1 Big idea to think about

  • There is no upside to avoiding crucial conversations. Often we only consider the risks of speaking up instead of also considering the risks of not speaking up. Becoming skilled at having crucial conversations will lead to increased trust, understanding, and cooperation in your personal and professional relationships.

2 ways you can apply this

  • Evaluate the costs of speaking up with the costs of not speaking up. Remember, in relationships, you either talk it out, or you act it out. When we don’t talk it out we are often not only allowing the problem to persist, we are allowing it to grow bigger.  
  • Help others feel safe. You can talk about almost anything with almost anybody if you can help them feel safe. To begin to do this, clearly communicate your intent to the other person, and help them understand what you want for them. 

3 Questions to ask

  • What do I want for myself?
  • What do I want for the other person?
  • What do I want for the relationship?

Key Moments From The Show 

  • The mindset necessary for a high-stake conversation (3:44)
  • Why silence is the biggest communication error we make (7:27)
  • The costs of not speaking up (11:18)
  • How to distinguish between fact and opinion in highly emotional conversations (20:02)
  • How to make it safe to talk to others about almost anything (21:18)
  • Questions to ask yourself before having a crucial conversation that will help others feel safe (23:30)
  • How to be clear so people do not misunderstand your intentions (24:26)
  • The ABCs of being a skillful listener (25:28)

Links You’ll Love from the Episode

Crucial Conversations: Tools For Talking When Stakes Are High

Crucial Learning

Connect with Joseph Grenny

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Speakers

Greg McKeown, Joseph Grenny


Greg McKeown  0:06  

Come with me on an exploration of self-discovery. On this podcast, we decipher what really matters. As we unravel the chaos in day to day work, to learn how to build an essential life

One of the most frequently asked questions I receive, since writing it Effortless is how do I make it easy or at least less awful, less difficult, less painful, to have conversations with other people about the things that really matter most. I’ve been doing some intense thinking on this subject myself because I’m working on a new book about interpersonal communication. And I always want to learn the best from the best. And so I have invited Joseph grannie, the very best of the very best one of the authors of crucial conversations, which has now sold some 5 million copies and counting perennially imprint in a third edition that’s just recently been updated and come out. So for those listening, do you have in your own life, any high-stakes conversations that you need to have that are important to have, but that you’re putting off? Of course you do. And so listen to this conversation, if you want to be more skilled at negotiating what matters most, when it matters most with the people who matter, most. Joseph Granny, welcome to the Watts essential podcast, been looking forward to our conversation. Thank you for the invitation, Greg. Is that really true, Joseph? Or is that just a polite line? I rarely say polite things. So I would count it as truth. If I were.

I’ve been looking forward to it because I feel like you and I sort of cross paths in our lives. And but without really Crossing Paths. I did speak at a Vital Smarts event. I don’t know, a couple years ago, I feel like you might have been on the table next to me when I was sitting before going up. But we never even there we I mean, how close can you be without properly?

 

Joseph Grenny  2:21  

Yeah, I had the sense the chance to sit at your feet. And I think not only have you raised questions that are provocative and important for us to be contemplating, and in this era of time, in particular, but you’re one of the more gifted teachers I’ve ever had the chance to sit in front of choose if that is so nice, and so kind and I feel like our work is done here. We could just have a short, a short conversation.

 

Greg McKeown  2:47  

How do we get to this? This is I mean, I sort of in my head have this idea that they’re a mindset elements to having crucial important essential vital conversations and also a skill set element to it.

 

