ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I lost my job due to a reduction in force and haven’t been able to find another job due to my age. Everyone seems eager to hire me until I show up for the interview and they discover that I am sixty-one years old. How can I prove to potential employers that I have a lot to offer, despite my age? Signed,Overlooked  Dear Overlooked, I have a dear friend who has been going through the same ordeal. It’s not a great time for anyone to be looking for a job. And I know that the repeated feeling of disappointment that comes when one after another hope falls through can lead to awful self-doubt at a time when you need motivation to continue to represent yourself boldly. Before I offer some unconventional advice, let me suggest that you need to know your rights. If you have been overtly discriminated against because you are over forty, there are legal avenues you can pursue. I will not comment on those but suggest you find out what is available to you. The challenge in your situation is not just helping employers know what you have to offer, it’s ensuring you retain a firm view of the value you have to offer as well. If you start doubting yourself, you’ll be more reluctant to stay in the search as well as telegraph your lack of confidence in interviews. First, let’s reframe the problem of a job search. The employer’s central question when searching for a new hire is, "Can I trust you to solve important problems for me?" That’s it. It’s all about trust. Since the only way an employer can truly know if they can trust you to solve their problems is to give you the job, they have to rely on proxies for trust in the hiring process. Giving you and 1,000 candidates the actual job would be too inefficient, so they use proxies—like education, previous job titles, salary levels, and letters of recommendation. They’ll even look for gaps in employment as a way of discerning if you have some hidden issues that made others want to avoid you. As we all know, these are incredibly imperfect proxies. Resumes offer facts and figures that hiring managers hope will reveal truth—but they obscure as much as they reveal. In addition, they aren’t particularly persuasive. Reading that someone worked at Acme, Inc. as a superintendent from 1978-1987 tells me nothing about the kinds of problems I can trust you to solve. So, if you can’t give the employer a direct experience with your ability to solve problems (i.e., by taking the job for a couple of weeks), and the facts and figures approach to building trust is ineffective and fraught with weakness, what can you do? Also, is there anything you can do to retain trust in your own ability to solve important problems so you’ll stay motivated and project confidence during the search? Yes. In fact, I have one suggestion that I believe can help with both. It’s the advice I offered my friend and it seems to be helping—no job yet, but the market is responding much differently. The principle is to stop giving facts and start telling stories. Give potential employers a vicarious experience with you. Throw away the resume or keep it in reserve for when the box-checkers demand that you check their boxes for them. But ensure the experience potential employers have with you engages them in interesting stories about the problems you are uniquely suited to solve. Think about it. If you want to sell a hamburger, you don’t list its ingredients. You show a picture of it. It’s juicy. It’s got a crispy piece of lettuce on it and a dollop of the exact mustard you love. Then you show someone taking a bite of it with eyes drooping in ecstasy. Why do you do this? Because it helps people trust that this hamburger might help them feel the way they want to feel. It’s a vicarious experience—and we trust stories more than we trust facts and figures. We like direct experiences best, but stories are a strong second. My friend (I’ll call him Greg) threw away his resume. He started over by answering the question, "What am I world class at?" He thought about his personal brand. What problems do I want people to feel I can solve for them? He is a world-class HR strategist. He has a way of elevating every conversation he is part of. He brings humor and happiness to a team. And he’s a brilliant teacher and communicator. After clarifying the three or four problems he solves better than most anyone in the world, he designed a document that read like a "movie trailer" rather than a "resume." He created a document that included stories told by others about him that made these points. It includes graphics of logos of companies he solved problems for—sure, as an employee—but the point is not that he worked there—it’s that he solved problems there. He added his own commentary to let them know what he liked about the experiences others told. When you finish this 1,500-word document, you desperately want to meet Greg. Oh, and I didn’t mention, but Greg is sixty-one years old and legally blind. He worries that he gets shrugged off for one or both of these reasons. As he reframed his life story in terms of problems he is brilliant at solving, he found that his age and his disability were natural parts of the unique strengths he ended up describing. He was able to frame his visual impairment, for example, in a story about a complex negotiation and he was able to describe how listening to nuances that led to a breakthrough was a direct result of limited visual distraction. You’ll find that when you prepare your pitch as a story (movie trailer) rather than a eulogy, you’ll rediscover your own special value. You’ll bolster your confidence that you’re representing a product that deserves good representation. You’ll stop letting yourself be a prisoner to HR boxes that make you worry your age is a deficit and make it clear to both yourself and others that this is part of the reason they can trust you to contribute. Good luck telling your story. I hope you find the perfect place to serve and contribute. Warmly,Joseph More from Joseph Grenny on Forbes: Read Joseph’s latest article, "There’s Nothing Like a Financial Crisis to Bring Out The Best In People," to learn about the importance of vulnerability, sacrifice, and integrity during a financial crisis. Related posts: Seeking Accountability Shady Past Seeking a White-Collar Job Seeking an Honest Relationship

