Learn to Look for when a conversation becomes crucial

After initiating a crucial conversation effort, how do you evaluate outcome of the effort? What objective outcome assessment do you utilize?

Signed,
Curious

Dear Curious,

Over the years, we've used a variety of methods to assess the effectiveness of Crucial Conversations Training. Our most rigorous methods involve most of the research and statistical tools science can provide. Prior to the training course, we measure trainees' knowledge with a paper-and-pencil test. With five possible responses, each answer averages 20 percent, or what you'd expect from chance. After the training however, almost everyone gets a perfect score. The thesis here is simple: if trainees don't understand the concepts, they won't be able to put them into practice.

Next, we measure people in action. We give trainees a problem situation and ask them to resolve the issue in a role play. We tape the interaction and then have experts code the presence or absence of ten different skills. Before the training, subjects typically earn a couple of points, after the training they average around 9.5. Now we've seen that they can actually do what they've studied.

But we're still not through. Just because people understand the new skills and can demonstrate them on demand, do they actually want to do what they've been taught? After all, you just might teach something people find hokey or even risky to put into action. So, we ask people if and where they'll use the skills at home and at work. The vast majority report that they want to put the skills into action. They see how the skills will help them solve problems and achieve key personal, family, and business objectives.

Finally, we see if participants actually practice the skills at work. Peers evaluate one another before and after the training. Now we're no longer relying on self-report data, nor are we judging people under test conditions. We're measuring people on the job, and we're gathering the data from their coworkers. When the training is implemented well, participants show remarkable improvements in their crucial conversations skills at work.

And there's still more to measure. In three different studies we've asked university researchers to explore the relationship between improvements in crucial skills and key corporate measures such as costs, productivity, and profitability. After all, companies implement Crucial Conversations Training as a means to solve corporate problems and increase overall corporate health, not simply as a means to enhance communication skills. In one study, we found that an increase in candid, honest, and crucial communication yielded and increase in productivity of 93 percent and also reduced customer-care expenses by $20 million, among other bottom-line results. (Read the entire case study)

Now, at the less formal level, we've received hundreds of letters and e-mails reporting the immediate and beneficial effects of using crucial conversations skills at home and at work. For instance, one woman held a conversation with her mother that helped heal years of separation and recrimination. Another student talked with a boss about a leadership tactic that was driving him nuts—it ended up solving the problem and strengthening their relationship. The list of success stories is long and varied.

I suppose I enjoy the anecdotal evidence as much as the scientific body of knowledge we've built. These one-of-a-kind incidents shore up our numbers with poignant and memorable stories that often pull at our heart strings. Of course, when your goal is to convince a skeptical audience that learning crucial conversations skills can lead to changes in behavior that in turn lead to changes in key corporate indicators, we fall back on two decades of research that demonstrate that the training works.

Best Wishes,
Kerry

Editor's note: The measurement tools mentioned above are used during custom client interventions. The resources are not made available to the public.

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Hark, I Hear the Rain Clouds Roaring

Last year, I had the opportunity to work for a company in Trinidad and Tobago. The company had secured the local town hall (a two story building with a tin roof) as the training site. Everything was set up properly, and the training was going along smoothly—that is until 1:45 P.M.

At exactly 1:45, rain started to fall. At first, the whole class moved to the rhythm of the falling rain—big drops hitting the tin roof at a perky tempo (somewhere in the range of 86 to 92 beats per minute; the perfect tempo to deliver a course). And then it really started to rain.

I found myself having to talk louder, then louder, and then louder still to be heard over the increasing din. Pretty soon I was yelling as loud as I could while holding my mouth in just the right way to approximate the Steve version of surround sound.

And right in the middle of yelling and projecting, I was drowned completely out by the thundering storm. I couldn't even hear my own voice. I looked around to see how the audience was reacting, only to be met with craning necks and straining ears. Needless to say, we took a break, relocated to a different area not so close to the tin roof, and repeated the lost portion of the training material.

Upon reflection, I realized that when faced with changing and often challenging conditions, many people believe they have only three choices: 1) keep doing the same thing, 2) increase the volume, or 3) better yet, keep doing the same thing while increasing the volume.

I've found over the years, that merely developing a skill set like crucial conversations isn't always enough. In order to apply the skills, we need to notice if and when conditions change. Then we can act.

So, as you consider what to do in order to improve your crucial conversations or confrontations skills, build cues and signs that will alert you to changing conditions and, in turn, help you notice opportunities to act. As you get better at noticing change, you won't have to spend the ten or fifteen minutes it took me to adjust my course.

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