Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time

I have read many business books, and this one is in a class all itself. It's contents apply to personal and business relationships of all types. Real world experience that is well written, humorous, effective, and easy to implement. I highly recommend this book for anyone that maintains a relationship of any kind with any other person.

Fierce Conversations is a must read for anyone. Period!
Nothing else to say. It has fantastic information on communication and understanding. Two levels beyond talking ...and helps readers improve their level of interaction to reach win win results.

I had to read this book through work, and I have to say it made a powerful change in my company. If you are tired of having the same conversations over and over with employees or your spouse then this book will teach you that the conversation IS the realationship. Fierce conversations are REAL. They are not mean are rude, they are robust, intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, and unbridled. they are meant for confronting reality, understanding why a problem exists, and discovering the solution. The book guides you with 7 principles:

#1 You must interrogate reality. Discover the truth first.
#2 Make the conversation real. Take off your mask and speak the truth with tact.
#3 Be here. Focus on the conversation at hand, focus on it. No fading away!
#4 Tackle your toughest challenge today. Stop procrastinating. What can you solve that will bring you the most value, today?
#5 Obey your instincts. You know in your heart what is right.
#6 Take responsibility for your emotional wake. You must understand how you in your position emotionally effects people.
#7 Let silence do the heavy lifting. Slow down your speaking, take time for quiet gaps and to think about what to say next.

This is a powerful book that can change your life, your family, or your organization.

What a piece of destructive, corporate wanna-bees version of the world! This is an epic work worshiping the god /dess of mediocrity. "How dare you present things that shake the paradigm?" If you do, we need to have a "fierce conversation" regarding how you have upset our "etched in-stone" methods of business. You need to play the rules or out you go. I just suffered the humiliation of this as the background text to an "invigorating, uplifting" "retreat" in the field of education. I thought there was real progress moving forward with the "Appreciative Inquiry" movement, but I see that this trash, now the embraced holy text, is the backlash to that. Welcome to the cultural stage of fixed roles and top down directives where solutions are tromped into dust.

I bought this book because it was used as a text in my MBA class for Maximizing Team Performance. Decent book, fairly easy to read.