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I work as a nurse in the education department of a healthcare institution. I lead unit nurse educators whose role is to maintain the competence and educational skill level of the nursing staff on their units. They sometimes struggle with having a crucial conversation about safety or performance with a colleague who says, "It’s no big deal." How can I teach my nursing staff to hold their "friends" to a high standard without having the friend get defensive or tune them out? Nurse Educator  Dear Educator, Thanks for a great question. The issue you raise is relevant far beyond healthcare. Every organization has groups that are tasked with tracking and supporting best practices. Think of quality and safety departments in manufacturing, or human resources or IT departments in nearly every organization. Here is what happens. Everyone knows that your group owns the issue. In your case, your education department owns competency and skill building. A natural human reaction is to conclude that if you own it, then I don’t. In their minds, you become an enforcer and they act like drivers on the freeway who slow down when they see a cop but then speed again as soon as they’re out of radar range. They don’t take responsibility for their behavior. That’s why you hear them say things like, "It’s no big deal." It has become your issue, not theirs. There is no way that enforcement alone can drive good behavior. Not only does it fail to produce positive change, it makes the enforcers feel ineffective, unwanted, and unappreciated. But there are solutions. I’ll share a few ideas that come from our Influencer approach and have worked with many of our clients. Create an influence plan. Begin by meeting with the unit educators. Describe the problem and get them on board. They can never really succeed as long as they are seen as enforcers. Your team needs to get employees in the units to own the problem. Then they can play a supportive role by coaching, building skills, and getting access to resources. Make sure your team knows how their roles will need to change. Focus on measurable results. Determine a handful of measurable results that you and the units can track. For example, you might focus on infection control, falls, and patient and family experience. Pick the few that will have the greatest impact. If you include too many result areas, units will lose focus. Determine vital behaviors. Vital behaviors are the two to three actions that will drive the results if they are consistently and reliably employed. Some of these behaviors will be unique to the result areas you target. For example, wash in wash out reduces hospital-acquired infections; quick screens reduce falls; and bedside reports improve patient and family experience. Important to your case, a few vital behaviors span nearly every result area. One of these is 200 percent accountability, which means, "I’m 100 percent accountable for my own best practices and I’m also 100 percent accountable for your best practices." Instead of your education team members being the only ones to hold others accountable, everyone on the unit/team will hold everyone else accountable. This is the vital behavior that will fix the problem you describe in your question. But this is a tough behavior to implement. Making it work will require all Six Sources of Influence™. I’ll suggest one idea for each of the Six Sources. Personal Motivation—Create a value frame. Currently, employees in the units/teams are giving you and your nurse educators their compliance, not their commitment. They are focused on the enforcement of the rule, instead of the reasons for the rule. You could even say they are in a moral slumber. They aren’t attending to the very real personal impacts of their actions. For example, let’s say they are taking shortcuts instead of fully gowning up. When one of your staff reminds them, I bet they respond with "no big deal." Your staff needs to make it personal by focusing on the patient, not the rule. For example, "Imagine your daughter was on this unit and you were doing everything possible to keep her safe. Wouldn’t you want people here to gown up to protect her from infections?" Your goal is for employees in the units/teams to see holding each other accountable as watching out for each other. None of them wants to put their patients at risk and yet, we humans are all fallible. Despite our best intentions, we all make slips and errors. Team members need to give permission to (or request) their peers to watch out for them and to speak up when they see them slip. Personal Ability—Use deliberate practice. Team members need to decide how to remind each other. For example, "How would you like to be reminded if I see you forget to wash your hands?" They should compose the phrases they’d like to use to hold each other accountable. For example, "I’ll position the patient while you wash up," or "The dispenser is by the door." Then teams need to practice using these phrases. Talking about holding each other accountable isn’t as powerful as practicing holding each other accountable. A fifteen-minute practice is all it takes to turn good intentions into actual action. Social Motivation—Involve formal and informal leaders. You, as the manager of the education department, will want to meet with the unit managers to get their buy in. They need to understand that making their teams accountable for their own best practices is the best, most efficient way to improve performance. There will be times when someone will object to being held accountable. Maybe it’s a more experienced employee or a high-status professional who doesn’t want to be reminded by a newbie. In these cases, you want to provide easy and immediate support for the newbie. Having the formal leaders (the unit managers) on board is essential, but usually not enough. You’ll also want to reach out to