By Douglas C. SchmidtPrincipal Researcher The SEI Blog continues to attract an ever-increasing number of readers interested in learning more about our work in agile metrics, high-performance computing, malware analysis, testing, and other topics. As we reach the mid-year point, this blog posting highlights our 10 most popular posts, and links to additional related resources you might find of interest (Many of our posts cover related research areas, so we grouped them together for ease of reference.) Before we take a deeper dive into the posts, let’s take a look at the top 10 posts (ordered by number of visits, with #1 being the highest number of visits): #1. Using V Models for Testing#2. Common Testing Problems: Pitfalls to Prevent and Mitigate#3  Agile Metrics: Seven Categories#4. Developing a Software Library for Graph Analytics#5. Four Principles of Engineering Scalable, Big Data Software Systems #6. Two Secure Coding Tools for Analyzing Android Apps #7. Four Types of Shift-Left Testing#8. Writing Effective YARA Signatures to Identify Malware#9. Fuzzy Hashing Techniques in Applied Malware Analysis#10. Addressing the Software Engineering Challenges of Big Data TestingUsing V Models for TestingCommon Testing Problems: Pitfalls to Prevent and MitigateFour Types of Shift-Left Testing Don Firesmith’s blog posts on testing continue to rank among the most visited posts on the SEI Blog. The post Using V Models for Testing, which was published in November 2013, has been the most popular post on our site throughout the first half of this year. In the post, Firesmith introduces three variants on the traditional V model of system or software development that make it more useful to testers, quality engineers, and other stakeholders interested in the use of testing as a verification and validation method. The V model builds on the traditional waterfall model of system or software development by emphasizing verification and validation. The V model takes the bottom half of the waterfall model and bends it upward into the form of a V, so that the activities on the right verify or validate the work products of the activity on the left. More specifically, the left side of the V represents the analysis activities that decompose the users’ needs into small, manageable pieces, while the right side of the V shows the corresponding synthesis activities that aggregate (and test) these pieces into a system that meets the users’ needs. In the two-part blog post series Common Testing Problems: Pitfalls to Prevent and Mitigate, Firesmith begins by citing a widely known study for the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) reporting that inadequate testing methods and tools annually cost the U.S. economy between $22.2 billion and $59.5 billion, with roughly half of these costs borne by software developers in the form of extra testing and half by software users in the form of failure avoidance and mitigation efforts. The same study notes that between 25 and 90 percent of software development budgets are often spent on testing. In this two-part series (read the first post here; read the second post here), Firesmith highlights results of an analysis documenting problems that commonly occur during testing. Specifically, this series of posts identifies and describes 77 testing problems organized into 14 categories; lists potential symptoms by which each can be recognized, potential negative consequences, and potential causes; and makes recommendations for preventing them or mitigating their effects. In the post, Four Types of Shift-Left Testing, Firesmith details four basic methods to shift testing earlier in the lifecycle (that is, leftward on the V model). These can be referred to as traditional shift left testing, incremental shift left testing, Agile/DevOps shift left testing, and model-based shift left testing. Readers interested in finding out more about Firesmith’s work in this field can refer to the following resources: Book: Common System and Software Testing Pitfalls Podcast: Three Variations on the V Model for System and Software Testing Agile Metrics: Seven Categories For agile software development, one of the most important metrics is delivered business value. This progress measure, while observation-based, does not violate the team spirit. A group of SEI researchers began research to help program managers measure progress more effectively. At the same time, we want teams to work in their own environment and use metrics specific to the team, while differentiating from metrics that are used at the program level. The SEI blog post, Agile Metrics: Seven Categories, details three key views of agile team metrics that are typical of most implementations of agile methods: velocity, spring burn-down chart, and release burn-up chart. This research, which is presented in greater detail in the SEI technical note Agile Metrics: Progress Monitoring of Agile Contractors, involved interviewing professionals who manage agile contracts, which gave SEI researchers insight from professionals in the field who have successfully worked with agile suppliers in DoD acquisitions.  