💬 Join our Book Summary Talk on "Crucial Conversations" with Evan's Notes - May 31
Plus 5 Switchboard Articles to support your Crucial Conversations
Join a Switchboard workshop that’s a book talk with a twist — you don’t actually have to read the book — just check out the book summary or the key principles outlined by
. I’m teaming up with of — a newsletter with nuanced, chapter-by-chapter book summaries you can trust. Learn about his method for framing business writing in concise and actionable ways. To start, we’ll engage in Q&A with Evan to understand how he approaches summarizing stories — an important skill set for work.Then, we’ll spotlight Evan’s book summary on Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler and Emily Gregory. We’ll explore key takeaways from the article to support the success of your communications professionally and personally. Join us to learn and discuss together in this interactive gathering.
Here’s a book brief from Evan to introduce Crucial Conversations. Read more in his thoughtful summary:
One common theme of a lot of business and management books is the need for fierce honesty about reality. But whether discussing the merits of a particular strategy, collecting information about what’s actually happening on the ground, or figuring out why it’s not working as we expected … these conversations are still done by real people who have real quirks and flaws.
These important conversations, while capable of unveiling reality, often get derailed by heated emotions, toxic (and usually unintended) motivations, lack of true participation, and unclear resolutions.
Enter Crucial Conversations.
🍷 This book summary pairs well with these five previous editions of The Switchboard: 😇 #1 The Importance of Sharing Your Story in Advance
In Why The Ways We Work Together Matters, I highlight 10 steps to align, share and succeed as a team, including sharing your story in advance. Different personalities and working styles make us unique and interesting as colleagues. Projects should begin by outlining everyone’s stories.
To avoid speed bumps, let others know how you prefer to work for smooth feedback, internal communications and collaboration. Author and former New York Times Columnist Adam Bryant wrote about this strategy, which he calls a “User Manual.”
🎧 #2 The Power of Listening
In Learn to Write for an Executive, I share eight best practices from communications leaders. Listening was identified as a critical skill, and it’s important when engaging in Crucial Conversations too.
Here’s what Emily Singer Mandel shared on the art of listening:
Listen as much as possible. Audio-only can be more helpful than video. I used to walk around just listening to audio of my principles using headphones. Podcasts are a great, intimate format that can help with that. Something about the passive listening while walking helps me pick up cadence, word choice, and rhythm and lodge it deep in my brain somewhere. This is the same way I learn languages, by the way. Every voice is a new language.
#3 🔌 The Ability to Reduce Danger
In Communicating Change Like an Orchestra Conductor, I shared 14 recommendations for successful change communications from leaders featured on The Switchboard. Moments of change, like Crucial Conversations, embody heightened emotions.
Here’s guidance from Laura Hunter on how to manage these moments:
Changes charge up emotion, but every situation has a "ground." I started thinking of electrical plugs while writing one of my change management plans. There are opposing currents — those that want the change and those that are resistant to it. But there's also the grounding plug — something that takes the danger out of the situation, that keeps everyone flowing in a positive direction.
⚖️ #4 The Need to Balance
As we all navigate the new working norms, it’s crucial to be inclusive, intentional and experimental. That’s the approach Helen Kupp embraces in her work and book as a co-author of How The Future Works.
In her Future of Work Feature, Helen emphasized the importance of aligning as an organization, team and individual:
The power of team-level agreements. I talk a lot about them as a tool to help set expectations for team norms — it’s important to be intentional and explicit about them.
🎙️ #5 The Prioritization of Leadership Capabilities
The craft of Crucial Conversations may take time to embed into your work style — from understanding your interpersonal skills to focusing on self-awareness. For support on your professional journey, coaching can be a resource.
In this Founder Feature, Sounding Board’s CEO
identifies these strengths as leadership capabilities and shares tips for honing these skills:In general, talent leaders are realizing how urgent it is to equip people with these leadership capabilities, and they can be developed. We believe they are both learnable and coachable. Whether you’re managing a team or a project, these are the skills you need to make a positive impact on your organization.
Even if you don’t have people reporting to you, you need to be able to influence people. Sounding Board’s Leader Development Platform can help organizations build a deeper leadership bench and individuals and groups create consistent, positive outcomes and measurable business impact.
Ready to discuss these topics and more? Join us on May 31st for our Book Talk on Crucial Conversations with Evan's Notes.Thank you for reading The Switchboard. ☎️ Every edition is personally written by me — Julia Levy. Learn more about why I write. Review the Index of past posts.
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