informal leaders (the opinion leaders). Ask the manager, a physician, and a few other opinion leaders to play the champion role. They can explain why the issue (infection control, falls, etc.) is personally important to them. They can also provide that easy and immediate support when it’s needed. Structural Motivation—Reward small gains. This is where it gets fun. Instead of being enforcers, your team members become cheerleaders. Equip them with lots of ways to celebrate the improvements they see as units adopt 200 percent accountability and make progress on their results. You might give them gift certificates to use as recognition or provide funding for a few pizza parties. Structural Ability—Be the bridge to resources. This is another fun part of your new role. Your team members help units identify and bust through obstacles in their environment. For example, a team might complain that they don’t have enough hand-hygiene dispensers or that they aren’t always full and working. Your team takes on these kinds of challenges and gets to bring resources to the units. You are starting in a strong position because you already have nurse educators embedded in the units. The challenge now is to move the enforcement part of their jobs from the nurse educators to the staff members in the unit. Once staff members take responsibility for holding each other accountable, you’ll see rapid improvements in quality of care, safety, patient and family experience, and even staff satisfaction and engagement. David Related posts: How to Influence the Influencers Creating a Culture of Accountability Speaking Up For the Patient

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Listen to Kerrying On via MP3 Listen to Kerrying On via iTunes The TV shows I watched as a boy frequently offered up scenes of a father, dressed in suit and tie, coming home from work, carrying an expensive briefcase, and whistling a happy tune. But that would be the end of any work references. Once the briefcase was stowed, no sitcom writer dared bring down the mood with sordid details about the nature of work itself. Consequently, the message of the 50s was as vague as it was odd. Work was a place that required actions of mysterious origins—ones that left employees whistling tunes at the end of the day. My own father painted a very different picture of the workplace. We watched our TV far from the white-picketed environs of the sitcom folk. The people in our neighborhood wore thick aprons and gloves at work in an effort to keep the gunk, slime, and glue off their clothes. You didn’t see my dad or anyone else from 25th Street whistling as they came home from work. The woman next door who gutted fish at the local cannery most certainly didn’t skip her way into her doily-adorned living room each evening. After work she went straight to the kitchen where she tried her best to scrub the stench of fish from her hands. Given the circumstances on our side of the tracks, adults complained endlessly about the backbreaking and mind-numbing nature of their jobs along with the stupidity and pettiness of their bosses. They hated their jobs. It’s what they talked about. It’s what they told jokes about. It’s what they wrote songs about. With this in mind, imagine my surprise some twenty years later when one day I found myself whistling as I walked out the door—on the way to work, no less. I loved what I did. I wore neither suit nor tie, but somehow I had found a way to extract pleasure from my job. What a shock. I had never dreamed that one day I would like work. At first, I thought my satisfaction stemmed from the fact that I had a career (i.e., it required neither protective clothing nor a lunch pail) as opposed to a job. I was wrong. I could easily find ways to be unhappy within my white-collar environment just as individuals in the blue-collar world find ways to love what they do. I discovered that it wasn’t the nature of the work itself that determined job satisfaction. It was something else—something far more elusive. Two decades passed before I met Rich Sheridan, a renowned entrepreneur and organizational philosopher. A few years earlier, Rich started his own software development company with the strong belief that creating software (some of which involved actual cartoon figures and cool sound effects) would be a genuine hoot. But then Rich learned that customers (no matter how cool the product) often changed their minds in the middle of the development cycle, leading to ugly meetings with lots of finger pointing and much gnashing of teeth. Plus, the code writers who worked with Rich soon became specialists, making it impossible for any of them to leave work early or, heaven forbid, take a vacation. If they did, they’d leave an intolerable vacuum. Employees were now chained to their desks. For Rich and his team, what had started as a gentle romp down candy cane lane was now a tortuous grind through the valley of unfulfilled expectations. Where had he gone wrong? More specifically, how could he turn his company into a place that left him with a tune on his lips at the end of each day? Rich discovered the answer. He made an extensive study of joy and then infused his company with it. Best of all, he’s soon to release a book titled Joy Inc. that teaches how to create an intentionally joyful culture. Now, I’m not about to scoop Rich’s book, but I will suggest the following. As I met with Rich and his team in his joyful facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I was immediately filled with his vision. The sitcoms of the 50s had been right. You can love your work. You can whistle as you walk through the door each night. But you have to want it, believe it’s possible, and work for it. I myself have experienced a bit of a work-related transformation as of late. For years I enjoyed a job that consisted of traveling the world, consulting, and designing training. It was exhausting, but I loved it. Then one day, I had my fill with travel. I was done. After more than twenty years of being a road warrior, I gave up my airline Gold Card to stay closer to home and devote my time to writing. Surely, this