Joseph Grenny  3:06  

It presuming that that’s okay. That you’re on board with that. Maybe help me with the mindset first, like what’s the mindset I need to get into? If I’m about to have one of these high-stakes conversations? You know, the, the matches? Go ahead? Yeah, I think the first thing to have clear in our mind is that there really is no upside to not having them. We started our research 35 years ago, not looking at communication, we weren’t interested in communication, we were interested in how social systems perform and improve performance. So we work with organizations trying to find what we called Vital behaviors, we were looking for moments of disproportionate influence where how people showed up, would have a disproportionate effect on downstream results, whether it’s a financial services company, and you’re looking at for NET client retention, whether it’s a healthcare company, and you’re looking at patient outcomes, or whether it’s manufacturing, and you’re looking at producing things on time on budget on spec and getting volumes up and scrap down. So a whole variety of kinds of social systems. And we wondered, in the course of getting things done, are there moments where how people show up has an outsized effect on the kind of results they later achieve or don’t achieve. And what we found time and time again, was it’s moments where people have to deal with something emotionally or politically risky, that that in those moments how people as a pattern across an organization show up has a profound effect on the level of trust in the organization on the level of cooperation between departments on the quality of decisions, the quality of execution, that those moments matter more than any others and, and more than most any other experience. One of the things that forced our attention in this direction was a research project at consulting project were asked to do in a healthcare organization where they had amputated a limb on an individual who was in for a tonsillectomy.

And after this highly public disaster, we were asked to come in and from an organizational perspective, do the forensic work and try to figure out how this could possibly happen. And as we looked into it, we found there were no fewer than seven people who that morning of this what they call wrong site surgery could have averted this disaster. If they had done one simple thing and it was speak up. There were people who were asked to load equipment onto a tray for surgery. There’s people in pharmacy, there were nurses who were called in to participate in the surgery, a whole variety of people that notice something untoward, something unexpected, but said nothing. And so we began to see this pattern of silence and how it was almost always an element of underachievement that you could get collections of smart people who, who as a group would behave in incredibly stupid ways, and in sometimes disastrous ways. And the common denominator was usually not a lack of IQ, it was a lack of conversation. So this is what kind of brought us to pay attention to this one kind of dynamic. And now you ask about mindset. From, from my perspective, we lie to ourselves and I and excuse ourselves from stepping into these moments that require vulnerability and risk. Because we consider only the risks of speaking up. We don’t stop and ask ourselves, what are the risks of not speaking up, we never do a full threat assessment. And if we would just from today forward, if people turned off this podcast now and listen to nothing else, if the next time you knew there was something that you might want to speak up about, you stopped and honestly asked, not just what are the risks of speaking up? But also what are the risks of not speaking up, it will profoundly affect the choices you make? 

 

Greg McKeown  7:04  

What do you see as the biggest communication error? type one, type two? Is it what you’ve just said, not speaking up, when you ought to? Or is it when you do speak up? 

 

Joseph Grenny 

People having arguments and and dealing like fighting badly, which do you think is the biggest issue the silence, so the violence in your experience, but the silence by far, and it’s interesting, because I as I know, you’ve experienced, we’ve traveled around the world teaching these concepts. And we’ll go to places like Germany or Denmark, or Australia, where people will say, we take pride in the fact that we’re pretty out there, we’re pretty candid. But the fact that people are talking doesn’t mean they’re having the right conversation. Oftentimes, we’re talking loudly about the wrong thing. And so the real vulnerable issues, the real risky issues really don’t get processed and addressed. And so the fact that we’re just in communication doesn’t mean that we’re having the real crucial conversation. And so by far, silence is the biggest issue. 

 

Greg McKeown

And it can be noisy silence as well. What do you think the ratio is?

 

Joseph Grenny  8:03  

I would say, probably at 20. If not more than that, again, if the measure is, are we not just talking? But are we addressing the real issue? So for example, you know, if you’ve got somebody on your team that is continually underperforming, they don’t get it to you on time, or what they get you as a pile of malarkey. And, and the conclusion you begin to draw over time is that this is not just a motivation problem, it’s an ability problem, there’s a competence concern that ought to be addressed. What we’ll find, if we watch you over time is, you may think that you’re being candid, because you’ll complain about this product, you’ll complain about this deliberately, we point out errors in the next one. But what you’re not doing is stepping back and sharing your honest perspective about these competence gaps. And so if we measure it by is the real conversation being held? It’s probably more than 90%. It’s so painfully true what you just said. Yeah, absolutely. You know, a really revealing study we did maybe seven years ago in cooperation with the Wall Street Journal. We asked people across the world, I think we had around 4000 respondents. Do you work with somebody that you would describe as grossly incompetent, incredibly untrustworthy, Prickly, difficult, obstinate rude, crude, you know, you name it racist, whatever the epithet was, and 96% of respondents said, yeah, there’s somebody in my immediate workplace that I would describe in those really, I amplify terms. Yeah. Yeah. And so 96% so that means this is a this is a perception that that almost all of us have. And then we ask the question, how long have they been behaving this way? The typical response was, between one and five years, this person had been behaving this way. And then we asked the real question, which was, have you had a conversation with it? Have you shared the feedback? 

