the other person’s virtues and turn their flaws into exaggerated indictments. Victim Stories: You exaggerate your own innocence. The antidote is to ask: “What am I pretending not to notice about my role in the problem?” This question jars you into facing the fact that you may have contributed—perhaps through a thoughtless omission rather than malicious intent.
With experience and maturity, you learn to worry less about others’ intent and more about the effect their actions are having on you. Mastering your stories isn’t about letting someone off the hook for bad behavior. It is the first step toward addressing that behavior through dialogue. When you master your stories, you take ownership for the emotional energy you bring to the conversation.
Finally, ask: “What should I do right now to move toward what I really want?”
The best communicators immediately turn their attention to why others might not feel safe. Dialogue calls for the free flow of meaning, and nothing kills the flow of meaning like fear. When you fear people aren’t buying into your ideas, you start pushing too hard. When you fear you may be harmed, you start withdrawing. Both reactions—fight and flight—are motivated by the same emotion: fear. If you make it safe enough, you can talk about almost anything and people will listen. If you don’t fear being attacked or humiliated, you can hear almost anything without becoming defensive.
Key Insight Think about a time you received really tough feedback without becoming defensive. You absorbed it, reflected on it, let it influence you. Why? Because you believed the other person had your best interest in mind, and you respected their opinion. You felt safe because you trusted their motives and ability. You didn’t need to defend yourself—even if you didn’t like what was being said. When you don’t feel safe, even well-intended comments are suspect.
By pulling yourself out of the content of an argument and looking for signs that safety is at risk, you reengage your brain and your full vision returns. Giving yourself a new problem to consider—“is safety at risk?”—actually changes your brain functioning.
Silence is any act to purposely withhold information from the pool of meaning, almost always done to avoid potential problems. The three most common forms are:
Violence is any verbal strategy that attempts to convince, control, or compel others to your point of view. It violates safety by forcing meaning into the pool. The three most common forms are:
When you see signs of silence or violence in virtual communication, ask for more data. For example: in email, note that you haven’t heard back and ask how they feel about the proposal. On the phone, acknowledge that you wish you could see their face and ask what they’re thinking. In direct messaging, flag that a comment seemed off and ask whether they’re upset.
If you spot safety risks as they happen, you can step out of the conversation, build safety, and then find a way to talk about anything with anyone. The key is to step out of the content of the conversation—literally stop talking about the topic—and rebuild safety. Human beings are wired to look for threats; when they feel threatened, they move to silence, violence, flight, or fight. The best communicators don’t play games. They know that to solve their problem they need to talk about it with no pretending, sugarcoating, or faking.
Principle — The Two Conditions for Safety
People need to know two things about your intent:
1. Mutual Purpose: You care about their concerns.
2. Mutual Respect: You care about them.
Respect is like air: as long as it’s present, nobody thinks about it. If you take it away, it’s all that people can think about. Feelings of disrespect often come when you dwell on how others are different from yourself. You can counteract these feelings by looking for ways you are similar. Without excusing others’ behavior, try to sympathize—even empathize—with them. When you recognize that everyone has weaknesses, it’s easier to find a way to respect even the thorniest of people.
If the other person doesn’t seem to care about your purpose, choose that as the topic of the crucial conversation you need to have. Your purpose is every bit as important as theirs, and you can hold that as a boundary.
1. Share Your Good Intent. When you start by sharing your good intent, you lay the foundation for safety. It doesn’t mean the other person won’t get defensive as the conversation progresses, but it gives you a touchstone to return to when safety is at risk. For example: “I love you, and I want to make sure we’re talking about things that impact our relationship, because it’s the most important thing in the world to me. I’m sure there are things you’d like me to change, and I want to understand those as well as share concerns I have.”
2. Apologize When Appropriate. An apology isn’t really an apology unless you experience a change in heart. You have to give up saving face, being right, or winning in order to focus on what you really want. You sacrifice a bit of your ego by admitting your error—and in return, you’re rewarded with healthy dialogue and better results.
