Start with Heart

It's time for the next section of the Crucial Conversations course, "Start with Heart."

"When Conversations turn crucial, three things happen to us-and they all affect our heart: 1) We become blind to our own role in the problem, 2) Our motives degrade, and 3) We limit our choices."

Here are some skills to develop that can help us work with and maybe even overcome some of these natural tendencies. First, we must focus on what we really want. A couple of great question to ask yourself in a crucial conversation is, what am I acting like I want? What results do I really want? And the follow up question would be, how would I behave if I really did? After going through this series of questions, there is now a great opportunity to change your behavior if it's currently not helping you achieve the outcome you want.

"Admit your role. It's hard to work on ourselves first when we become blind to our own role in any problem we may be experiencing. When we experience a problem, we see others and the role they're playing. Seldom do we see ourselves. We're on the wrong side of our eyeballs."

Another other interesting concept in this section is called the "Sucker's Choice." The "Sucker's Choice" is basically changing an outcome to an "or" statement. For example, "I can either discipline my child, or have my child like me." The authors of Crucial Conversations challenge all statements of this nature. Avoiding the "Sucker's Choice" does require us to change our thinking. They suggest using the statement "I wonder how..."So in this same example, you would ask yourself, "I wonder how I can discipline my child and still have them like me."

Isn't it funny how often we do this? We instantly make quick, false conclusions. I think we tend to take the "Sucker's Choice" because it's easier than trying to figure out how to achieve both desired outcomes in a situation. Attaining multiple outcomes may require some creativity and "out of the box" thinking but can really be worth the effort!

When you find yourself in a crucial conversation in the next day or two and see that it's heading in a direction different from what you want, take just a second to stop and ask yourself "what do I really want? Where is my motive/heart right now?