Have you expressed the real concern, not just pussyfoot around and shared kind of cosmetic details about the effects of it, but what your real judgment is about this individual. And here’s the remarkable finding, most of us would say, well, something that’s significant is the job of the supervisor to address. So we asked, have you addressed it? And then we asked, What’s your relationship with this individual, there was no increase in frequency of an affirmative response, whether the person was the supervisor or not, the supervisor was no more likely to have this conversation than a peer than a direct report than a customer supplier, it didn’t matter. And so we all try to find some way to escape responsibility for having these conversations. And one of the ways we do that is by having the wrong conversation by talking about something but not the real issue. 

 

Greg McKeown

I can see such a tangible downside to having that conversation, as I’m sure most people that you talked about these subjects do, what they see is, well, I’m going to take one for the team here, I’m going to be the one to say it, I’m going to get pounded by that individual, I’ll be, you know, I’ll be ostracized by them, they’ll talk badly about me, you know, like, I’m just going to create damage, and no one’s going to be there to protect me. And so you might as well just let somebody else deal with it. What are the costs of not doing it, that will help me to act differently? 

 

Joseph Grenny

Well, there’s, there’s two elements to that. The first is that clearly, if you don’t attempt to address the problem, the problem will persist. And so most of us just kind of say, hey, I can learn to walk with a limp. You know, I’ve got low back pain, you know, dealing with a low back pain is better than taking some action and going to physical therapy. So we rationalize it that way. But there’s a second order effect that it’s important for people to consider. And that is, if you choose not to talk it out, you act it out. So the fact that I’m carrying judgments about you, Greg, so if I say this, this guy really doesn’t understand his job, the fact that I carry that judgment, in my mind, affects my choices and behavior towards you from that day forward. And inevitably, the way I show up differently becomes an issue for you to make judgments about you start seeing Joseph avoiding you talking behind your back excluding you from important meetings, and you make judgments about me. And then you have to choose do I talk it out or act it out, generally, you’re not going to talk it out, you’re going to act it out. And now you begin behaving in ways that actually reinforce my perception of you. So when we choose not to talk it out, we’re often voting not just for the problem to persist, but for it to worsen. The and we become co conspirators we begin to collude in the worsening of the problem, but are blind to our role in doing so. So one of the most important skills that we hope to teach people in Crucial Conversations is really honestly doing that second part of the risk assessment, asking myself, to what degree is my acting out going to have an influence here, if I choose not to talk it out? What will the effect be? And I and then comparing that to the obvious risks of making a shot at the conversation. But the good news is, those who learn to practice the skills have Crucial Conversations, the risk decreases substantially as well and never goes to zero. There’s always a chance that somebody is on a bad day, or they choose to use their power against you and punish you for the rest of eternity. You know, that may happen sometimes. But it tends to happen far less often if people know how to approach these situations skillfully. 

 

Greg McKeown  13:48  

Well, anyone you say that skillfully brings to bear the idea of what is the skill set? What are the practical things you can do? But But even before we get to that, it makes me think,

are you talking really about being diplomatic? I mean, is that the spirit of crucial conversations? Or is it something else? 

 

Joseph Grenny 

I would say no, by the common definition of that term, most people would take diplomacy as a synonym for sugarcoating. What that means is that if I think you’re dangerously incompetent, the way I’m going to express that, quote, unquote, diplomatically is to say, you know, I, I think there are a couple of areas where some personal development would serve you well. And if you walk away from this conversation, not understanding that I see you as dangerously incompetent, we call it a failed Crucial Conversation. My job is to get to the other side of this conversation with you understanding clearly how I see things you don’t have to agree. But at least you understand how I see things. And number two, with the relationship not only being intact, but potentially stronger than it was before. That’s the measure of an effective, crucial conversation, not brutal honesty, and not sugarcoating. It’s getting the truth across and in a way that strengthens the relationship. 