Based on interviews with personnel who manage agile contracts, the technical note (and blog post) also identify seven successful ways to monitor progress that help programs account for the regulatory requirements common in the DoD. Readers interested in finding out more about this research can read the following SEI technical reports and notes: Agile Metrics: Progress Monitoring of Agile Contractors Considerations for Using Agile in DoD Acquisition Agile Methods: Selected DoD Management and Acquisition Concerns DoD Information Assurance and Agile: Challenges and Recommendations Gathered Through Interviews with Agile Program Managers and DoD Accreditation Reviewers Parallel Worlds: Agile and Waterfall Differences and Similarities Developing a Software Library for Graph Analytics Graph algorithms are in wide use in DoD software applications, including intelligence analysis, autonomous systems, cyberintelligence and security, and logistics optimizations. In late 2013, several luminaries from the graph analytics community released a position paper calling for an open effort, now referred to as GraphBLAS, to define a standard for graph algorithms in terms of linear algebraic operations. BLAS stands for Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms and is a common library specification used in scientific computation. The authors of the position paper propose extending the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Sparse Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (spBLAS) library to perform graph computations. The position paper served as the latest catalyst for the ongoing research by the SEI’s Emerging Technology Center in the field of graph algorithms and heterogeneous high-performance computing (HHPC). This blog post, the second in a series highlighting ETC’s work in high-performance computing, is a follow-up to the 2013 post, Architecting Systems of the Future. This second post describes efforts to create a software library of graph algorithms for heterogeneous architectures that will be released via open source.This post details research that bridges the gap between the academic focus on fundamental graph algorithms and our focus on architecture and hardware issues. The post by the SEI’s Scott McMillan also highlights a collaboration with researchers at Indiana University’s Center for Research in Extreme Scale Technologies (CREST), which developed the Parallel Boost Graph Library (PBGL). In particular, the SEI is working with Dr. Andrew Lumsdaine who serves on the Graph 500 Executive Committee and is considered a world leader in graph analytics. Researchers in this lab worked with us to implement and benchmark data structures, communication mechanisms and algorithms on GPU hardware. Readers interested in finding out more about our work in this area can read the following SEI technical note: Patterns and Practices for Future Architectures Big Data Four Principles of Engineering Scalable, Big Data Software Systems Addressing the Software Engineering Challenges of Big Data New data sources, ranging from diverse business transactions to social media, high-resolution sensors, and the Internet of Things, are creating a digital tsunami of big data that must be captured, processed, integrated, analyzed, and archived. Big data systems that store and analyze petabytes of data are becoming increasingly common in many application domains. These systems represent major, long-term investments, requiring considerable financial commitments and massive scale software and system deployments. With analysts estimating data storage growth at 30 to 60 percent per year, organizations must develop a long-term strategy to address the challenge of managing projects that analyze exponentially growing data sets with predictable, linear costs. In a popular series on the SEI blog, Ian Gorton continues his exploration of the software engineering challenges of big data systems. In the first post in the series, Addressing the Software Engineering Challenges of Big Data, Gorton describes a risk reduction approach called Lightweight Evaluation and Architecture Prototyping (for Big Data) that he developed with fellow researchers at the SEI. The approach is based on principles drawn from proven architecture and technology analysis and evaluation techniques to help the Department of Defense (DoD) and other enterprises develop and evolve systems to manage big data. In another post, the tenth most popular on our site in the first six months of 2015, Four Principles of Engineering Scalable, Big Data Software Systems, Gorton describes principles that hold for any scalable, big data system. Readers interested in finding out more about Gorton’s research in big data can refer to the following additional resources: Webinar: Software Architecture for Big Data Systems Podcast: An Approach to Managing the Software Engineering Challenges of Big Data Two Secure Coding Tools for Analyzing Android Apps One of the most popular areas of research among SEI blog readers this year has been the series of posts highlighting our work on secure coding for the Android platform. Android is an important of focus, given its mobile device market dominance (82 percent of worldwide market share in the third quarter of 2013the adoption of Android by the DoD, and the emergence of popular massive open online courses on Android programming and security. Since its publication in late April, the post Two Secure Coding Tools for Analyzing Android Apps, by Will Klieber and Lori Flynn, has been among the most popular on our site. The post highlights a tool they developed, DidFail, that addresses a problem often seen in information flow analysis: the leakage of sensitive information from a sensitive source to a restricted sink (taint flow). Previous static analyzers for Android taint flow did not combine precise analysis within components with analysis of communication between Android components (intent flows). The SEI CERT Division’s new tool analyzes taint flow for sets of Android apps, not only single apps. DidFail is available to the public as a free download. Also available is a small test suite of apps that demonstrates the functionality that DidFail provides.  