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

If your relationships at home or work could use improvement, then this is a must read book. The title is probably a little misleading and perhaps intimidating. After all, most people I know do not like confrontation. And the title sounds like you will be having toe to toe, screaming matches. But a fierce conversation is not about who can shout the loudest.

The book is based on the fundamental truth that most of the time we have polite conversations rather than real ones. We talk about things that are safe rather than the things that really need to be talked about.

Susan Scott has written a wonderful book that address the importance of having real conversations and then tells you how to make sure you can pull them off.

For starters, she says the purpose of a fierce conversation is to
interrogate reality, provoke learning, tackle tough challenges and enrich relationships." The last point is so important. Lots of people have tough conversations but often these cause the relationship to deteriorate.

If you follow the steps, you will not only talk through the tough issues, you will build better relationships. This is true for work relationships as well as personal relationships.

Scott addresses five different types of conversations. They are: team conversations, coaching conversations, delegation conversations and confrontational conversations. And she gives the model and example for each.

Susan gives seven principles to guide a person in their fierce conversations. They are: Master the courage to interrogate reality, Come out from behind yourself and make the conversation real, Be here, prepared to be nowhere else, Tackle your toughest challenge today, Obey your instincts, Take responsibility for your own wake and Let silence do the heavy lifting.

I do not know anyone who uses silence as they should. Most people are too eager to tell their story, show how much they know, they forget to let silence into the conversation.

The book does a marvelous job of discussing how to truly have fierce conversations. But an underlying theme of the book is that most conversations are with your self. On occasions, other people are involved. If you want to truly master fierce conversations, you must master them with your self first.

It is not a book to just read and file away. This is a book you need to keep handy, refer to often. The appendix has some wonderful worksheets and questions and there is a User's Guide at the end.

The book is well written, easy to read with lots of helpful examples. If you implement just a portion of the wisdom in this book, it will change your life.

The big lesson is to interrogate reality in all your conversations. What are you pretending not to know? What are you afraid to discuss with your boss/ co-worker or spouse?

A polite conversation is a failed conversation because you did not talk about the issues that are crying to be addressed.

Truly a life changing book. Susan has written a companion book that I also highly recommend - Fierce Leadership - check it out.

As someone who finds difficult people hard to approach and handle, this book offers some really good strategies for dealing with people problems. The last bits are a bit touchy-feely compared to the tough, direct middle, but overall it's a good read. I'm going to read it several times to get the most I can out of it.

The book gives a sort of "how to do" tool to solve a lot of everyday life problems that have to do with conversations (so almost everything..).

Fierce Conversations is a life-changing book. It brings to stark consciousness the weak, limp, lukewarm, and inhibited manner in which we converse with each other today. It reveals a style of "conversation" which we all have with others that simply is not working. The author encourages us to "come out from behind ourselves" and let people...in conversation...get to know the real us. It eschews the vapid, dead, superficial, lifeless way we talk to each other, and the abysmal results that ensue in our lives together. The book is filled with simple strategies for the reader to make his or her conversation more meaningful, more moving, and more memorable. For those who thirst for honest, heartfelt, intimate conversation, the book is a spiritual fountain of many waters. The "Fierce" in the title of the book does not mean violent, demeaning, or angry but instead brave, pure, un-prepackaged and watered down to meaninglessness, etc. It is well worth the money and is watered with many illustrations in people's work, business, and personal life.

I did not consciously choose this book. A friend regards this book highly, couldn't find it in her library, ordered another and then found her original. I became the beneficiary...happily, I might add. And that's because this book so succinctly and smartly puts forth what a life of quality looks like. For instance, Scott says, "Each of us must first answer the question 'Where am I going?' before we can address the question 'Who is going with me?' It is essential not to get those out of order." She then goes on to say, "You will bring into your life whatever it is that you have the most clarity about."
While I did find this to resonate as true, the book goes beyond being a mere motivational speech. It is a handbook for those who are charged with responsibility or compelled to align the movements of masses so that some higher-order ideal is realized. How that is done practically is "one conversation at a time." Scott shows how to, as Shakespeare would say, "screw your courage to the sticking place" so that this clarity can consistently see the light of day. She has some interesting processes, guidelines and touchstones. My favorite take-away is to ask yourself, when analyzing a situation, "what are your pretending not to know?"