Fierce Conversations: Achieving success in work and in life, one conversation at a time

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Wrap it up by having everyong distill their solution into one sentence, go around the table for everyone’s ideas

Once you practise candour - paired with intelligence, passion and skill - your possibilities will be expanded. This new candour will fundamentally change you and your organisation. The quality of our lives is largely determined by the quality of the questions we ask ourselves—and the quality of our answers.” Successes and failures don’t happen overnight. Our relationships, organizations, and careers are shaped one conversation at a time, until they cross a tipping point to suddenly bloom or collapse. A failed marriage or business comes from the cumulative effect of conversations you’ve had (or avoided) over months or even years.

Let Silence Do the Heavy Lifting – Allow silence when having a conversation; the more important the topic, the longer the silence. When we allow a moment of silence in between some of the things we say, it will allow the words to sink in. Your impact or legacy as a leader is the sum of the emotional wakes you leave behind. What will your legacy be? How do you want people to remember you when you’re gone? Learn to create positive emotional wakes and minimize negative ones. Principle 7: Use Silence Purposefully Be here, prepared to be nowhere else. Speak and listen as if this is the most important conversation you will ever have with this person. It could be. Having a difficult conversation can feel like a confrontation. They can get emotional. They’re stressful – for both parties. They don’t always achieve the intended outcome.

A review in Orlando Sentinel read, "Although the truths presented by Scott are as old as common sense, she dresses them up in interesting new ways. Her pithy prose and poignant examples make for entertaining and instructive reading". [8] Think about when you are not that thing, and recognize multiple realities about how each of us show up in the world, not just when we are at our best. The most important thing about interrogating reality while engaging in fierce conversation is to avoid laying blame. Inviting other people to express their reality and then laying blame on them will give the impression that we didn’t really want to consider how things are in their eyes or how they interpreted things; and usually activates our defense mechanisms. Both people leave the conversation without the relationship being enriched, but deteriorated instead. There are 7 principles of fierce conversations which help us to move away from misunderstanding, silos, defensiveness, and competition, and to move toward exploration, accountability, inclusion, engagement, alignment, innovation, and collaboration.It’s a good premise in that all relationships are series of conversations. Thus, we should have those fierce conversations. We should always be our genuine self and we should never take a conversation for granted. Notes from the book- overall the book has good ideas but was not about fierce conversations until about chapter 7. Better idea than was executed Choose to be authentic, and start by being radically transparent with yourself. Get clear on who you are, and what you must do to be that person. When you get real with yourself and others, you enjoy greater personal clarity and freedom, as well as more fulfilling relationships and professional accomplishments. Principle 3: Be Here and Nowhere Else When leaders say or do something—be it a simple word of encouragement or a harsh criticism—they leave an emotional wake that continues to impact people long after the event.

You can’t build a deep relationship without understanding the other person. Be fully present, use regular one-to-ones to connect, and use the “decision tree” to give everyone more autonomy and freedom for decision making. Principle 4: Confront Your Toughest Challenge Now The simplest definition is one in which we "come out from behind ourselves, into the conversation, and make it real" in other words, one where we reveal our real thoughts and focus on what really matters.While many fear such real conversations, it is the unreal conversations that ought to concern us because they are incredibly costly, both in time wasted and the opportunities for change that are thrown away.A fierce conversation is not about holding forth on your point of view, but about provoking learning by sitting with someone side by side and jointly interrogating reality. The goal is to expand the conversation rather than narrow it. Questions are much more effective than answers in provoking learning.”(Scott, 2004) In the workshop you will learn and practise seven principles of Fierce Conversations and discover how together with the 4 conversational models, they can transform your leadership skills, shake up your performance management, and transform the culture in your team and organisation. How have you helped create this issue or situation? Don’t comment on the response other than to say-that’s useful to recognize. And move on Include: the issue, a specific example, your emotions about it, clarify what is at stake, identify your contribution to the problem, indicate you wish to resolve the issue, and invite the person to respond