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Have you ever not been in the mood for somebody’s sunshiny ways?   Their lack of sympathy pushes you away.  Instead, they should match your mood, at least at first.  A little sympathy can go a long way.  In Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion, Jay Heinrichs writes about using sympathy to build rapport.
Share Your Listener’s Mood
Start with your audience’s mood.  Use rhetorical sympathy to show concern.  Heinrichs writes:
Sympathize – align yourself with your listener’s pathos.  You …

“Speak when you are angry – and you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret.” — Dr. Laurence J. Peter
A crucial conversation is any conversation where the stakes are high, emotions run strong and opinions vary.  If you can master crucial conversations, rather than fear your tough conversations, you’ll kick-start your career, strengthen your relationships, and improve your health.   How do you improve your crucial conversations? …
In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler show you specific principles and …

Ask, mirror, paraphrase and prime are four power listening skills.  In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler write about asking, mirroring, paraphrasing and priming to build rapport, stay connected, and listen more effectively.
4 Power Listening Tools (AMPP)
AMPP stands for:

Ask.  Ask the other person what’s really going on.
Mirror.  Mirror means describe how the other person looks or acts (e.g. you seem upset, you seem angry at me). 
Paraphrase.  Paraphrase what you’ve heard using your own words.
Prime. Prime means take your …

"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it." — Voltaire
What do you do when you disagree with another person’s stories or facts?   
In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler write about using your ABCs to agree, build and compare your views when you disagree with the other peron’s facts or stories.
Key Take Aways Here are my key take aways:

Agree when you …

How do you make an idea stick?  Mark Twain noted, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on."  Meanwhile, people with important ideas, struggle to make their ideas stick. In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip Heath and Dan Heath write about six principles to make your ideas stick and help you get your point across.
Key Take Aways Here are my key take aways:

Be a master of exclusion.   Less is more.  Ruthlessly prioritize …

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This post is my index of book nuggets from Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst, by Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner. In this book, the authors teach you how to identify the 10 most unwanted behaviors and how to deal with them. They also teach you how difficult people thing, what they fear, and why they act the way they do.
My NuggetsHere’s my nuggets so far …
Reference Nuggets:

Ten Types of Difficult People
The Lens of …

This post is an index of my book nuggets from Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by KerryPatterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. In this book, the authors teach you how to master your dialogue skills for crucial conversations at home and work.  A crucial conversation is any conversation where the stakes are high, emotions run strong and opinions vary.   If you can master crucial conversations, rather than fear your tough conversations, you’ll kick-start your career, strengthen your relationships, and improve your health.
My Nuggets from …

Tell me you’ve never had a difficult boss to work for? Even if you work for yourself, I’m sure you’ve had days where you’ve hated the boss. Well, what if there were patterns of these “difficult bosses,” and, if you knew them, you could either avoid them or you could work more effectively with them. In fact, you could even work with your own “inner boss” more effectively.
Coping with Difficult Bosses
In the book Coping with Difficult Bosses, Robert Bramson not only names these difficult bosses, but he shows you how …

”None of us is as smart as all of us.” — Ken Blanchard
How do you consistently build a winning team? I think successful coaches are good to learn from.  After all, they have to build effective teams time and time again, while dealing with people issues and finding ways to make the most of who they’ve got.
In Social Psychology: Theories, Research, and Applications, Robert S. Feldman interviews Joe Paterno, head coach of Pennsylvania State University’s college football team. In the interview, Feldman asks Coach "JoePa" about his secrets for building …

The precision model is a tool for overcoming some of the most common language pitfalls. When your language is fluffy or when somebody else’s language is fluffy, it can be difficult to take effective action, because you don’t really understand what the problem is. Using the precision model, you can clarify people’s distortions, deletions, and generalizations, while keeping rapport. In Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement, Anthony Robbins writes about using the precision model to improve your ability to cut through fluff and get more actionable insights …