 

Greg McKeown

Okay, let’s get real for a second. The closer the relationships come, I think the harder it is to live these kinds of parties says, Tell me where I’m wrong. 

 

Joseph Grenny 

Definitely no, I completely agree, I think where there’s more emotional risk and vulnerability, I think more of our own wounds and weaknesses express themselves. So my relationship with my wife is one where her view of me is one that I can become unhealthily connected to. And so my emotional reactions will be will be escalated accordingly. And so that the stuff, the noise, and the damage that we bring to our relationships is directly proportional to the level of intimacy that we have with that person. And that that makes it all the more important that we’re conscious and intentional about how we approach these conversations. 

 

Greg McKeown

Tell me a fail you’ve had in the last two weeks? 

 

Joseph Grenny 

Oh, good question. The the most frequent fails that I have are going to be with a family member. We’re empty nesters. And so it’s myself and my wife at home. And we’re the ones that would have most of the interactions. The time I failed, the times I failed the most often are when she’ll say something or do something in a way that that triggers a wound or what I consider to be a false belief that I have where my own worth is attached to her behavior choices. 

 

Greg McKeown

Give me an example if you if you’re comfortable with it. 

 

Joseph Grenny 

Yeah, so one of the moments that that is emotionally triggering for me with my wife is just a moment where she’ll disagree. So I’ll say how about if we pick the grandkids up and have a sleepover this Saturday, and she’ll respond not just with a no but a no with an edge to it.

And in that edge has to do with her own feeling of AI, whether it’s insecurity or concern about that decision, but the way I hear it, as you idiot, I hear no, you moron. And the fact that I’m hearing it that way, is is a real challenge for me in showing up for that conversation to complete this decision in a way that is healthy and connecting. And so that’s ongoing work that I have to do. But the good news is that there are tools to help me do that, when I can become conscious of the story, I’m telling myself under these conditions, when I can learn to take it out of my head and look at it in my hands and examine it, I can actually calm and soothe my emotions, and come back to her in a way that creates connection and candor, rather than divisiveness and conflict. what it’s all about when I hear that story is meaning that all this is is misunderstanding, like once you know what they mean. And once they know what you mean, these things are going to be great. And of course, that’s often the case that misunderstanding is a big, deep root cause of many other forms of friction. 

 

Greg McKeown

But sometimes, what you think it means is what it means it you know, what they really mean is worse than you think they mean, you know, like what you’re trying to get to is clarity. 

 

Joseph Grenny 

Yeah, and I think I would partition misunderstandings in two categories. There’s sort of informational misunderstandings. So there there are objective facts out there. And you and I have different perspectives on those should people wear masks or not, or what have you. But then there’s sort of personal evaluative misunderstanding. So the, the example I’m sharing with my wife, is that her saying no, with that particular tone of voice means that she’s feeling derision toward me. And that’s a complete most of the time, that’s a complete misunderstanding of what’s going on. But but the experience I’m having emotionally right now is is the same as though that was an objective truth. And so me learning to take responsibility for the kinds of accretions that I offer to my, to my story, to my emotions to my evaluations, for me learning to recognize, as we say, in crucial conversations, that this is just my story, that I’m telling a story. And then I tend to tell certain kinds of stories. And if I can recognize when I’m doing that, I can gain emotional influence in my life in a way that helps me step into these conversations in a far better way. 

 

Greg McKeown

How do you help people to distinguish between fact and opinion in these highly emotional conversations? 

 

Joseph Grenny 

Well, the first step is for people just to understand the difference between facts and stories. Most people are motivated to change when they recognize that there’s some benefit in their life that will accrue to them doing that. And most of us realize that our relationships and our communication are nowhere near where we would like them to be. And so when people understand that one of the first steps to a greater connection, greater intimacy, greater influence in your workplace, is for you to recognize when you’re telling stories, and to learn to disassemble those, and then to more intentionally reassemble those in a way that, that that is information based. That’s an empowering concept, but it requires a lot of training and a lot of practice because we’ve been doing the opposite for so long. So first, just learning to recognize the difference between fact and story and learning to challenge your own to interrogate your own stories in a way that helps lead you to a greater place of emotional control is a is a huge benefit.

