Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time Paperback – January 6, 2004

This book was an amazing book to read. I got it for work, but it actually works for relationship and having Tough conversations with anyone

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 tointerrogate 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.

How often do you walk away from a conversation having talked around an issue, but not about it? How often do you not fully share your thoughts? How often is this conversation with yourself?These questions form the heart of Susan Scott’s book, where she challenges us to step into Fierce Conversations with others and ourselves. At its core, Scott challenges us to interrogate reality and talk about the things that are most important, assuming (rightly, I believe) that we often avoid doing this to our own and others detriment. She outlines four key components that form the structure of this book. Interrogate reality. Provoke learning. Tackle tough issues. Enrich Relationships.Take one (of many) insights as an example of what you might appreciate about this book: Ground Truth. As Scott references, Ground truth is an old military term, referring to what is really going on on the ground as opposed to what officials are talking about back in the strategy room. As one might imagine, these are often different, sometimes vastly different! Think of this as the talk after the meeting around the water cooler, the things that are rarely brought up during the actual meeting. Stated truth and ground truth are often misaligned.In my own life I have to admit that ground truth can be hard to come by. How often do I really express fully what I’m thinking to friends or family? How often do I hold back my full thoughts at work or in meetings? How often do I have things that really need to be said, but avoid saying them for fear of safety or that the other person wouldn’t care.What I appreciate about Scott is she challenges us to have the tough conversations. Interrogate reality so you can get to ground truth. This isn’t easy, and by no means does she advocate that we shouldn’t be thoughtful about how we communicate this (cf. Chapter 6, which is a beautiful summary of how to note our emotional wake). But I think most of us, or at least myself, avoid many ground truth conversations and opt into not talking about the hard things. Scott inspires me to have more hard conversations, because often you have to go through those hard conversations to get to richer, fuller relationships. And, it is impossible to make the best decisions in work without ground truth. We’re literally shooting ourselves in the foot when we don’t show up with all of ourselves and our ideas at work.Other things you may get out of this book:Living life in personal integrityThe power of shared vision at workTips and outlines of how to effectively engage in difficult conversationsThe power of understanding our emotional wakeDefinitely worth your read. You won’t be sorry you’ve read this if you’re looking for something to inspire meaningful self-reflection on your life, work, and relationships.

I really enjoyed Susan’s ideas, I will be applying some of them in my personal and professional life. It is a bit repetitive but the worst part of this book, at least this version, has to be the numerous gramatical errors, I hope this can be fixed in future editions.

The most useful book I have read in years.

This book was really amazing, it helped lot in Communication and some of Internal Training between department, it's also good in life because it will teach you some little tips, to work on, and some things that you retain obvious will be more focussed. Shipment and Everything was on time. (my first order)

The product hasn't been delivered to me till date though its been more than a month i have ordered

Somos personas y nos comunicamos siempre, ya sea para resolver conflictos, obtener cosas, expresar ideas y sentimientos... El caso es que a menudo hay barreras que nos impiden realizar una comunicación efectiva. Con Fierce Conversations, Susan Scott nos muestra cómo las conversaciones sinceras son necesarias y cómo llevarlas a cabo por difícil que sea. Es un libro de referencia