Dear Crucial Skills, My father-in-law is a very powerful person and I don’t feel comfortable speaking honestly about anything with him. If I ask him a question about an issue I want to resolve, he announces his opinion then cuts off any discussion by saying, “Well, that’s how life is sometimes” as he stands up …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations. His fourth book, Change Anything, will be available April 2011. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills,I have some very tough news to deliver and would appreciate your help. My colleagues and I have to tell some good performers in …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations. His fourth book, Change Anything, will be available April 2011. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I live in a very nice, quiet, upscale suburban neighborhood. A new family recently moved into one of the homes and is doing …
Dear Crucial Skills, It’s my job to influence the people in our company to improve quality—both of incoming raw material and of our outgoing products—and it’s hard. We’ve got all the “head” stuff right—technical expertise and good quality tools—but we don’t have the heart. And to make it even more difficult, the people I need …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is the author of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I am the CFO of a small business. Our president spends money in a way that many of the employees see as wasteful—for example, a landscaping project at the back of the …
Dear Crucial Skills, Help! I am the wife of a hoarder. My husband buys and keeps everything. He has a hobby room, garage, and a rented storage unit full of stuff, including twenty-year-old key chains from vendor booths, console TVs from the 1970s, empty boxes, old magazines, plastic silverware, and anything others don’t want or …
Dear Crucial Skills, The new skills I learned from your training have been priceless to me. I regularly come away from conversations feeling proud of my own conduct, but I’m getting mixed reactions from others. I’m finding that even when I’m at my best people resist having crucial conversations with me. Sometimes my efforts are …
Dear Crucial Skills, Our company is going through tough times in the midst of the current financial downturn. We are not downsizing but have been instructed to cut expenses, work more efficiently, and basically do more with less. We have implemented many initiatives—including staffing to workload, reducing overtime, and purchasing more efficiently. All of these …
Dear Crucial Skills, I was recently asked to lead an effort to implement job rotation in our organization. The problem is that the team I’ve been asked to lead thinks it’s a dumb idea. They are focused on their own jobs and have no interest in cross-training and rotation. How am I supposed to lead …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is the author of three bestselling books, Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, My youngest daughter lives several states away and it is difficult at best to have a conversation with her. Nearly all our communication comes via text messaging and e-mail. If this happened …
