 So we could start early, right? We don't have to actually wait for 2.15 on the dot, right? I could use the extra time. Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming to this talk. I am really excited to be giving this talk because this is material that I've been thinking about for a good five or six years. We're going to be talking about crucial conversations. These are the conversations that happen when stakes are high. Tempers flare, and perspectives clash. That's actually an animated GIF that I added. No. It was a joke. Now I explained the joke, so it's not funny. But the explanation's funny now. In a little less than a half an hour, we're going to be talking about how to navigate these difficult conversations and give you a few tools to help diagnose and debug them. Most of the content that we're going to be going over today comes from these books, specifically Crucial Conversations by these four authors. It's a great read. You can pick it up in a day, finish it in a day. And I just started reading the follow-up book, Crucial Confrontations, which covers over a lot of the same material but from a different perspective. My name is Chris Weber. I'm a Drupal enthusiast. I've been a developer for over a decade, mostly in web development, and mostly, during that time, highly enthusiastic about Drupal. I'd like to take part of the sprint mentoring, and I hope you are all here on Friday for the open sprints, the open contribution sprints. If you have some kind of computer computational device, if you could, could you open this link at the bottom here to the conference page and be ready to fill in all of your feedback about how well I'm doing here. I'm not a very good public speaker, and I need all the criticism that you give. So I guess come to this link later if you don't have a device right now. Whenever I talk about Crucial Conversations, I like to tell the story about how this book really did change my life. And when I started a company with a buddy of mine, and we fought the good fight for a good two years, and it seemed like we were putting everything we could into creating a successful small consulting company of about two people, two, three people, but we weren't making it. And we didn't know why we weren't making it. We tried to fix the problem. We added more organization. We even hired a project manager at some point. But it got to the point that I started to realize that my best friend's family's well-being was absolutely hinged to my ability to produce. And I didn't want to hurt my friend, but I didn't want to seem disloyal to my friend because we had fully vested into this company together. We were partners. We were going to not have bosses anymore. We were going to be the best developers we could be. And we were going to have a great life together. But yeah, I got to the point where I felt really terrible about the fact that by my needing to sleep, by my needing to play video games every now and then, I was hurting my buddy's ability to support his family. And so I didn't want to hurt him, but I also knew that I had to become a better developer. And the solution that I came up with was I had to leave, which meant I had to have this very difficult conversation with him that I just had to go and we had to stop this. And that's how I found this book, because I didn't know how to have that conversation. And once I read through this book, I helped help me to have that conversation and get through that conversation with him. And my hope was that we could get through it and still be friends. More about that at the end. But this is where we're headed today. We're going to learn how to, in the next 20 minutes or so, first we're going to learn how to diagnose when we are in a crucial conversation. Which sounds like an easy thing, but crucial conversations are the kinds that tend to creep up on you. And you don't know if you're at this pivotal moment that could define the rest of your relationship. Then we're going to learn how to log and monitor your intentions during those conversations. And finally, we're going to learn how to debug and fix your conversations so that we can optimize our communication. I'm a developer. I'm going to use nerdy terms, OK? First of all, this is a question where perhaps we're not too focused on a lot. Have we evolved as human beings? When we're presented with a threat, we still react instinctually. We're not really presented with physical threats anymore. We don't have to fend for our lives in the streets. But we're still presented with a lot of psychological threats. And the reactions that we have to those threats are still the fight or flight instincts that helped us survive when we were cave people and needed to run away from prey. But it's actually more than that. It's more than an instinctual reaction. It's actually a biochemical reaction. Part of what makes those instincts so powerful is that when we're presented with a threat, adrenaline kicks in. And the parts of our brains that could help us reason through problems start to shut down and get overwhelmed by the parts of our brains that want to react and keep us safe from that physical threat. Because it still thinks that every threat is a physical threat. So it's no wonder why when we have very heated, emotional, difficult conversations, we are at our worst. Because even our own body is against us. The very moment we need our brains to be working through these difficult conversations is when it takes a nap. When we are presented with threats, this is the spectrum that we tend to react with. Our natural responses to threats fall upon the spectrum. Some people have a tendency to avoid conflict. I'm one of those. And some people tend to react with conflict with conflict. Think back at the last time that you had a really difficult conversation. Perhaps it was an argument with a family member. Perhaps it was with your boss. Perhaps it was with a coworker or someone on the internet. Emotions probably ran high on both sides. And you could feel your body working over time, getting stressed out, feeling angry or sad or fearful about where the conversation was leading, what the consequences of that conversation could be. Did you lash out? Did you stay quiet and try to ignore that the problem was happening and to try to change the subject to something else, more pleasant? That