Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success in Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time [Paperback]

Fierce Conversations is a guidebook on how to make relationships meaningful and successful. It's simplicity of focusing on "one conversation at a time" avoids the pitfall of a relationship deteriorating in Scott's words "slowly then suddenly". The idea that our lives (and work) succeed or fail one conversation at a time, including those conversations we don't have is compelling.
The case studies from her consulting practice are reasonably instructive. Some of the models such as Mineral Rights and the Decision Tree are practical and useful to managers and coaches. This is both a "think about this" and a "here's how to use it" book that can give people the courage and tools to tell others what they are seeing and believing.

We can all think of relationships that will benefit from applying some of these ideas and organisations that need to adopt them. Just think what could have happened at Enron, etc. if people had been willing to talk to each other about what was really going on? However one of the best concepts in the book is the notion of having "Fierce Conversations" with yourslef before having them with others.
The ideas are simple yet powerful and can change the way we talk both to ourselves and to others. The examples are rather better applied to business than to personal situations and the chapter on “ let silence do the heavy lifting” covers some important ideas but seems a little muddled. Apart from that the book is an easy read. Well worth having as part of the "tool kit"

This is a book I recommend to all my executive coaching clients, and they come back and tell me how useful it is.

How many times have you experienced problems at work because someone isn't getting a message that they need to be told? Whether it's because of fear of that person, or because we are reluctant to 'hurt their feelings', or because we worry that they are so fragile that giving them this essential feedback will send them off the rails, very often we suppress what we want to say.

Susan Scott makes the case for authenticity as the essential characteristic for a healthy workplace and a successful business, and gives useful pointers on how to deliver difficult messages without an accompanying emotional payload.

Highly recommended.

If you work in a bureaucracy, or have read Jack Welch's autobiography, here's a how to get on with it guide - or at least, a big chunk of it. If you haven't read Jack Welch's book - go take a look (try "straight from the gut"). The reference here is to the one regret Mr Welch admits to: not getting on with some things sooner. At the heart of Fierce Conversations is a practical model for doing just that, and in particular handling the difficult people stuff you might rather avoid and put off. And it's not a bad model at that.

The book is written in the "American Business Book" style - chatty, with lots of anecdotes - so on first glance feels a bit lightweight. I prefer my knowledge to be well polished and structured, ideally with evidenced research, and in contrast this book comes across as rather haphazard and slapdash. But if you can stand the American style, there's gold in them thar hills.

Susan Scott's model offers a good way to make sure you deal with the things you need to deal with in conversations, and critically shows how you can avoid the collateral damage it's easy to inflict when doing so. That's the real essence of the book - how to navigate through the difficult conversations you need to have. "Fierce Conversations" is perhaps catchier than "A practical way to have the hard conversations without getting into an argument", which is what this is really about. The principles here actually offer ways to avoid dangerously wild, hostile, or vicious behaviour, which "fierce" might suggest. The model Ms Scott presents to do this is a good one. This reflects the wider trend in academic and business thinking about how to get things done - which is to recognise that it's about people, stupid. This model includes some real understanding about how things go wrong, and what to do about it.

How much use you'll find this is hard to say - I suspect it depends on the kind of person you are. I loved it, but I tend to want to go for the jugular anyway, so something that means less risk of collateral damage is really practical and worthwhile to me. If you tend to avoid the unpleasant stuff, this might be really useful in providing a way to approach those conversations, but won't answer all the issues - these can be difficult to face, and whilst preparing using the model may help, it won't change introverts into extroverts, or vice versa. So it may not really solve all the problems of how you face the meeting you need to have. It's not an answer for everything, but a good tool for your toolbox nonetheless.

It would be possible to boil down the contents and present these in a more concise and elegant form, but this is the real stuff, not fools gold: definitely worth reading, and quite possibly buying - worth the five stars.