Definition Contrasting is a don’t/do statement that fixes misunderstandings. In the don’t part, you explain what you don’t intend—addressing concerns that you lack respect or have a malicious purpose. In the do part, you clarify your real intention. The don’t is the more important half because it deals with the misunderstanding that has put safety at risk.
3. Contrast to Fix Misunderstandings. Contrasting can also prevent safety problems, similar to sharing good intent up front. Examples: “I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate the time you’ve taken to keep our checking account balanced. I do appreciate it. I do, however, have some concerns with how we’re using the new online banking system.” Or: “My fear is that I’ll draw down on our relationship, and that’s not my intent at all. My goal in bringing this up is to strengthen our relationship.”
4. Create a Mutual Purpose. You have to open your mind to the possibility that there is a third choice—one that suits everyone. By focusing on higher and longer-term goals, you often find ways to transcend short-term compromises. When you sense you’re working at cross-purposes: step out of the content of the conflict, stop focusing on who thinks what, and commit to seek a Mutual Purpose—a unilateral public commitment to stay in the conversation until you find something that serves everyone. Recognize the purpose behind the strategy: ask people why they want what they’re pushing for, and separate what they’re demanding from the purpose it serves. If you’re still at odds after clarifying purposes, invent a higher or longer-term purpose that’s more motivating than the ones keeping you in conflict.
Creating safety doesn’t resolve all your issues—it simply creates the space to give dialogue a chance.
Your heart needs to be in the right place, and your head needs to be focused on the right topic. To speak honestly when honesty could easily offend, you have to find a way to maintain safety without compromising candor. This requires blending three ingredients: confidence, humility, and skill.
Definition — STATE: Five Skills for Speaking Up
Share your facts.
Tell your story.
Ask for others’ paths.
Talk tentatively.
Encourage testing.
Share your facts. Share your facts, not the facts. When you acknowledge that these are your facts, you make space for other facts—things the other person may have seen and heard.
Tell your story. The goal of Contrasting is not to water down your message, but to be sure that people don’t hear more than you intend.
Talk tentatively. One of the ironies of dialogue is that the more convinced and forceful you act, the more resistant others become. Speaking in absolute and overstated terms decreases your influence. The converse is also true—the more tentatively you speak, the more open people become. Use phrases like: “It appears to me that…,” “I’m starting to feel like…,” “I don’t think you’re intending this, but I’m beginning to feel…”
Ask for others’ paths. If others have different facts or stories, you need to hear them to complete the picture. Actively invite them to share: “Does anyone see it differently?” “What am I missing here?” “I’d really like to hear the other side of this story.”
Encourage testing. When you can tell others aren’t buying in but aren’t speaking up, play devil’s advocate. Model disagreeing by disagreeing with your own view: “Maybe I’m wrong here. What if the opposite is true? I really want to hear all the reasons my position could be dangerously wrong.” You might also say: “I know people have been reluctant to speak up about this, but I would really love to hear from everyone.”
Key Insight Once we’re convinced it’s our duty to fight for the truth, we pull out the big guns—citing information that supports our ideas while hiding or discrediting anything that doesn’t, spicing things up with exaggeration. The harder we try and the more forceful and nasty our tactics, the greater the resistance we create, the worse the results, and the more battered our relationships.
Your willingness to use STATE skills is a reliable indicator of your interest in dialogue. The harder it is to use them, the more likely your goal is to win rather than learn. Watch for the moment people start to resist—raising their volume, overstating facts, or retreating into silence. Turn your attention onto yourself: are you leaning forward, speaking more loudly, starting to try to win?
As you consider what you really want from the conversation, ask yourself: “How would I behave if this is really what I want?” If you want to influence people, start by understanding them. Open yourself up to the belief that others might hold a piece of the puzzle—then ask for their views. Hold to your belief; merely soften your approach.
”One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears—by listening to them.” — Dean Rusk
Thoughts are all electricity. Emotions add chemistry. Once the chemicals that fuel emotions are released, they hang around in the bloodstream—in some cases long after thoughts have changed. Be patient while the chemistry catches up with the electricity. If you don’t get at the source of people’s feelings, you’ll end up suffering the effects of those feelings.
