Introduction

When we experience flow in a conversation—when the conversation feels effortless and enjoyable—we leave feeling valued and respected. In these types of conversations, there’s no sense of anxiety or awkwardness. Neither person feels stuck or trapped. We are respectfully listening and responding to each other.

All too often, however, our conversations have a less positive outcome. For example, maybe you sense others have no idea or no interest in what you’re talking about. Or maybe they become visibly upset or angry.

What causes these types of negative outcomes? Why is it—even when you have the best intentions—your conversations take a turn for the worse? And how can you prevent this from happening? That’s what this book is about.

This book reveals the key factors behind how others perceive us when we communicate with them—things like attitude, body language, and word choice. But it goes even further to discuss the neurochemicals that drive these perceptions. Understanding all these different factors can help us approach conversations and communications with openness to promote superior outcomes.

Armed with the knowledge and skills you’ll gain from reading this book, you’ll be able to quickly identify when a conversation isn’t going the way you intended and get things back on track.

Goals for This Book

This book is intended to:

• Present easy-to-recall acronyms to help you improve your conversation skills.

• Provide tips and techniques to help you overcome that “deer in the headlights” feeling that often occurs during difficult conversations.

• Offer direction and guidance for having critical conversations.

• Help you understand how various personality types match up with various traits and perceptions.

• Help you improve your communication by using empathetic language, body language, listening skills, and your own communication style.

• Teach you how to reduce your stress levels before a difficult conversation and help you make good decisions in the face of conflict to mitigate negative reactions.

How This Book Is Organized

Conducting a conversation is a little like driving a car. If you’re not careful, you may find that people try to “run you off the road.” For this reason, I structured the chapters in this book using a car metaphor. Each chapter is broken down into the following sections:

• In the Driver’s Seat: This section introduces the main ideas in the chapter.

• Your Road Map: This section describes how you apply the main idea.

• The Drive Home: This section summarizes key points into bullets for easy review.

More on the Use of Acronyms

In addition to using a car metaphor to structure each chapter, this book also frequently uses a CAR acronym. CAR stands for:

• Consideration

• Action or a call to action

• Return on investment (ROI)

You’ll learn more about this concept starting in Chapter 1.

CAR is just one acronym used in this book. Another is BEST, which I consider the guiding principle for critical conversations. BEST stands for:

• Body language

• Emotional intelligence

• Scripting Techniques

Special Features

Throughout this book, you’ll also find these special features:

• Reflection boxes: These challenge you to take a moment to consider how you can apply what you’ve learned.

• Tip boxes: These provide quick tips that you can apply to improve the effectiveness of your conversations.

• Real World boxes: These provide examples of research on effective communication techniques.

• Sidebars: These provide important information that goes above and beyond the main text in the chapter.

• Scripts: Scripts for various types of common workplace conversations are provided throughout the book to provide you with examples of how to frame your conversations.