 

Greg McKeown  20:00  

Let’s go to a number two actionable tool that we can use right now, how do you make it safe to talk about almost anything to almost anyone?

 

Joseph Grenny

The first thing that people need to do is is adopt the new paradigm, most of us believe that they can predict the the likely outcome of a crucial conversation based on its content. So for example, giving feedback to appear that I find them untrustworthy, that would be a really risky conversation, and the likelihood anyone would ever be able to hear that is very low, telling somebody who just asked me to proofread their book for them that I think it sucks, you know, the likelihood of them hearing me on that and being grateful for the feedback is very, very low, telling my wife that I prefer to have the toilet paper roll back way rather than front way. You know, that’s an easy one. That’s a no brainer. That oughta work. Well, for 35 years of research, we know there is no correlation between the riskiness of the message, and the likelihood of the conversation going well, none.

 

And we all know this, if you start examining your own life experience, you’ll you’ll remember things, big giant fights that have lasted for weeks, you’ve gotten in over the trivial kinds of issues. And and you also have probably had conversations where you brought up really big albatrosses and been able to get it across in a way that was surprisingly easy thing that that points to that is paradigm busting. That’s important for people to to understand is the controlling variable for the success or failure of your Crucial Conversation is not how risky the issue is, you can talk with almost anyone about almost anything, if they feel safe with you. 

 

Greg McKeown

To what extent is this a skill based issue? And to what extent it is a personnel issue? 

 

Joseph Grenny

Well, I guess I would describe it as always a skill based issue. But there are times that you’ll make a judgment that the amount of skill and investment that would require to help somebody feel safe might be more than you’re willing to invest. And that’s a rational judgment, so long as you’re willing to accept the downside of acting out rather than talking out the crucial issue. And, and, and there are times that’s the right decision, you really can address almost any issue, if you can express your intent clearly. 

 

Greg McKeown

Can you say a little more about the exact phrases that I could use in order to establish more neutral intent? 

 

Joseph Grenny

So the first thing that we ask people to practice before opening their mouth in a Crucial Conversation is asking three questions. Number one, what do I want for me? Number two, what do I want for that other person? In the best of all worlds that the other side of this conversation for Greg, how should his life be better? Why should he beg for me to have this conversation honestly, with him? And until you’ve answered that question, you aren’t ready to open your mouth. Because if you come in with selfish motives, the other person perceives it feels unsafe, and then all the defenses come up. The third question is, what do I want for the relationship? What do I want that to look like when we’re done? If people just practice the discipline of answering those three questions, before they walk into a conversation? They’ll do 80% of it, right? 

 

Greg McKeown

There’s another skill, it’s cool skill number four here, it’s a quite a precise one contrast in order to fix misunderstanding. What does that mean? And how do you do it? 

 

Joseph Grenny

Now this is particularly at times where people misunderstand your intentions. So if I was giving performance feedback at the in a performance review to an employee, for example, and they start behaving as though it looks like I’m just here to beat them up, or trying to convince them to leave the company or what have you, I start picking up that they misunderstand my intent. The contrasting skill is a simple one. It’s just a don’t mean do mean don’t want do want. It’s it’s clarifying, hey, it looks like this is what you think I’m after here. That’s not what I want. Here’s what I want. It’s stepping out of the content of the conversation and clarifying your intentions on both sides. The most important part of the message for you to express accurately is not unlikely enough. The do want part, it’s the don’t want part. It’s addressing and verbalizing the misunderstood intentions they had. 

 

Greg McKeown

Well, first of all, you talk about the ABCs of being a skillful listener, asked Mira paraphrase, and prime, why don’t you share what that is? And then I want to one more clarifying question. 

