By Bill Wettstein, President & CFO
Christmas is a time when we have the opportunity to spend more time with family and connect through calls and Christmas cards. It’s a time of relationship and love.
Are there relationships in my life that are not what I want them to be? If yes, why is that? How should I act, and what should I say to attempt to improve them?
What is a Crucial Conversation?
Talking about relationships always leads me to Crucial Conversations, a book by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Al Switzler, and Ron McMillan. The book first came out in 2002 and was subsequently designed into a training course.
Crucial Conversations teaches tools for talking when hot-button topics are broached. What makes a conversation “crucial?” A crucial conversation has opposing views, high stakes, and strong emotions. Conversations like that aren’t hard to come by nowadays, are they?
In those crucial conversations, we often move to reply with silence or violence. Silence is any action taken to withhold meaning, and violence is any action taken to compel others toward your point of view. Violence can be raising your voice, sarcasm, or belittling.
Instead of moving to silence or violence, we need to move toward dialogue.
How to Have a Successful Dialogue
How do we do that? When a conversation goes crucial, which can happen in a moment, STOP, and ask yourself some questions.
- What do I really want?
- How would I behave if I wanted that?
- How am I behaving now?
Do I have a positive motive in the conversation? Some examples of positive motives are to learn, find truth, get results, and build relationships. Or do I have an unhealthy motive? Unhealthy motives are to be right, look good, win, punish, blame, and avoid conflict.
If you change what you want, you will change how you act and listen in the conversation.
We need to explore others’ paths to understand their point of view. To truly listen with a heart to understand is a beautiful way to show respect. To do this effectively, we cannot try to convince and persuade them to our way of thinking.
You can talk to almost anyone about almost anything if they feel safe and heard.
As the year ends and a new one begins, I challenge you to continue to grow your relationships. Experience the freedom that forgiveness brings and put love above all. Communication is a powerful and beautiful gift.
How will you communicate the love God has shown you to those so important in your life?
