Fierce Conversations

Our careers, our companies, our relationships, and indeed our very lives succeed or fail, gradually, then suddenly, one conversation at a time.

All conversations are with myself, and sometimes they involve other people.

Our most valuable currency is not money. Nor is it intelligence, attractiveness, fluency in three-letter acronyms, or the ability to write code or analyze a P&O statement. Our most valuable currency is relationship. Emotional capital.

While no single conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a career, a company, a relationship, or a life, any single conversation can.

What gets talked about in a company, how it gets talked about, and who is invited to the conversation determine what will happen or won’t happen.

Fierce conversations are about moral courage, clear requests, and taking action. Fierce is an attitude. A skill set. A mind-set. A way of life. A way of leading. A strategy for getting things done.

Most people want to hear the truth, even if it is unpalatable. There is something within us that responds deeply to people who level with us.

The problem named is the problem solved.

A leader’s job is to get it right for the organization, not to be right.

In any situation, the person who can most accurately describe reality without laying blame will emerge as the leader, whether designated or not. - Edwin Friedman

Remove the word “but” from your vocabulary and substitute the word “and.

The quality of our lives is largely determined by the quality of the questions we ask ourselves— and the quality of our answers.

Authenticity is not something you have—it’s something you choose.

There is a direct link between our practices and our results.

Courage is a noun that shows up as a verb. We recognize it by what people say and do.

Weak leaders want agreement. Strong leaders want the truth.

Radical transparency can be scary—but it rocks. It is for those who are not interested in living a guarded, careful life and are quickly bored in the company of those who are.

It is better to fail at your own life than succeed at someone else’s.

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

The issues in my life are rarely about you. They are almost always about me.

It’s amazing how this seemingly small thing —simply paying fierce attention to another, really asking, really listening, even during a brief conversation—can evoke such a wholehearted response.

For relationships to move forward and upward, you must have fierce affection for the other person.

One conversation at a time, you are building, destroying, or flatlining your relationships.

If you chicken out now, you’ll pay the price later. If you or someone else feels a conversation is needed, it is.

Burnout happens, not because we’re trying to solve problems, but because we’ve been trying to solve the same problem over and over.

The rare and valuable gift you can give to others this week, and I hope for many weeks and years to come, is to be fully present in the moment.

A fierce conversation is not about holding forth on your point of view, but about provoking learning by sitting with someone side by side and jointly interrogating reality.

As a leader, you get what you tolerate.

The very outcomes we fear if we confront someone’s behavior are practically guaranteed to show up if we don’t.

All confrontation is a search for the truth, a two- person Beach Ball conversation. Each of us owns a piece of the truth, and neither of us owns all of it.

Feedback can and often should be positive, reinforcing behaviors and attitudes that lead to success.

If you want to work harmoniously with people around you, learn to receive feedback with curiosity, grace, and gratitude.

When confronting, your obligation is to describe reality from your perspective and then invite your partner to describe reality from his or her point of view.

Delivering a difficult message clearly, cleanly, and succinctly is essential.

If your life succeeds or fails one conversation at a time, and if the conversation is the relationship, ensuring that these conversations take place is up to you.

We can have the conversations needed to create the results we say we want in our lives, or we can have all of our reasons why we can’t have those conversations. But we can’t have both. Reasons or results. We get to choose.

Staying current regarding issues that are troubling or perplexing us enriches and simplifies our relationships.

Fierce conversations cannot be dependent on how others respond.

How we enter our conversations is how we emerge from them. Holding back, not paying attention, disengaged, half-asleep. Or available, present, engaged, awake.

When we confront behavior with courage and skill, we are offering a gift. This behavior is hurtful. This is the result it is producing. This is what’s at stake.

There are things our gut knows long before our intellect catches on.

Obeying your instincts requires that you listen to your own internal voice, acknowledge your internal reference point, rather than rush to embrace the myriad references and voices of others.

Those messages are from you to you. They are from the part of you that knows what is needed to help you get better. If you ignore those messages, eventually you’ll stop getting them.

One of the most valuable things any of us can do is find a way to say the things that can’t be said.

It’s not our thoughts or feelings that get us into trouble. It’s not our disclosures that cause distress. It’s our attachment to them, our belief that we are right.

Integrity requires alignment of our values—the core beliefs and behaviors that we have claimed are important to us—and our actions.

If your behavior contradicts your values, your body knows, and you pay a price at a cellular level.

Our emotional wake determines the story that is told about each of us in the organization. It’s the story that’s told when we’re not in the room. It’s the story that will be told about us after we’re gone.

Appreciation, praise. Unfiltered, unqualified. There is so little of it going around.

Healthy relationships require appreciation and confrontation. How can we really know someone if there is never a misunderstanding that invites exploration, never a disagreement that merits examination, never anger that reveals an unacknowledged fear?

The most powerful communications technology available to any of us is eye contact.

Very few hearts are rejected. It is the armor that seals us off from one another and causes us to move so awkwardly through life.

You must extend to others what you want to receive. It begins with you.

What if I could become a crucible—a strong, resilient vessel in which profound change could safely take place—for my clients? for my family and friends? for myself?

The conversation is not about the relationship. The conversation is the relationship.

You have the right to get your core needs met in a relationship or, at least, the right not to have them violated.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

The challenge is to reconcile being real and doing no harm.

Silence allows us to reflect on and ultimately identify the problem, so that we may focus our limited time and resources on removing obstacles in the company’s way.

Silence allows us to scan our heads and hearts for ground truths.

Before any of us can hope to engage others in wonderfully fierce conversations, we must engage ourselves in a dialogue so real, so sweet, so fierce, so filled with silences that we can hear our own heartbeat.

All the conversations in the world cruise on a crest of silence.

The courage to show up is both simple and daunting. Once you show up, people can see you. They can judge and criticize and gossip. Some safety and comfort are lost when an ambition or strongly felt emotion is expressed.

Until we master the courage and the skills needed to engage in conversations that help accomplish the goals of our shared civilization, we will move away from greatness, not toward it.

What’s at the heart of fierce conversations is connection, at a deep level, with those who are important to our success and happiness.

We begin and find ourselves speaking in a deeper, richer language.

Every single person on your team got up this morning, looked in the mirror, and announced, 'Today, I intend to do everything I can to alienate my team, irritate my boss, and ensure that this company languishes or tanks!

The conversation is the relationship. When effective, they truly give you a pulse on what needs to potentially start, stop, and continue. The insights are pure gold.

Trust requires persistent identity. For most of us, the people we respect most in our lives are the ones who show up as themselves consistently.

Don’t listen to respond; listen to understand. Take your time. Remember, your job is to slow the conversation down so you can discover what it really wants and needs to be about.

A sincere and specific apology said while looking into someone’s eyes is pretty powerful.

The most powerful tool you have is yourself, your way of being, your way of thinking and feeling, the way you work and behave with each of us and everyone else in the organization.

As a leader, part of your job is to consistently let people know what they are doing well to reinforce those positive behaviors and to build emotional capital.