According to the reference in the syllabus, write your summary of your assigned chapter of

Crucial Conversations.
Part I- The essence of the reading. Four- five sentences that capture the essential understanding
of the reading.
Part II. Highlights- Choose the most salient highlights and embeds in quotation, giving the page
reference.
Part III- Application of the reading- apply this reading to your school/district, or your
understanding or reference to leadership
Remember to respond to the posts of two of your colleagues.

Part I
Chapter four focuses on the health of a crucial conversation. It takes notice on the importance of safety
with participants in the conversation. The authors stress the importance of being able to dual-
processing terms of content and conditions to monitor the health of the conversations. The chapter
focuses on response signals for danger, indications of conversations falling into silence and violence
situations, and the ability to self-monitor yourself during these conversations.

Part II
The authors start off with distinguishing between content and conditions. (pg. 52)
Content: The topic under discussion.
Condition: What people are doing in response to the content.

Watch for conditions:
There are three types of conversation killers that are mentioned in this chapter. (pg. 53)
1. The moment the conversation turns crucial.
2. When people involved in the conversation do not feel safe.
3. When you own style is under stress.

The three keys to help you identify crucial conversations when they occur. (pg. 54)
1. Physical: The bodys reaction on how it responds to a crucial conversation. The narrowing of
eyes, sweaty palms, flushed face, changing in breath, etc
2. Emotional: When the person exhibits feelings or being scared, defensive, hurt, or angry.
3. Behavioral: Raising of ones voice, pointing your finger like a gun at someone, or becoming very
quiet are behavioral signs.

Whenever any of these keys appear take the opportunity to stop, and try to reengage the brain in a
constructive dialogue. If the conversations strays too far off track the harder it is to get it back on,
and the costs are significantly higher.

When people feel upset or unsafe the act in an annoying fashion. Examples of behavior include: being
aggressive, argumentative, forceful, shut down, or pacification.

Were suggesting that people rarely become defensive simply because of what they are saying. They
only become defensive when they no longer feel safe. The problem is not the content of your message,
but the condition of the conversation. (pg. 56)

When people start to feel unsafe they can venture down two paths: Silence or Violence. (pg. 58)
Silence: Purposely withholding information.
1. Masking: Understating, or selectively showing your true opinion.
2. Avoiding: Steering the conversation completely from the important
issues.
3. Withdrawing: Pulling out of the conversation altogether.
Violence: Any verbal attempt to convince, control, or compel others to your point of
view.
1. Controlling: Coercing others into your way of thinking. Forcing your
ideas on other or dominating the conversation.
2. Labeling: Label people or ideas so we can dismiss them under a general
stereotype or category.
3. Attacking: Your move from winning the argument to making the person
suffer. Belittling or threatening the other person.

Look for your style under stress: (pg.63)
People have trouble removing themselves from arguments to dual-process crucial
conversations properly.
People are low self-monitors meaning people have trouble monitoring their own
behavior during conversations.
During conversations you need to be vigilant self-monitors. Pay close attention to what
you are doing and the impact that it is having on others involved in the conversation.
Adjust strategies as a result of your self-monitoring.

Style Index Stress Test: (pg. 64-69)
The is a test that you can take as a self-evaluation of what strategies you use during crucial
conflict by answering a series of true/false statements. The results analyze what strategies that
you resort to during crucial conversations. It also recommends possible strategies to adopt.


Part III

I believe that this chapter could be adopted into a very useful professional development for my staff.
People often think of conflict or crucial conversations as a bad thing. Many times in meeting the some
staff feel attacked during these discussions and shut down or aqueous to the more vocal participants in
the group. By showing people the possible stressors and positive outlets to air concerns it would be
truly beneficial. Over time people assume roles and their input is lost because they would rather be
quiet because they fell unsafe.

As a leader I feel it is your responsibility to create an environment where meaningful conversation can
take place. So often we get stuck on the content that we forgot about the condition that the message is
being delivered in. By being able to identify the factors that make participants feel unsafe you can safely
redirect the conversation back into the right trajectory. All of the behaviors that arise from fear are
counterproductive and costly in terms of time and staff culture.