is your style and distress. Just know about it. The most important thing about today is to know that all of these reactions are very human. They're very eventual. We're going to be encountered with stress and you're going to be surprised by it. You're going to be blindsided. You're not going to know how to deal with it. So you just need to be able to diagnose that those things are happening and they're starting to shut down your brain and then work through the steps that are going to be following to work through them. So that's what I'm here to tell you. We can fall into a stress trap. One where we have a natural response to the stress that isn't very productive, whether it's through violence or silence and that itself becomes a source of stress that adds to the stress that you already had and then you're in a stress bomb. First step, the first aha moment that I had in this book was the realization that you really don't have any power to affect what's happening on the other side of the conversation. There's no magic switch and there's not really a magic switch that you have when you're like inside out where you have this console in front of you press the switch and all of a sudden anger shuts up. But you can have ask yourself a series of questions to step you down from the stress bomb that you're creating and to work through it. And most of these questions start with the premise start with heart. And I don't mean start from a place of empathy or a number of great suggestions. What I mean is to start with introspection. Ask yourself what's going on in your head. Are you starting to react in this instinctual kind of way? Step yourself down. But actually it works better if you ask this question. What do I really want? Get back to what you really want because when the adrenaline kicks in when the energy starts picking up you start losing sight of this and you start focusing on winning. How many people have young children? How many times do you get into an argument where they're not really arguing about what they were arguing and they're just arguing about who's gonna win the argument? That's exactly what I'm talking about. We are not so much more mature than our children in that fashion sometimes. We still love having arguments where we're the winner of the argument. So by asking ourselves rational questions like what do I really want? What do I really want for our relationship? This person and myself going forward. My partner and I. What do I really want for everyone else that's involved in this process? Like if you're working for trying to figure out a difficult conversation within a company. And by asking ourselves this question we're actually kick starting the rational part of our brain again. You're waking that part up so that that part can start reacting to the situation instead of the lizard brain. But also we need to learn to look. While we're logging ourselves and our intentions we need to look at what's happening at the other conversation to see if they're about ready to blow up their stress bomb. So you need to audit your slipping intentions and watch the other for exceptions. What are the kinds of warnings and exceptions that drive a conversation off track? Watch to see if they're starting to dominate the conversation. If they're starting to play games they're starting to play tit for tat. Look for content and conditions. Because a lot of times we tend to take a little bit of a situation and we turn it into a much bigger thing. And if we could just focus on the content of what we were talking about we could handle the problem a little bit differently. There are a number of things and you probably know this inherently because again many of us have known children or have children and they tend to do all of these things. I'll just go through them really quickly. Masking where you use sarcasm or sugarcoating to hide what you really feel. Straight up avoidance, trying to steer the conversation changing the topic away from touching content. Withdrawing, pulling out of the conversation completely like physically avoiding the people who have the problem so that you don't have to be in the situation where you're dealing with it. Those are all symptoms of if you have a tendency to move to silence. If you tend to be the kind of person who avoids the problem. And if you're a person that is prone to violence those are things like manipulation, labeling, aggression, straight up like form trolling. So things like controlling where you use things like filibustering or dominating a conversation to or if you're starting to speak in absolutes. Labeling when you try to say well of course that they think that they're a pinball player from Portland. So all pinball player from Portland are terrible people. So of course they're gonna think that because they're a pinball player from Portland. Kind of things like that. Or just straight up attacking where you're not focusing on the conversation anymore. You're just talking about like what your silly brother-in-law is doing over in England now. So look for these things. These are the things you need to look for in a crucial conversation. I did not start my timer. This is gonna go well. So you are auditing yourself, you're logging yourself, you're auditing the conversation, you're looking at what's going on on the other side of the conversation. Now that you know that you're in a crucial conversation what do you do? The number one thing you do is you make it safe. What does that mean? We're talking about psychological safety. Let me unpack that. In 2012, Google did a study that would help them learn what makes teams successful. And what they found was that teams where everyone was allowed to speak at meetings achieved the best results. Why was that? This being Google, they looked at a ton of factors. The levels of expertise, years in the company, about every factor you can imagine. This is Google. Teams that were allowed to speak at pretty much equal amounts provided their members with the psychological safety that everyone on the team deserved to be listened to. Teams where they had like a project manager or a team lead that tend to absorb all the information and then repeat it back at them did not do it as well because it felt like well that's the only person that matters because that's the only person that's speaking. So when we say