Difficult Conversations

This is the first of a series of posts based on my review of the book, Difficult Conversations (By Stone, Patton and Heen, Penguin Books, 2000)

I only strongly recommend a handful of books to all my executive coaching clients, students at George Mason University, and colleagues. Difficult Conversations is one I recommend without reservation.

The authors, members of the Harvard Negotiation Project, have written a compellingly simple and effective guidebook for anyone who has had or will ever have a difficult conversation with a spouse, client, or any other human. In short, it’s a book for all reasons, seasons, and persons. At its core, the book realizes that conflict is part of life and that it’s how we deal with those conversations that makes that conflict constructive, not destructive.

Over the next week, I will review this book in some depth, hoping I can show you why you might want to add both the text and the audio CD’s to your leadership collection.