ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, What if you’re in negotiations and you are doing your best to build safety with mutual respect and mutual purpose, but the other side is playing hard ball and …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes Thirty years ago, I took a class with a group of doctoral students who reviewed and reported on the latest findings in organizational behavior. During each …
Dear Crucial Skills, I am a frontline supervisor of people from all different walks of life and from several different countries. A term we use and teach our staff is cultural diversity. It is part of our everyday lives, as we constantly interact with customers and staff who are “not from here.” We try to …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes Yesterday my neighbor told me an interesting story. She noticed that a girl in the grade-school class that she teaches wasn’t bringing a sack lunch to …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes Today’s story starts with my eighth-grade report card. It contained five C’s and one B. Mom took one look at my grades and gave me one …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes The first time I ever drove a car (my parents’ 1939 Ford sedan) was on a rather dreary morning in the spring of 1952. It was …
Dear Crucial Skills, Why is direct talk bad? I’m not talking about rudeness or offering my opinion. I’m talking about saying things without adding “cushioning” words. It’s not well received when we speak directly and to the point. This isn’t about passing judgment on someone and voicing those judgments. It’s about getting work done. A …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I have a very direct and, you could say, brash way of talking. I have been told I talk like a New Yorker but I work in Salt Lake …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Accountability, Influencer, and Change Anything. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes A couple of months ago I wrote a piece on epistemology—or how we know what we know. I addressed methods for cheating, the dangers of drawing …
Dear Crucial Skills, I’ve been mulling over how when we’re trying to be very careful about our words during a crucial conversation, our body language can sometimes send an entirely different message. I know we can be aware of our body language and keep it neutral, but what about our tone of voice, little noises …