would bring me joy. After all, I love writing. I was wrong. Writing can be lonely. Very lonely. You spend a lot of time staring at a screen that openly mocks you with its ghastly emptiness. Soon, I didn’t care all that much for my job. It involved far too much isolation, mumbling, pacing, and self-ridicule. Unlike my childhood neighbor, I wasn’t gutting fish all day long, but like her, I wasn’t happy at work. So I prepared myself for retirement. I was certainly old enough to retire. Luckily, I recalled my visit with Mr. Sheridan and his compelling case for joy at work and felt inspired to find ways to infuse my own job with joy. In my case, it involved restructuring my daily tasks and bringing on another writer with whom I could collaborate while occasionally reenacting Three Stooges bits. I now look forward to work. Every single day. How one goes about finding pleasure in his or her job varies and I don’t want to underestimate how much effort (and risk) it might take to negotiate with your boss for more interesting work, restructure your job, gain a new perspective, or possibly even switch companies altogether. Nor will I go into the various sources of work satisfaction ranging from the thrill of creation to beating a goal to satisfying a customer to enjoying supportive relationships and so forth. Mr. Sheridan can teach you about creating an entire company filled with joy. Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, can alert you to what it takes to be happy in general. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a job satisfaction guru, can teach you the elements required to enjoy any specific task at work. There’s plenty of help out there—once you decide to seek it. My point is far more modest. It’s this. We should expect to find joy at work and we should go out and seek it. Years of hearing about lousy jobs and reading statistics that suggest over half of all employees don’t like their work can lead one to expect to be unhappy at work. For many of us, it’s our go-in position. We may not think about it much or even talk about it—ever—but the idea that work equals dissatisfaction can be so deeply embedded into our psyches that it keeps us from hoping and asking for more. But we should hope and ask for more. We spend more time at work than just about anywhere else so it ought to be enjoyable. This doesn’t necessarily mean that in the ideal job employees routinely chase each other around with silly string, but a hoot once in a while or an excited sharing of a story should be common. Laughter should be common. Our default position should be that work—organized correctly—is pleasurable, and if it isn’t we need to make changes. Once this expectation is firmly set in our minds, we’ll start taking steps to find joy rather than develop methods for tolerating our existing miserable conditions. And from what I’ve personally experienced, joy is worth the search. Related posts: Dealing with Personal Issues at Work Kerrying On: A Holiday Gift for the Children

This letter was received in response to a question Joseph Grenny answered in the February 29, 2012 Crucial Skills Newsletter titled, "Influencing Unprofessional Dress." Dear Joseph, I am the "CEO" of this company—that is, I am the superintendent of schools of a 5,000-student K-12 district and my challenge was to get the building principals to agree that impressions do matter to our "customers." In public schools, we have a rather unique situation in that one never knows where the parents are on the "dress for success" spectrum. Some (like Joseph and some who responded to his column) do not like ties and suits (very few of us do!) and argued for a relaxed, personal approach to dress. But that doesn’t work when it comes to interacting with parents who are more likely (given that they’re taking the time to actually visit you rather than call or e-mail) to have an issue and are quite possibly mad and ready to draw conclusions of one sort or another. The impression we create for those parents matters, so we have to dress the part. However, my building leaders were often not setting a good example for the teachers in their school, and as a result, the entire building’s level of dress was unacceptable by most peoples’ standards. The occasional spirit day or casual Friday is totally fine and welcome in a school, but this was becoming the norm. So I decided to engage the leaders in a conversation. At our leadership council meetings we first talked about our impressions of the teachers’ dress and then about how we could be role models for them. Addressing the teachers’ dress was a secondary objective—they are unionized and for such "initiatives" we need to get union leadership on board. I decided to first discuss and then decree that leaders start wearing a jacket and tie (or the equivalent for women). Now, school leaders definitely look more professional. I’m not saying they wear three-piece suits, or even a suit, but the norm is now to wear a tie, and that has raised the general level of dress quite appropriately. In fact, I’ve started a conversation with union leadership about teacher dress. We’ll need to define terms such as "business casual" which means different things to different people, but there is consensus that such a term, once better defined, can and will help us get away from the ragged jeans and flip flops. I just cannot help but think how that type of dress harms our profession’s reputation and union leadership agrees, so perhaps we have some mutual purpose and common ground from which to operate when we begin step two of the dress for success campaign in our school district. Thank you once again for the advice and for the ensuing comments from your readers. Very helpful to me indeed! Editor’s Note: If you would like to share similar feedback about how the authors’ advice has helped you, please e-mail us at editor@vitalsmarts.com. Related posts: Influencing Unprofessional Dress Influencing the Education System What Happened: Time to Let People Go

