“The relationship is the communication bridge between people.” — Alfred Kadushin
Negative, vague language can work for or against you. Whether self-talk or dialogue with others, generalizations we make, details we leave out, or the way we distort through language, influences how we think, feel, and act. You can choose limiting vague language or artfully vague language patterns that are positive and empowering.
In Brilliant Nlp: What the Most Successful People Know, Say & Do, David Molden and Pat Hutchinson write about generalization, deletion and distortion as it pertains to Neuro …

Photo by Orange_Beard.
How do you stay in dialogue when you’re angry, scared, or hurt? How do you rethink yourself back into control? How do you take charge of your emotions and gain control of crucial conversations? You learn to exert influence over your own feelings. You can master your emotions by mastering the stories you tell yourself. In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler write about mastering your stories to rethink yourself back into control.
Key Take AwaysHere’s my …

What do you look for when you’re caught in the middle of a crucial conversations? What do you need to see in order to catch problems before they become too sever? It’s helpful to watch for three conditions: the moment a conversation turns crucial, signs that people don’t feel safe (silence or violence) and your own Style Under Stress. In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler write about how to Learn to Look.
Key Take AwaysHere’s my key take …

“Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one.” — Hans Selye
As you begin to feel unsafe in a conversation, you start down one of two unhealthy paths. You either move to silence (withholding meaning from the pool) or to violence (trying to force meaning in the pool). If you know a few of the common forms of silence and violence, you can see safety problems when they first start to happen.
In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, …

What is a crucial conversation? A crucial converations is where the stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong. In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzer define a crucial conversation.
Key Take AwaysI think mastering crucial conversations is one of the most important skills for life. Here’s my key take aways:

Manage crucial conversations or they will manage you. Crucial conversations are a part of life. You can run but you can’t hide.
Use crucial conversations as a chance to …

Photo by NIOSH
How do you make it safe to talk about almost anything? If you spot safety risks as they happen, you can step out of the conversation, make it safe, and find a way to dialogue. In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler write about a pattern that skilled experts at communication use to Make it Safe.
Key Take AwaysHere’s my key take aways:

If you need to have a crucial conversation, Make It Safe. I think …

Sometimes we find ourselves in the middle of a debate because we clearly have different purposes. There is no misunderstanding here. Contrasting won’t do the trick. You need to get to Mutual Purpose. In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler write about how to use four skills, CRIB, to get to Mutual Purpose.
Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

Find the higher, common ground. Finding the higher ground is a proven practice for results. From experience, I know …

When conversations get tough, it’s easy to fallback to bad patterns including saving face, wanting to win, seeking revenge, and hoping to remain safe. Skilled people start with heart and stay focused on intentions. In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler write about starting with heart.
Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

Use focusing questions to move away from fight or flight mode. I’m a fan of using questions as a technique to change your focus or get into …

The only person you can directly control is yourself. In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler write about how the most effective way to improve your effectiveness with others, is to first work on yourself.
Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

Change yourself first. I agree with the concept of change yourself first. You can spend a lot of energy trying to change others, or you can change yourself (whether your thoughts, feeling, actions, approaches … etc.) , which …

Photo by Joe Shlabotnik
Either / or choices are Sucker’s Choices. The best at dialogue refuse Sucker’s Choices by setting up new choices. They present themselves with tougher questions that turn the either/or choice into a search for the all-important and ever elusive and. In Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler write about how to search for the elusive AND.
Key Take Aways
I’m an “and” kind of a guy, so this nugget certainly resonates with me. Here’s my key take …

How do you adapt your leadership styles to the task and people at hand? How do you take your leadership game to the next level? In The 3 Keys to Empowerment: Release the Power Within People for Astonishing Results, Ken Blanchard, John P. Carlos, and Alan Randolph propose the Situational Leadership II model. With this model, you apply the appropriate leadership style depending on where your team is for the specific task or goal. For the leadership style, the two key considerations are directive behaviors and supportive behaviors. For the …

Good ideas are abundant. The problem is putting ideas in place. In Get Them on Your Side, Samuel B. Bacharach writes about the Political Leader, the Political Analyst, and the Consensus Builder. The Politically Competent Leader gets results, while The Political Analyst and the Consensus Builder get stuck in the process.
Key Take Aways

To get things done, lead coalitions.  Unless you want to just be a Political Analyst, make sure you work on your communication and interaction skills so you can lead coalitions.
Avoid analysis paralysis.  Avoid analysis paralysis by having too …

Leadership comes down to a simple issue: Are you able to take ideas and translate them into action? As a leader, you will be judged on whether you could put good ideas into action.
In Get Them on Your Side, Samuel B. Bacharach writes about the political processes and political skills necessary to put good ideas in place.
Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

Find support for your good ideas.  Good ideas aren’t enough. You need support to make them happen.
Know the system.  Knowing how the system works is a key to …

In Get Them on Your Side, Samuel B. Bacharach writes about getting people on your side to get results and make things happen.
Key Take Aways Here are my key take aways:

Get people on your side. People are for you or against you. Having them on your side reduces friction, makes your life easier, and it’s how things get done.
Know that political competence works both ways. Political competence is why a bad idea or bad person can win. It’s also why a good idea or a good …

Do you practice the habits of highly successful software architects? Can you deliver a solution while acting as a technical mentor, empowering others, improving the process, and developing a focused, high-performance team along the way? In Software Architect Bootcamp, Raphael Malveau and Thomas J. Mowbray, Ph.D. write about the habits of successful software architects.
The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Software Architects
Malveau and Mowbray write the following:

Keep it simple. When communicating various architetural concepts or software mechanisms to team members, resist the temptation to provide a complete and detailed explanation of …