The dictionary meaning of the word crucial is extremely important or necessary. An entrepreneur needs to deals with many crucial communications, as a part of the game.
What are Crucial Conversations?
Crucial Conversations is the discussions between two or more parties, where stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong.
These could be day-to-day occurrences that affect lives, and in many cases, these are pivotal conversations whose results may be extremely significant.
Let us take an example of these three situations :
1. Opinions vary: You're talking with your boss about a possible promotion. She thinks you're not ready; you think you are.
2. Stakes are high: You're in a meeting with four coworkers and you're trying to pick a new
marketing strategy. You've got to do something different or your company isn't going to hit its
annual goals.
3. Emotions run strong: You have just completed the annual salary revision and given the best possible salary raise according to your ability to pay. Your highest-paid employee walks in and resigns because he feels the salary raise is poor and unjustified.
Why can’t we handle these conversations?
People generally choose to at least try to handle such situations as well as they can. However most of the time they don’t do very well, for the following reasons:
Physiologically, human beings are designed to handle stressful situations with fists
and feet, more than intelligence and attentiveness.
• Most of such situations spring up unexpectedly, and most of us can come up with
only a knee-jerk response to them because of the pressure.
The consequences of either avoiding or messing up these conversations can be severe
and can affect all aspects of life – personal and professional.