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I have a beautiful, talented twenty-four-year-old daughter who is fifty pounds overweight. She is currently in graduate school and has not been in the job market for the last two years. I worry about her health, and the bias she will face seeking a job as an overweight individual, and I ache for her lack of a social life. I have been trying to serve healthy meals and discuss healthy eating at the dinner table, but I have stopped short of a direct crucial conversation with her. Now, she no longer goes on short walks and is doing even less physical activity than before. How can I open dialogue with my daughter about weight management? Worried Mother  Dear Worried, Crucial conversations with our closest loved ones can be the toughest and most rewarding conversations of our lives. They are challenging because you’re conflicted. You care deeply about your relationship and you worry that speaking up could threaten it. At the same time, you care deeply about your daughter’s health and happiness, so saying nothing isn’t an option. So, how do you speak up in a way that helps your daughter without undermining your relationship? Find Mutual Purpose. You are clearly concerned about her weight, and you’ve identified several potential consequences: health, bias, social life, and physical activity. You’ve also noted that weight is a touchy, unsafe topic for your daughter. I suggest you begin with the safest common ground, the one she is least likely to see as meddling—your fundamental concern for her health. I wouldn’t introduce the issues related to potential bias or her social life. And I would let her steer the discussion to weight. Help your daughter find her own motivation. Do your best to avoid giving advice, making suggestions, or lecturing. Instead, help your daughter explore her situation and decide for herself what she really wants. Begin with a contrasting statement. A contrasting statement is a "don’t/do" statement that is designed to fix misunderstandings. You can already anticipate that your daughter is likely to misunderstand your intent. She may think you intend to tell her how to live her life. Fix this misunderstanding before it has a chance to grow. The "don’t" statement explains what you don’t intend. It anticipates and addresses your daughter’s concerns: "I’d like to hear your point of view on a sensitive topic. I don’t want to intrude on your personal life or tell you what to do." The "do" statement explains what you do intend: "I just want to hear your perspective. I’ll respect your choices." Encourage your daughter to explore both sides of the issue. "Please tell me how you see your health—what’s working for you, and what’s not." Then stop talking and let your daughter respond. Don’t push your perspective. A mistake we often make is to state our position in a way that forces the other person to take the other side. Here’s an example of what that would sound like. Parent: "If you don’t begin exercising and eating right, it could have long-term impacts on your health and happiness." Daughter: "Not necessarily. I’m happy the way I am. Besides, with my school schedule, I don’t have time to cook food and go to the gym." You have advocated for one side and forced your daughter to advocate for the other side. And guess who’s going to win this argument? Focus on Mutual Purpose. Listen for what is working, rather than for what is not. Your daughter is likely to focus on the challenges that prevent her from living a healthy lifestyle. A good response from you would be, "Are you saying that you’re motivated to work on your health, but you’re struggling with how to do it?" If your daughter says she is motivated but unable, then you can offer your support and she might accept it. Know your limits and be willing to step back. There is a good chance your daughter won’t want to have this discussion with you. Even if she is concerned about her health, she might not want you to be involved. If that is the case, then I think you will be more successful if you respect her decision and back off. To you, this might feel like rejection when you are only trying to help, but please don’t take it that way. Even when your daughter shuts down the conversation, she is listening. Back off, give her some space, and allow her to think about her situation. Earn her trust by respecting her limits, and she might invite you to help her when she is ready. Other suggestions. Are there ways you can improve your own health behaviors? For example, are you eating fruits and vegetables, watching your weight, and getting plenty of exercise? Be a modest model. Don’t talk about it, but change your own behavior. Trust that your daughter will take notice. Change your home to make healthy eating and activities easier and more convenient. Keep fruit and vegetables visible, and make them appealing. Stop buying fatty, salty, and sugary foods. Consider replacing your plates with smaller ones and moving your TV to a less comfortable area. Introduce new, fun, muscle-powered toys. As you prepare for this crucial conversation, please remember that all the research confirms that parents are the most influential people in their children’s lives. You can have a real and positive impact in your daughter’s life. Take the chance and make a difference. Best wishes, David Related posts: Confronting a Child’s Drug Abuse Addressing Your Child’s Teacher Crucial Conversations for Kids