Definition — AMPP: Four Power Listening Tools
Ask: Invite the other person to share. “What’s going on?” “I’d really like to hear your opinion on this.” “Don’t worry about hurting my feelings.”
Mirror: Describe how the other person looks or acts—especially when their tone or gestures are inconsistent with their words. “From the way you’re saying that, it doesn’t sound like you’re fine.” Mirroring magnifies safety because it demonstrates genuine interest.
Paraphrase: Put the message in your own words, usually in abbreviated form. Don’t simply parrot back what was said. “Let’s see if I’ve got this right. You’re worried because the previous project manager was fired, and you’re wondering if you might be at risk as well.”
Prime: Offer your best guess at what the other person is thinking or feeling before expecting them to share. Sometimes you have to pour some meaning into the pool before the other person will respond in kind.
You create safety when your tone of voice says you’re OK with them feeling the way they’re feeling. Understanding doesn’t equate with agreement. Sensitivity doesn’t equate to acquiescence. By taking steps to understand another person’s Path to Action, you aren’t promising to accept their point of view—you are promising to listen.
Agree when you agree. Don’t turn an agreement into an argument. When the other person has merely left out an element, agree and then build: rather than “Wrong. You forgot to mention…,” say “Absolutely. In addition, I noticed that…”
The pool expands only when both their meaning and your meaning are heard. However, you will create more safety for others by helping them share their meaning first, before you dive in with yours. Start by listening, then sharing. You can’t force people to listen to you. Just because you listened doesn’t mean they will reciprocate—but you can set that expectation up front. Let the other person know you want to hear their perspective and ask if they’re willing to hear yours in return.
Principle If you live by the compliment, you’ll die by the criticism. We lean too far forward and move from enjoying praise to needing it—sometimes out of a naïve hope that outside evidence will take better care of us than we can of ourselves, sometimes because it’s just a quick fix. We are unwilling to do the work required to steady ourselves, preferring to lean on approval instead.
Others’ feedback is either pure truth, pure falsehood, or some mixture of the two—usually some mixture. The sensible response is to collect it, sort out what’s true, and discard the rest.
Action — Four Steps for Receiving Feedback
Collect yourself. Breathe deeply and slowly to remind yourself that you are safe. Name your feelings—hurt, scared, embarrassed, ashamed. Naming them helps you put daylight between you and the emotion. Examine the stories that led to your feelings. Some people collect themselves by repeating affirmations: “This can’t hurt me. I’m safe” or “If I made a mistake, it doesn’t mean I am a mistake.”
Understand. Curiosity can inoculate you against defensiveness. Focus on understanding to interrupt the tendency toward personalizing. The best puzzle to solve: “Why would a reasonable, rational, decent person say what they’re saying?” Detach yourself as though the feedback is being said about a third person.
Recover. It’s sometimes best to ask for a time-out. You regain a sense of control when you exercise your right to respond when you’re truly ready. Separate the tasks of collecting and sorting. Put it all in a bag and sort it out later. You might simply say, “I will take a look at that”—without agreeing or disagreeing.
Engage. Once you’ve collected, understood, and recovered, you can engage with the feedback constructively—on your own timeline.
Having more meaning in the pool, even jointly owning it, doesn’t guarantee that everyone agrees on what to do with it. Conversations often fail to convert ideas into action for two reasons: unclear expectations about how decisions will be made, and poor follow-through on decisions that are made. The two riskiest times in a crucial conversation are the beginning (where you must create safety) and the end (where unclear conclusions lead to violated expectations).
Principle Before making a decision, the people involved should decide how to decide.
There are four common ways of making decisions: command (someone with authority decides), consult (input is gathered, then someone decides), vote (the group decides by majority), and consensus (everyone must agree).
Action — Four Questions for Choosing a Decision Method
While a conversation doesn’t necessarily need to end with a decision, it should always end with a commitment—whether to change, take action, or sincerely reflect on what was shared. Make sure your commitments cover:
One dull pencil is worth six sharp minds. Don’t leave your hard work to memory. Write down conclusions, decisions, and assignments. Revisit your notes at key times—usually the next meeting—and review assignments. When you hold people accountable, you not only increase their motivation and ability to deliver, but you create a culture of integrity.