How do you improve your writing?  How do you make your writing more conversational?  How do you cultivate a personal style in your writing and your speeches?  In Perfect Phrases for Executive Presentations: Hundreds of Ready-to-Use Phrases to Use to Communicate Your Strategy and Vision When the Stakes Are High (Perfect Phrases), Alan M. Perlman, Ph.D. writes about five principles you can use to improve your writing and speeches to make them more conversational and personal.
Five Principles for Improving Conversational Communication
Based on results and experience, I agree with Perlman’s principles …

How do you create compelling arguments for change? How do you convince others to comply with your requests? How do you reduce the perceived costs of action or increase the perceived costs of inaction? In The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, Michael Watkins writes about framing compelling arguments.
Key Take AwaysHere’s my key take aways:

Frame your arguments. One approach is to just ask for what you want and see what happens. If the stakes are high, you’ll want to frame a compelling argument.
Know whether …

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How do you get a group to make better decisions? In Social Psychology: Theories, Research, and Applications, Robert S. Feldman writes how cooperative controversy is an effective technique for enhancing group effectiveness.
Key Take AwaysHere’s my key take aways:

Wear a hat. The most effective technique I’ve found to help a group use cooperative controversy is to “wear a hat.” The team puts on their Devil’s advocate hat and beats the idea up toether. We then wear another hat to work together to figure out ways we can …

How do you get competitive groups to work with each other? How do you improve cross-group collaboration? Superordinate goals. In Social Psychology: Theories, Research, and Applications, Robert S. Feldman writes about how superordinate goals were effective in uniting competitive groups.
Two Groups in the Same Camp
Feldman writes:
“One of the best examples of how group goals can influence group formation comes from a now-classic field study held in a boy’s summer camp named Robber’s Cave (Sherif, 1966). Two groups of missle-class 11- and 12-year-olds – none of whom knew that he was …

What if you had a playbook for dealing with the types of people you can’t stand? What if there was a way to turn your enemies into allies? What if you could find ways to deal with your own behavior that you can’t stand? In Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst, Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner identify 10 specific behavior patterns that people resort to when they feel threatened, don’t get what they want, or face undesirable …

Nobody likes a Whiner. Laugh the world laughs with you; whine and you whine alone. Whiners feel helpless and overwhelmed by an unfair world. Their standard is perfection, and no one and nothing measures up to it. But misery loves company, so they bring their problems to you. Offering solutions makes you bad company, so their whining escalates. In Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst, Dr. Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner write about how to deal with people that …

A No Person kills momentum and creates friction for you. More deadly to morale than a speeding bullet, more powerful than hope, able to defeat big ideas with a single syllable. Disguised as a mild mannered normal person, the No Person fights a never ending battle for futility, hopeless ness, and despair. In Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst, Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner write about dealing with people that behave like a No Person.
Your Goal
Transition to …

A Nothing Person doesn’t contribute to the conversation. No verbal feedback, no nonverbal feedback, Nothing. What else could you expect from … the Nothing Person. In Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst, Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner write about how to deal with people that behave like a Nothing Person.
Your Goal
Persuade the Nothing Person to talk.
Action Plan
Brinkman and Kirschner provide prescriptive guidance for dealing with Nothing people:

Plan enough time. f you are tense and intense because of …

In a moment of decision, the Maybe Person procrastinates in the hope that a better choice will present itself. Sadly, with most decisions, there comes a point when is it too little, too late, and the decision makes itself. In Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst, Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner write about how to deal with Maybe people.
Your Goal
Help them learn to think decisively. Brinkman and Kirschner write:
“Your Maybe Person’s problem is a simple one: He …

In an effort to please people and avoid confrontation, Yes People say “yes” without thinking things through. They react to the latest demands on their time by forgetting prior commitments, and overcommit until they have no time for themselves. Then they become resentful. In Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst, Dr. Rick Brinkman and Dr. Rick Kirschner write about how to deal with Yes people.
Your Goal
Get commitments you can count on. Brinkman and Kirschner write:
“Your goal with this problem …