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kerry Patterson is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, I have an aging mom who needs to be moved into an assisted living facility, but she just won’t hear of it. How can I have a conversation with her to help her understand that she needs to move so we will know she is safe? Concerned  Dear Concerned, Your mother is lucky to have a loving child who is concerned about her well-being and safety—enough so that you’re willing to step up to what many believe will be one of the most difficult conversations they’ll ever have. After all, you’re about to ask an aging parent to step away from a comfortable situation, complete with a familiar collection of belongings and friends, and enter a situation that could be not only novel, but even frightening. After all, in her mind, the new home may not be a home at all, but an institution full of people who treat their customers in an institutional way. It’s filled with strangers. There are rules and restrictions of all sorts. Plus, who knows what view your parent has of assisted living facilities. For years, the industry was peppered with horrible places that were often used to hide away the ailing aged—forgotten by loved ones, ruled by the local version of nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and smelling of urine and alcohol. At least, that’s how movies portrayed the places. Your mom may have even visited such an institution—perhaps the horrible place that housed her mother or grandmother. The place you have in mind, in sharp contrast, provides lovely circumstances, delicious food, the possibility of companionship, and lots of fun group activities. Why just look at the van parked out front filling up with active seniors on their way to the mall for a shopping trip. Also pulling up out front is a group of high school kids who’ve come to put on a luncheon show of musical numbers and poetic recitations. At the ready, you’ll find a qualified staff of medical assistants who will ensure that the food everyone eats is healthy and in the right proportions while simultaneously monitoring medicines and special needs. There’s the rub. Two people hold two very different views of the immediate future and two very different opinions about what choice to make. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up trying to convince each other that your view is correct, while fighting off the other person’s incorrect view. As a result, neither of you will change your opinion and you will either continue with the status quo, or you will take your mom to the care center kicking and screaming. This sort of stand-off reminds me of a time I watched my eight-year-old daughter attempt to convince a neighborhood kid who had just moved to America to taste a bowl of chocolate ice cream. The new neighbor hadn’t tasted ice cream before and the brown blob she was being offered wasn’t the least bit appealing to her. My daughter kept saying, "Trust me, you’ll really like it!" And then when that didn’t work, she’d state: "Honest, you’ll really, really, really like it." The friend would shake her head no and steel her will against what she assumed was a circumstance similar to the time her mom told her to eat a suspicious looking new food (liver) and not to fret because it was really, really good—only it was liver. Essentially, my daughter was talking ice cream and her friend was hearing liver. Here are some steps you can take to avoid such a standoff. I’m assuming that your mom’s medical circumstances demand that she move to an assisted living center—for both her safety and your peace of mind. That means whether she moves isn’t open to discussion. How, when, where, and under what conditions are indeed open and require healthy dialogue. Enter to learn, not simply to teach. Before you start the conversation, don’t merely prepare your arguments, prepare your willingness to listen. You’ll need to understand your mother’s concerns in order to openly discuss and resolve them. Explain why you made the decision. Don’t start by suggesting that you’re thinking about her moving into assisted living. If you leave that door open, you’ll spend most of your time debating if, when the if is no longer up for discussion. Start by explaining that you and your siblings have decided that, for her own safety and well-being, it’s time she moves. Then share the circumstances that led you to make the decision. Explain the impact her actions have had on her and on friends and loved ones. Let her know that you’re trying to help her find a place she can enjoy while she still has most of her faculties, not a place to stow her away. Ask her to share her concerns. End your description of why she needs to move with an invitation for her to share her concerns. Some will be accurate, some you’ll need to research, and some will be way off base. Restate each concern to ensure that you understand exactly what she’s saying. Many of the concerns will be about genuine losses of independence and convenience. Discuss ways to mitigate or minimize these disadvantages. When she shares what you perceive to be an inaccurate perception, explain that you see it differently and then share your view. Quickly call for a study and visit. Rather than try to verbally persuade your mother of all the benefits of assisted living, involve her in selecting a facility—including a visit to some of the choices. Match your mother’s issues with the place that best suits her needs. Play the role of a good realtor—don’t sell the place, let the place sell itself. What do you like? What don’t you like? How might we change that to suit your needs? Talk with existing residents and see how they like it. Where possible, call or visit old friends who are currently living in a care facility and see what they think about the situation. Choose friends who face similar circumstances and they’ll be able to share insights about what to expect and what to do to avoid potential disappointments. Allow for a trial visit. Many facilities let you sample their services by signing up for a short test period. This is often the point at which the senior begins to realize that having others of the same age around, support from medical staff, prepared meals, less area to clean, and the like, more than offset the loss of living in one’s own home. Check for success. Once your mother selects a place and settles in, visit frequently—by whatever means possible. Check to see what is working and what isn’t. Where possible, make further changes to match her needs to the facility. Finally, live up to the promise you made to yourself. You meant it when you decided that you wanted what’s best for your mom. Whether this turns out to be true depends a great deal on how often you make contact with her once she’s found a new place to live. Kerry Related posts: Sharing Bad News with an Aging Parent Speaking with a Parent Facing a Crucial Conversation?