psychological safety, we mean feeling safe to fail, to make mistakes, to not like losing your job because you're doing something wrong. The kind of safety that you feel in a community that accepts you to feel included. When that condition is met, everyone feels safe to contribute their knowledge. How did we become unsafe? When safety is violated or you're starting a conversation that because of previous conditions already feels unsafe, it's usually because one of these two safety conditions have been violated. Mutual purpose, like if you know that you have conflicting goals and there's just no common ground to have a good conversation, you're just diametrically opposed. Or another question, do other people perceive that you're working toward a common outcome that they're invested in? Do you have their buy-in? So mutual purpose. Another condition, mutual respect. Respect is like air. As long as you have it, you don't think about it. But as soon as it's gone, it's the only thing you think about. So if you have a situation where respect has been violated, then that's pretty much the end of productive conversation. You have to address those things before you can move on. So what are the tips? What are the tactics? Where's the guts of this talk? That's covered up next. How do we feel safe again? Here's a couple of tips. Step one, step out and step back in. Sometimes you need a moment to adjust to a very stressful situation that's totally natural. Not exactly what I'm talking about right here, but yes, if you need a moment to collect yourself, step out and then step back in. But what I really mean is step out of the conversation that you're currently having, and if safety has been violated, address the safety concern. If the person you're talking about perceives that what you just said means that you are diametrically opposed to what they're trying to accomplish and then there's no common ground, step out and address that. Or if they feel that you have insulted them or respect has been lost or violated in some way, step out and address that. Only when you can step out and address that that you can get back to having a productive dialogue. Step two, oh wait, I should be pressing things. There, helpful, right? Okay, step two, apologize where appropriate. Where you make, when you have made a mistake, even if especially if it was unintentional, I guess if you intentionally intended to insult them and your intent is to burn this conversation to a ground, perhaps don't apologize there, just say we're done and then move on, I guess. But definitely, if you have harmed safety and it wasn't your intention, apologize where appropriate. And try to make it clear that though safety has been violated, you are committed to coming to a conclusion. That you're committed to the process of getting all the information out, not just your information, but to make sure that everyone has the ability to contribute. Use contrasting to fix any misunderstanding. Sometimes people can feel disrespected even if you didn't do something specific to violate their respect. That it's just something, people come to situations and they have already lived full lives. They have already been through so many things. We are so complex individuals. So there are lots of things that can violate safety, respect, purpose that you don't even know about. And to make it clear what your intentions are, use contrasting to say what you do mean and what you don't mean. Because if others believe you intend to put them down or otherwise play games, then the conversation is effectively over. So when others misinterpret your intent, step out of the argument, rebuild safety by making it clear what you don't and do mean. And lastly, whoops, no, thank you. No, nope, there we go. Discover or create a mutual purpose. Sometimes an argument has happened because you clearly have different purposes, but is there really no middle ground? Is there really nothing that you both want to achieve? Search, discover that mutual purpose. And if one doesn't exist, create one. We're both working at the same company. We should both be vested in our success. We perhaps disagree on the finer points, but let's all agree that we're going to work together as best as we can and we'll work through this for an example. So the purpose of all of this is to focus on this concept that I like to call the shared pool of knowledge. If the conversation is safe, if everyone can be contributing their knowledge, you can make the best decisions. I said that differently. History has shown us time and time again that the worst decisions happen when you prevent others from participating from providing their insights. Group think, shutting down dissenters, dominating arguments with all your points and none of theirs. If you are preventing others from participating by reacting with violence, you are preventing your access to that knowledge, which could help your decision-making process and help you make better decisions. And likewise, nope, stop that, don't do that. Likewise, if you move to silence, if you shut yourself down, you're not only harming yourself, but you're harming the group, you're harming the decision-making process by preventing the other people from having access to your insights and your perspectives. So I said we would get into debugging and this is actually kind of like the part I like the best, so thank you for staying with me so far. So remember, we were gonna talk about debugging, so here is the advanced section right now. Master your stories. Sometimes a conversation is turned critical because we have some of the information and we can connect the dots. We are highly intelligent human beings. We can see patterns with very little data, but seeing a pattern because you're telling yourself a story is not the same thing as a fact. Here is a bold claim, one that you might disagree with. Emotions don't just happen. They don't settle upon us like a fog. You create your emotions and it can work a little bit like a state machine. Things happen, you tell yourself a story and because of that story, you feel something, oh wait, here we go. This is how we tend to see our stories. We feel something and then we react. But we feel that thing because we have told ourself a story and we tell ourself a story because of some of the evidence that we see. And so we connect the