Generally speaking, a vast majority of tough interpersonal problems go away if they’re privately, respectfully, and firmly discussed. Your biggest challenge will be the respect part. If you put up with a behavior for too long, you’ll be inclined to tell an increasingly potent Villain Story about the offender. If you’ve tolerated the behavior for a long time before holding the conversation, own up to it. This may help you treat the individual as a reasonable, rational, and decent person—even if some of their behavior doesn’t fit that description.
When addressing uncomfortable behavior, share specific facts about what you’ve observed and explain that the behavior sends a message that makes you uncomfortable. Ask how they see it. For example: “When I walk into your office, frequently your eyes move from my eyes downward. I don’t know that you’re aware you’re doing these things, so I thought I’d bring them up. How do you see it?”
When something bothers you, catch it early. Use Contrasting: “I’m not trying to blow this out of proportion. I just want to deal with it before it gets out of hand.” Share the specific behaviors you’ve observed, tentatively explain the consequences, and encourage testing: “Do you see it differently?”
Key Insight When spouses stop giving each other helpful feedback, they lose out on the help of a lifelong confidant and coach. They miss out on hundreds of opportunities to help each other communicate more effectively.
Deal with trust around the specific issue, not around the person as a whole. When raising a personal issue, use Contrasting to explain that you don’t want to hurt the person’s feelings but want to share something helpful. Also explain that you’re reluctant to bring it up because of its personal nature, but since it’s interfering with their effectiveness, you feel you must.
Perhaps the most common way the language of dialogue enters everyday conversation is with the statement, “I think we’ve moved away from dialogue.” What stands between you and what you really want is lag time—the gap between when you know you have a problem and when you find a way to effectively confront, discuss, and resolve it. If you reduce this lag time, everything gets better.
| Principle | Skill | Crucial Question |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Choose Your Topic (Ch 3) | Unbundle, Choose, Simplify; CPR (Content, Pattern/Process, Relationship) | What’s the right topic to address to move toward what I really want? Is this a Content, Pattern/Process, or Relationship issue? |
| 2. Start With Heart (Ch 4) | Focus on what you really want | What do I really want? For me? For others? For the relationship? What should I do right now to move toward what I really want? |
| 3. Master My Stories (Ch 5) | Retrace my Path to Action; Separate Fact from Story; Watch for Three Clever Stories; Tell the Rest of the Story | How am I behaving? What am I feeling? What story is creating these feelings? What have I seen or heard that supports or challenges my story? Am I telling Victim, Villain, or Helpless Stories? What am I pretending not to know about my role? Why would a reasonable, rational, decent person do this? What should I do right now to move toward what I really want? |
| 4. Learn to Look (Ch 6) | Look for when the conversation becomes crucial; Look for safety problems; Look for your own Style Under Stress | Am I going to silence or violence? Are others? |
| 5. Make It Safe (Ch 7) | Apologize when appropriate; Contrast to fix or prevent misunderstanding; CRIB to get to Mutual Purpose | Why is safety at risk? Have I established Mutual Purpose? Am I maintaining Mutual Respect? What will I do to rebuild safety? |
| 6. STATE My Path (Ch 8) | Share your facts; Tell your story; Ask for others’ paths; Talk tentatively; Encourage testing | Am I really open to others’ views? Am I talking about the real issue? Am I confidently expressing my own views? |
| 7. Explore Others’ Paths (Ch 9) | Ask; Mirror; Paraphrase; Prime; Agree; Build; Compare | Am I actively exploring others’ views? Am I avoiding unnecessary disagreement? |
| 8. Retake Your Pen (Ch 10) | Collect; Understand; Recover; Engage | What must I do to make myself feel safe? What must I do to affirm my own worth? |
| 9. Move to Action (Ch 11) | Decide how you’ll decide; Document decisions and follow up | How will we make decisions? Who will do what by when? How will we follow up? |