We’re taking a candid look at how management attempts to influence the bad behavior of employees and how effective these influence efforts are in creating change. Do any of these behaviors sound familiar in your workplace? People make commitments, but don’t take them seriously. Coworkers gossip or talk behind each others’ backs, creating cliques. When projects fall through, people shift blame instead of taking responsibility. Please weigh in by taking our 3-minute survey today. All who complete the survey will receive a free MP3 download from our Influencer Audio Companion. Listen as author Kerry Patterson shares how to increase your influence by making use of vicarious experiences. Thank you for your continued help in supporting our research efforts! Related posts: We Need Your Help: Ever Had a Crucial Conversation Go Social? When Your Employees Won’t Talk to You Influencing Litter Control

April 10, 2013—Provo, UT—Social networks are becoming increasingly hostile, with 78 percent of users reporting rising incivility online and 2 in 5 blocking, unsubscribing or "unfriending" someone over an argument on social media, according to new research from the authors of the New York Times best-seller Crucial Conversations. The online survey of 2,698 respondents suggests contentious conversations that begin online tend to spill over into real life. The study also indicates that people are generally less polite and tensions often go unresolved on social media. Specific findings include: 76 percent have witnessed an argument over social media 19 percent have decreased in-person contact with someone because of something they said online 88 percent believe people are less polite on social media than in person 81 percent say the difficult or emotionally charged conversations they have held over social media remain unresolved One of the survey respondents, Laura M., is still reeling from a family rift that began in cyberspace. It started innocently enough—her brother posted an embarrassing picture of her sister who asked him to remove it. A full-scale family brouhaha resulted when he not only refused to remove the photo, but instead blasted it out to his entire contact list. Ultimately, Laura’s brother unfriended all of his siblings and has denied in-person contact with them for the past two years and counting. Another respondent, Laura J., has seen the ripple effects of social media at work. A frustrated co-worker posted a message about wanting to "handle co-workers like we did in the old days," followed by some descriptive and violent detail. The atmosphere in the office has been tense ever since the post was made a year ago. Ultimately, employees unfriended their colleague and avoid her in the office "for fear she’ll come after [us]." Joseph Grenny, co-author of Crucial Conversations, says these tensions arise and go unresolved in part because online conversations provide a unique set of challenges that are seldom taken into consideration when people begin typing their frustrations. "Social media platforms allow us to connect with others and strengthen relationships in ways that weren’t possible before. Sadly, they have also become the default forums for holding high-stakes conversations, blasting polarizing opinions and making statements with little regard for those within screen shot," says Grenny. "We struggle to speak candidly and respectfully in person, let alone through a forum that allows no immediate feedback or the opportunity to see how our words will affect others." And as the research indicates, younger people are four times more likely than Baby Boomers to prefer having these emotionally charged conversations over social media, so the need to learn to effectively communicate online is increasing. "Social media platforms aren’t the problem, it’s how people are using them that is causing a degradation of dialogue that has potential to destroy our most meaningful personal relationships," says Grenny. Grenny offers tips for communicating both candidly and respectfully on social media: Check your motives. Social media hasn’t only changed the way we communicate, it has modified our motives. Ask yourself, "Is my goal to get lots of ‘likes’ (or even provoke controversy)?" or "Do I want healthy dialogue?" Replace hot words. If your goal is to make a point rather than score a point, replace "hot" words that provoke offense with words that help others understand your position. For example, replace "that is idiotic" with "I disagree for the following reasons…" Pause to put emotions in check. Never post a comment when you’re feeling emotionally triggered. Never! If you wait four hours you’re likely to respond differently. Agree before you disagree. It’s fine to disagree, but don’t point out your disagreement until you acknowledge areas where you agree. Often, arguers agree on 80 percent of the topic but create a false sense of conflict when they spend all their time arguing over the other 20 percent. Trust your gut. When reading a response to your post and you feel the conversation is getting too emotional for an online exchange—you’re right! Stop. Take it offline. Or better yet, face-to-face. About VitalSmarts: An innovator in corporate training and organizational performance, VitalSmarts is home to multiple training offerings, including the award-winning Crucial Conversations®, Crucial Confrontations®, Influencer®, and Change Anything™ Training. Each course improves key organizational outcomes by focusing on high-leverage skills and behavior-change strategies. The Company also has four New York Times best-selling books: Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, Influencer, and Change Anything. VitalSmarts has consulted with more than 300 of the Fortune 500 companies, trained more than 900,000 people worldwide and been named by Inc. magazine as one of the fastest-growing companies in America for eight consecutive years. www.vitalsmarts.com Note to editor: Author Joseph Grenny is available for interviews. Copies of Crucial Conversations are available upon request. About the research: The study collected responses via an online survey tool from 2,698 individuals in February of 2013. Margin of error is approximately 2 percent. CONTACT: Laura Potter of VitalSmarts, L.C. +1-801-510-7590, or lpotter@vitalsmarts.com. Related posts: We Need Your Help: Ever Had a Crucial Conversation Go Social? Author Opinion on Current Events: The Media is an Accomplice in School Shootings: A Call for a "Stephen King" Law How to Change Social Norms at the Office

