![]() Note Coaches, it is valuable to learn not only to recognize these stories in yourself but in those you are working with so that you can provide guidance. If your internal stories fall into any of these three categories, the outcome will be poor. The section discussing three clever stories is extremely useful even if you are great at crucial conversations. Questioning the narrative you initially create will increase the chances of using a more logical thinking process which will yield a more constructive narrative. The book suggests several mechanisms to control your narrative, including questioning your feelings, not confusing stories with facts, separating facts from the story, and testing whether what you think are facts are observable in behavior. The Shakespeare quote in the book sums up the idea, “nothing in this world is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Controlling the story(s) we tell ourselves is important because they control how we feel and influence how we act. The authors suggest a process to control the story that is created using the lazier but more rational System 2. The stories that automatically pop to mind are a reflection of our mind using all of our learned biases to fill in the gaps. Step Two immediately evoked the distinction between System 1 and System 2 thinking described by Kahneman. The book provides a process to become better at dialogue. The people who are “best” at crucial conversations act on their emotions to change direction and make it possible to choose behaviors that create better results. They fake it if they have to get back to a dialogue. The book suggests that people that are “good” at crucial conversations realize that if they don’t control their emotions (rather than being controlled by them) matters will get worse. The authors point out that it is a very dangerous assumption that our emotions are the only valid response to any situation. The second premise is that once emotions have set in that you only have two options, “you can act upon them or be acted on by them.” The second statement evokes much of Daniel Kahneman’s ideas in Thinking Fast and Slow (a side note – if you have not read Thinking Fast and Slow, it will be useful to read the entries in our re-read that describe System 1 and System 2 thinking). The first is that “emotions don’t settle upon you like a fog.“ The fog metaphor is used to remind us that the occurrences of emotions are recognizable and predictable. The authors base the ideas in this chapter on two basic premises. ![]() Keeping your emotions under control allows you to think and use all of the tools at your disposal to stay in a constructive dialogue. Chapter 6 of Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler is about how to gain control of your emotions during crucial conversations and therefore gain control of the conversation. When I began to notice I was becoming heated, I realized that this week’s chapter was an appropriate touchpoint to get the dialogue back on track. While I was preparing for this week’s installment of Re-read Saturday, I got into a “discussion” with my wife about people and organizations profiteering during the COVID-19 disaster.
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