 

Joseph Grenny

The first thing to understand about listening is the intent is that your intent is not just to to get permission to speak yourself. Your intent is to help feel fill fill a common pool of meaning. So the goal isn’t just to get your meaning into this pool. If you think about this as a reservoir that exists between you and the other person, you’re speaking with what you want in the future. objective in a crucial conversation is to get all of your thoughts, conclusions, experiences, concerns out there in the open, so the other person has them as part of their understanding of the issue. But also you take responsibility to get all of theirs in that pool as well. You are equally responsible for helping them express theirs. And getting into that pool. So that the interaction the collision of you’re similar, but also occasionally different experiences produces synergy produces better ways of looking at the issue. So that intention, and that responsibility for getting both sets of meaning in is the is the first part of this. Once that’s done understanding these different skills, you can use ask mirror paraphrase prime he has is more tactical. 

 

Greg McKeown

What else can we do to help really understand the other side beyond phrases? Like, tell me more? Or it sounds like you’re saying acts? Like what words can we use or what tools to be able to show that we’re listening and to be able to be sure that we do understand that?

 

Joseph Grenny

The most important one is recognizing your responsibility to stay in there and to generate evidence that it’s safe, until the person feels safe enough to come out. Sometimes, though, it’s also about having the right conversation. If the problem is that over the course of a six month relationship with this individual, you have to go to enormous effort to create safety for them. It’s okay at times to have a conversation about that, to say, I don’t know what I’m not doing here, or what responsibility you need to take. Because I continue to need to go to enormous effort to try to draw you out in the relationship. That’s not working for me, how can we do this in a way that works for you, but also it doesn’t put the burden on me to try to get your information out all the time. 

 

Greg McKeown

Okay, let me ask you this. What’s the top quote that people take away when they read the book? 

 

Joseph Grenny

Well, two things. The first is just the title of the book, I think just calling out a term Crucial Conversations has helped people escalate the importance of being thoughtful about how they approach these moments. And so I think there’s some people that probably only read the title, but got more than their money’s worth out of the book. Never crack the cover, because hopefully, it put them on their better behavior in in these moments. But the second is the highest level claim of the book. And that is the you can measure the health of relationships, you can measure the health of teams, you can even measure the health of entire organizations by looking at one simple thing. And that is lag time. That that lag time is is either where all the mischief happens, all the mistrust all the Alien Nation, all of the rivalry between departments, or where all the creativity occurs, the shorter the lag time, the higher the functioning of the relationship, team or organization. How do you select for people that will have a short lag time, I think it’s a terrific thing to try to select for. But if that becomes an excuse for not intentionally developing that in an organization, then you’re doomed. Because even if somebody in a different social system was one of those zero lag time, people that address things in a professional and effective way quickly, if they’re brought into a system where it’s low trust, where the vast majority of actors politic around things, rather than working through them in a healthy way, they’ll usually drop to the level of the norms of that organization, or at least declined from where they were. It’s the responsibility of leaders to say not just that this is important, and to create safety for people to address things, but to hold them accountable to do it, and to train them to do it.

 

Greg McKeown  28:45  

I buy everything you just said, but still come back to the first point, which is, what is it that you need in someone that makes it safe for us to give feedback? You know, what’s the quality within them that would that would encourage us to say, Hey, listen, I’m going to tell you what I really think, what what is that characteristic? 

 

Joseph Grenny

I think it’s a combination of confidence and competence. So you know, people that are settled in themselves and comfortable in their own skin are generally more comfortable expressing how they see things. But that’s not culture independent. It depends on this the social situation that they’re in as well. But that’s a that’s a huge predictor. But the second is not just confidence, it’s competence. You can have people that are very confident of their point of view, who become obstinate jerks, and who are out there with their point of view and assuming the whole world needs to just shut up and listen to them. And so developing the competence to do to have the responsive take the responsibility not just to express their concerns or their perspective, but to do so in a way that makes room for those of others, and then to skillfully engage others to draw them out as well. These are the people that are culture lifters. They’re they’re the multipliers. They’re the ones that, that have an impact on raising the game of an entire team.