The ChallengeJ. Lynn Jones is a VitalSmarts veteran. An elementary school principal for sixteen years, he became a certified trainer in Crucial Conversations and used those tools to help his school boost achievement. When he was promoted to director at the Nebo School District in central Utah, he added a certification in Crucial Confrontations. He taught both courses to most of his 600-person staff and also offered them to other administrators, teachers, and support staff in his district. But his biggest challenge in his expanded role was a persistent one. He was responsible for special education in the district and focused particularly on the special education teachers in its twenty-seven elementary schools. These are the instructors who give extra help to mainstreamed students with learning disabilities. And they didn’t have a history or culture of being accountable to progress their students. "We had a number of veteran teachers who never had high expectations, and the kids never performed well. The teachers used the excuse that ‘these kids have disabilities’," he said. "In the end, we weren’t seeing good instruction and we weren’t seeing good results." Of about sixty teachers, Jones was comfortable with only five or six of their results. But because he was not a career special educator, he lacked immediate credibility to shake things up by himself. About the same time he came to this realization, he added another VitalSmarts certification to his credentials: Influencer Training. The Results: Read our case study to learn how J. Lynn used Influencer Training to boost literacy rates and double the number of special education students released into the regular school system. Related posts: Success Story: Crucial Conversations Training Improves Nurses’ Ability to Address Disruptive Physician Behavior Case Study: Influencer Training Helps Tennessee Health System Achieve 100% EHR Adoption Case Study: Influencer Training Helps Retailer Save Millions and Prosper in Economic Recession

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I work in a busy, growing medical office with five support staff, and I share duties with a coworker who just turned seventy and has been with the clinic since it opened. We don’t have an office manager, so the clinic owners expect us, as peers, to come up with policies and procedures for the front desk, solve problems, and strategize on improvements. My coworker resists every suggestion of change or improvement to the front desk area and refuses to use the computer unless she has to. When I try to suggest changes in a nonthreatening manner, she gets very hostile and attacks me personally, and I no longer feel safe talking to her. The owners are aware of the situation, but they won’t address it. I want to see the clinic continue to grow but frankly don’t see how that can happen if the front desk doesn’t keep up with the times. Stuck in the 90s  Dear Stuck, You’ve just described an incredibly messy, complicated, and value-laden problem. There isn’t likely to be a simple or easy-to-implement solution. Let’s begin by identifying the different issues that are involved. You don’t have an office manager, so your team of five organizes its own work and handles any disagreements. One of your coworkers resists changes and improvements. This coworker becomes hostile and attacks you personally. This coworker is seventy years old and has been with the clinic since it opened. The owners are aware of this situation, but haven’t addressed it. The clinic is growing and the front desk needs to keep up with the times. I think we can break this problem into two parts based on who could take action to solve it. One problem is with your coworker—her resistance to change and her personal attacks. A second problem is with the owners—their unwillingness to take action. I would focus my efforts on the owners for a couple of reasons: I don’t think you will reach an accommodation with your coworker until they make their position clear. The owners have more options than you do for creating new solutions. In any case, I think they need to step up and take responsibility for the situation. Determine What You Really Want. Before you talk with the owners, decide what you want in the long-term for yourself, for the owners, for the clinic, and for your coworker. I’ll guess that you want the clinic to continue to grow, the front desk to keep up with the times, and a fair distribution of work within your team. Find Mutual Purpose. What do you think the owners want? I bet they want many of the same things you do, plus a couple more: They don’t want to have to get involved in personnel issues and they want to show loyalty to a loyal employee. Can you buy in to these five goals? Do you think the owners will as well? Agreeing that a high-quality solution will achieve all of these goals will take you a long way toward crafting a solution. Make It Motivating. There is a good chance the owners don’t share your view of the problem. They may see it as a personality clash, while you see it as a productivity issue. Take the time to describe the situations that occur, and the impacts they have on the clinic’s ability to function. Avoid personalizing these issues. Remember, the owners are prone to dismiss your concerns if they sound like personality differences. Stick to the facts as they relate to the clinic’s ability to grow. Make It Easy. Give the owners time and space to discuss possible solutions among themselves. Don’t press for a "simple" solution—one that could sound to the owners like you win and your coworker loses. Remember, the owners may want to reward your coworker’s loyalty as well as maintain a healthy workplace. This will take some consideration and creativity on their part. Yeah, But. There are several ways this conversation can go wrong. I’ll anticipate a couple. What if the owners still refuse to get involved? Here is how I would read this outcome: they want to protect your coworker, they don’t want to get involved in a personnel issue, and they think you can work it out on your own. That’s the story I’d tell myself, but I’d want to check it out with them. Ask them whether you are reading them correctly. If that is their position, then you need to ask yourself whether you can live with the results. It may mean redefining the roles within your front desk team. Your coworker may need to stick to her preferred jobs, while the rest of you work more flexibly. It may appear unfair on the surface, but maybe she’s earned it. What if the owners ask your coworker to change, but she doesn’t? What if she becomes even more hostile toward you as a result? The ideal is that peers hold peers accountable. However, peer accountability requires that leaders back them up when the going gets tough. Since you know this scenario is possible, discuss it with the owners in advance. They can’t just ask your coworker to change; they need to support her and hold her accountable. They need a plan—who will do what by when—and a way to follow up. Good luck with this tough situation. Have other readers resolved a similar situation? I’d love to hear what worked for you. David Related posts: Uncomfortable Conversations with a Coworker Coworker’s Personal Life Control Freak Coworker