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

This book offers numerous useful principles that will help anyone become a better conversationalist and a more responsive listener. Read carefully because gems of very valuable content are scattered through the entire book, a sentence here, a quotation there, buried in long, interesting digressions about the author's life, people she's known and clients she's worked with over time. A judicious editor could have made a very sharp and effective pocket book out of this material, which is about managing intense, strong discussions with skill. As it is, you'll have to do some digging, but you'll have a perfectly good time doing it, particularly if you are a fan of New Age mantras and can handle a little touchy-feely vocabulary. We assure you that the lessons you'll learn about conversations - including fierce ones - will stand you in good stead.

Note: The review that follows is of the Updated with New Material edition (2004). The "User's Guide" (Pages 267-287) has been added.

I read this book when it was first published in 2001 and then re-read it after reading Susan Scott's more recent book, Fierce Leadership. As she uses the term and explains in the first chapter of Fierce Conversations, "fierce" is synonymous with "robust, intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, unbridled, uncurbed, and untamed."

At work and in our personal lives, we engage in conversations (or at least have interactions) dozens of times each day. The challenge for us is two-fold: to always be truthful, and, to require others always to be truthful. Scott describes this as a shared, reciprocal "interrogation of reality" and suggests that it be guided and informed by seven principles. (She devotes a separate chapter to each.) As she correctly points out, most people prefer that others be completely truthful. In fact, that is a prerequisite for establishing and then sustaining trust. However, for various reasons, most people find it very difficult to be completely truthful. My own experience suggests that, more often than not, people are selectively truthful or evasive rather than dishonest. I am also convinced that, in face-to-face encounters, 75-80% of the impact is the result of body language and tone-of-voice, with only 20-25% the result of what is actually said. As Scott correctly suggests, it requires courage to develop and then strengthen a "fierce" mindset, one with strict accountability to ensure that whatever (and however) one communicates, the "message" (whether initiated or responsive) is honest. It must also be sufficient as well as relevant, given the situation.

This is an immensely complicated subject, one that requires meticulous care with regard to definition of terms, especially terms of engagement. For example, as Richard Tedlow suggests in his most recent book, Denial, many people are unwilling and/or unable to "face the facts," especially harsh realities. In her book, Scott cites dozens of examples of people who are unable to "speak to power," who employ what she calls "the corporate nod" to evade a stronger commitment, who neither fish nor cut bait, etc. In what I consider to be his most valuable book, The Book, Alan Watts examines those who cannot overcome the "taboo" to know and be who they are. And in Denial of Death, Ernest Becker asserts that, although physical death is inevitable for everyone eventually, there is one death that can be denied: that which occurs when we become wholly preoccupied with fulfilling others' expectations of us.

Scott urges her reader to "start each day by choosing one of the Seven Principles of Fierce Conversations as your focus for the day. Start with the first one and work your way through them...No matter which principles you choose to practice, in just one week, you will have practiced all seven principles. Then begin again, from the top. Imagine the shifts in your conversation and, therefore, your relationships as you become skilled at [them.]" My earlier reference to courage was deliberate. What Scott proposes will be very difficult for most people, as she well realizes. So I presume to add my own emphasis on patience as well as persistence, on being honest with yourself as well as with others, and on trusting what in fact you really can accomplish as well as trusting in the seven principles as you master them.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out two co-authored by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. They are Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High and Crucial Confrontations: Tools for talking about broken promises, violated expectations, and bad behavior. Also Robert Cialdini's Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and Christine Pearson and Christine Porath's The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It.

Personally I have found this book to be amazing - and I'm not a trained therapist etc. But I am aware in others that whatever your training is you'll see the wisdom of your discipline in here - and that is what I think makes this a very profound, practical and insightful book. It's also highly accessible and contains both principles for having the conversations that I need to have, but 4 conversation structures too. There's a great deal in here, it is well written and if you like stories they bring the material to life. One thing that is pivotal is the question 'Are the things I am not talking about with other (and need to) difficult, which is why I am not talking about them? Or are they difficult because I am not talking about them? Fundamentally this book places a challenge at the level of character, courage and identity. Am I willing to show up honestly in the world and tread courageously but with grace and honesty too? If I am it's a great resource. It does not promise easy success but taking control of my life and being more effective "one conversation at a time". Instant transformation I am not convinced, but "one conversation at a time", now I can do that!