 

Greg McKeown

Okay, I like everything you’re saying. But I’m trying to get to a specific thing. And maybe there isn’t an obvious answer to this probably isn’t. But if there are people in your life that a harder to give feedback to write, versus people who are easier to give feedback to, but a crucial conversation at some level is about feedback, right? 

 

Joseph Grenny

It’s about you offering feedback and then being, you know, encouraging them to be able to also give their feedback. 

 

Greg McKeown

So you have this pool of combined meaning that you’ve been talking about, but other people who you say, if they just have this quality, then there’s someone I’d be willing to share the feedback with. 

 

Joseph Grenny

Yeah, I think that quality, the place that we all try to get to eventually is, is a place of, of self respect of believing that, that I have merit that I have value that my ideas are worth listening to. I that once I’ve settled that inside myself, I become more resilient in conversations. In fact, the the chapter that we added to the book is one we call retake your pin. And we use the pen as a metaphor for responsibility for defining the terms of my own worth and safety, that I don’t walk around the world assuming you’re responsible to make me emotionally safe. No, that’s my job. I don’t walk around the world looking for those who helped me feel good about myself. That’s my work. That’s my job. And those who understand that responsibility and take it seriously and develop rituals in their lives that cultivated on a regular basis, are capable of resilience in these crucial conversations of letting you come into it and tell me that you think my ideas whacked and being okay with you saying that? 

 

Greg McKeown

Let me ask you this. Why do you do what you do? You’ve been doing it 35 years?

 

Joseph Grenny

Yeah. 

 

Greg McKeown

Do you imagine yourself doing it for the next 20 years?

 

Joseph Grenny 

My life is about trying to help create a planet that works for everyone. That’s what it’s about. For me. I can’t imagine wanting to do anything else for the rest of my life. 

 

Greg McKeown

What a profound thing to be a part of something that  can have, let’s say residual goodness, residual impact in that in that bigger way. Give us the final word. 

 

Joseph Grenny

It certainly is a lot bigger than me. And I’m grateful to have been able to contribute to it somewhat in my life and intend to keep trying to get smarter at it.

 

Greg McKeown

Joseph Grenny, thank you for being on the What’s Essential podcast.

 

Joseph Grenny  32:33  

It was as enjoyable as I anticipated. Thank you, Greg.

 

Greg McKeown  32:36  

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve come to that time again, the end of the show. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being a part of this conversation. Wasn’t Joseph grainy, impressive, a polished, thoughtful presenter a teacher 35 years in his craft, that I hope 35 More to come as he shared those five specific things that we can do to better have the kinds of conversations that frankly, we often avoid. It gives us the chance to shift between this false dichotomy this sense of all we can do is give a polite yes or a rude No, he’s given us five specific skills we can apply right now to being able to move into that third option to negotiate the essential.

Thank you for everybody who has taken time, just a couple of minutes but still an important couple of minutes to leave a review of the Watts essential podcast on Apple podcasts. Here’s how to do it. Open the podcast app on your iPhone. Just navigate to the page of the podcast you want so you’re searching for the Watson central podcast. You scroll down close to the very bottom and find the subhead titles, ratings and reviews. Under the highlighted reviews select right to review. Number five is you select a star rating at the top five star review if you don’t mind. Number six you use the text box at the top to write a title for review. Then in the lower text box you write your review. It can be up to 300 words long but if you just want to write a sentence this is sufficient. Once you’re finished, select Send or save in the top right hand corner. Please take a photograph when you’ve done it and email it to me along with your name. So as your send an email to info at Greg mcewen.com i n fo at GRE G MSC KEOW n.com And do you enter the chance to receive membership in the essentialism Academy? As a $300 value, and it’s just a way to say thank you, which I wish to say again now, thank you for being a part of this community for listening, and for helping to grow this From its humble beginnings into now. One of the top five podcasts on Apple within self improvement in education. I mean, this is out of, I mean, we’re talking like out of 30,000 podcasts, it’s in the top five and and it’s growing and the momentum is clear. And that’s because of you. So, one more time. Thank you.


Greg McKeown

Credits:

  • Hosted by Greg McKeown
  • Produced by Greg McKeown Team
  • Executive Produced by Greg McKeown