dots, tell ourself a story, we react to the story and then we react. That's how we feel. So what I would like to propose is that we could put our breakpoint right there on tell a story. Are there any other stories that you could tell yourself that would satisfy the facts that perhaps you would react differently to? And this is kind of like a device that you can use when you want to stay in the conversation and you want to continue to be productive in the conversation. If you don't, don't worry about it, just react. But if it is important to you to continue to have a productive conversation and you need that lizard part of your brain to be quiet so that you can react productively to the conversation, try to tell yourself a different story that would also satisfy the facts so that you can get all the information out. These are the kinds of stories that we tend to tell ourselves that are clever but are unhelpful. It's not my fault. The theme is always the same. The other person is bad, they're wrong, they're dumb. We're good, we're right, we're brilliant. Other people, when they do bad or wrong things, we suffer as a result and then we tend to paint ourselves as a victim. This is, by the way, this is not an external voice telling you that, oh, you're just telling yourself that you're the victim. This is the internal voice in your head that you're just collecting a few facts and then you come to a victim story where you're telling yourself you're a victim. This is a conversation you're having with yourself. Another story, it's all your fault. This is where we like to make the person on the other side look like a villain. And it's an easy story to gravitate to because we tend to think that everything that we do wrong is an accident and everything that they do wrong is on purpose. And it's a nasty story because it gives ourselves license to do all sorts of nasty things in response. And again, this is the internal conversation you're having. And lastly, the helpless story, that there's nothing I can do, that the options that are presented to me are all equally so bad that I can't really pick anything and therefore I'm going to do nothing. And that's a particularly easy story when we vilify our opponents that way because it makes it look like all the options in front of us are futile. So the solution is to tell the rest of the story. Turn victims into actors. If you notice that you're telling yourself a story that you're the victim in the story, ask yourself, am I pretending not to notice my role in what is happening? This doesn't mean that you had malicious intent or maybe you think about the series of events that led you to that story and you can recall that that lizard part of your brain did not show you all the evidence that perhaps this person has a history of people who have done those things and they're just reacting to that. The thing that always got me is when I'm sitting in with someone and they tell me, oh, that other person is crazy. No, they're a human being. We're all human beings and we act at things weirdly sometimes but that does not mean that they're crazy but as soon as you start treating someone like they're crazy then you start treating them like a human being. Turn villains into humans. When you find yourself labeling someone as a villain, ask yourself, why would a reasonable, rational and decent person do this thing that this person is doing? Give yourself a reason to deal with the other side as a human being and perhaps there is a different answer other than that they're crazier, that the scum on the earth to explain what they did and finally if you find yourself with the helplessness story, remind yourself back to that first question, what do I really want for me, for others, for our relationship? Kill the fool's choice of this is bad and that is bad and there's nothing other, it's in between and find a more productive answer. Ask yourself, what would I do if I really wanted the things that I want? How would I behave? How, what would I do? You guys, you guys, sorry, I didn't, I didn't, sorry, these were the points. It'll be better next time, next, whatever. So, we're at the end. I promised you I would tell you the rest of my story. In the end, my crucial conversation was the first time that I had ever tried any of this and I was quite a novice and despite my best efforts, I was unable to convince my friends that leaving the company was something I had to do in order to ensure that I didn't harm his family and his financial prospects for the future and our friendship. I left the meeting pretty devastated that perhaps I had ruined one of the most important friendships of my life. But a while later, he called me out of the blue to ask me for drinks and it was at my new job of all places to tell me that he understood that it finally got through to him, why I did and it was the impetus for a lot of great success that he had forming a new company with some other friends of mine and they're doing really great now. And that, most importantly to me, that we were cool. So I guess what I'm trying to say is crucial conversations are unvoidable. You're going to run into someone who is very important to you and you're going to have that moment where everything can change. If you can just get through the conversation and stand your ground, be yourself, but get everything out and not let it simmer, not let it impact the rest of your life together. Thank you. Oh yeah, the link, one sec. Carrie, sure. Well, okay, thank you. So if they're starting to hulk out, go through the steps, step out of the conversation that you're currently having and address the reason why they're hulking, right? And to, you know, if they're being guarded, if they're just like so wrapped up in that roller coaster of anger and you needed to take a couple of questions in order to get that rational part of their brain-backed active and find out why are they so upset, once you know that they're, why they're upset, then you can address that. Maybe you intentionally, maybe there's nothing avoidable, maybe you don't have a mutual purpose, you know, or maybe they just want to be mad or, but maybe you can address it. Use contrasting to make it clear what you don't mean and what you do mean, right? But if you had said something insensitive and got them mad because that apologized, we're necessary, right?