Crucial Confrontations

 

"Crucial confrontations live and die on the words people choose and the way we deliver them." 

Those words, and particularly the way they are delivered, live and die on what people THINK before they open their mouths. 

💥 No amount of preparation can save a confrontation if the person who brings up the failed promise isn't in the right frame of mind. 

How do you dismantle a bundle of problems into its component parts and choose the one you want to confront? Learning how to get to the gist of the infraction requires time and patience. Feeling pressured by time constraints and hyped up by emotions, most people miss the real deal. The ability to reduce an infraction to its bare essence takes patience, a sense of proportion, and precision. 

1. You have to take time to unbundle the problem. (people are often in too much of a hurry to do this.) Their emotions propel them to move quickly, and speed rarely leads to careful thought. 

2. While sorting the issue, you have to decide what is bothering you the most. If you don't, you'll end up going after either the wrong target or too many targets. 

3. You have to be concise. You have to distill the issue to a single sentence. If you can't reduce a violation to a single sentence before you talk, the issue never becomes more understandable and focused as a conversation unfolds. 

If you're going to speak up when others remain silent, if you 're going to hold people accountable and to a standard that differs from that of the masses, get the word out. Send out a warning. Differentiate yourself from others. However, if you're going to differentiate yourself from your spouse or coworkers by holding people to a more rigid standard, don't be smug about it. Set expectations in a way that shows respect for people with different views.