The post by Klieber and Flynn is the latest in a series detailing the CERT Secure Coding team’s work on techniques and tools for analyzing code for mobile computing platforms. Readers interested in finding out more about the CERT Secure Coding Team’s work in secure coding for the Android platform can refer to the following additional resources: Presentation: Using DidFail to Analyze Flow of Sensitive Information in Sets of Android Apps Blog Post: An Enhanced Tool for Securing Android Apps Technical Report: Making DidFail Succeed: Enhancing the CERT Static Taint Analyzer for Android App Sets SOAP 2014 Workshop Paper: Android Taint Flow Analysis for App Sets  MalwareWriting Effective YARA Signatures to Identify Malware Fuzzy Hashing Techniques in Applied Malware Analysis Previous SEI Blog posts on identifying malware have focused on applying similarity measures to malicious code to identify related files and reduce analysis expense. Another way to observe similarity in malicious code is to leverage analyst insights by identifying files that possess some property in common with a particular file of interest. One way to do this is by using YARA, an open-source project that helps researchers identify and classify malware. YARA has gained enormous popularity in recent years as a way for malware researchers and network defenders to communicate their knowledge about malicious files, from identifiers for specific families to signatures capturing common tools, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). In the blog post Writing Effective YARA Signatures to Identify Malware, CERT Division researcher David French provides guidelines for using YARA effectively, focusing on selection of objective criteria derived from malware, the type of criteria most useful in identifying related malware (including strings, resources, and functions), and guidelines for creating YARA signatures using these criteria. YARA provides a robust language (based on Perl Compatible Regular Expressions) for creating signatures with which to identify malware. These signatures are encoded as text files, which makes them easy to read and communicate with other malware analysts. Since YARA applies static signatures to binary files, the criteria statically derived from malicious files are the easiest and most effective criteria to convert into YARA signatures. The post highlights three different types of criteria that are most suitable for YARA signature development: strings, resources, and function bytes. The simplest usage of YARA is to encode strings that appear in malicious files. The usefulness of matching strings, however, is highly dependent on which strings are chosen. In the post Fuzzy Hashing Techniques in Applied Malware Analysis, French highlights improved ways of assessing whether two files are similar including fuzzy hashing. When investigating a security incident involving malware, analysts will create a report documenting their findings. To denote the identity of a malicious binary or executable, analysts often use cryptographic hashing, which computes a hash value on a block of data, such that an accidental or intentional change to the data will change the hash value. In communication science, cryptographic hashes are frequently used to determine the integrity of a message sent through a communication channel. In malware research, they are useful for positively identifying a piece of software. If a suspected file has the same cryptographic hash as a known file, an analyst is reasonably confident that the files are identical. Modifying even a single bit of a malicious file, however, will alter its cryptographic hash. The result is that inconsequential changes to malicious files will prevent analysts from rapidly observing that a suspected file is identical to a file they have already seen. To counter this behavior, analysts seek improved ways of assessing whether two files are similar. One such method is known as fuzzy hashing. Fuzzy hashes and other block/rolling hash methods provide a continuous stream of hash values for a rolling window over the binary. These methods produce hash values that allow analysts to assign a percentage score that indicates the amount of content that the two files have in common. A recent type of fuzzy hashing, known as context triggered piecewise hashing, has gained enormous popularity in malware detection and analysis in the form of an open-source tool called ssdeep. Looking Ahead In the coming months, we will be continuing our series on DevOps, as well as posts on vulnerability analysis tools, predictive analysis, context-aware computing, and the SEI strategic plan. We will also continue our SPRUCE series highlighting recommended practices in the fields of Agile at Scale, Monitoring Software-Intensive System Acquisition Programs, Managing Intellectual Property in the Acquisition of Software-Intensive Systems. Thank you for your support. We publish a new post on the SEI Blog every Monday morning. Let us know if there is any topic you would like to see covered in the SEI Blog. We welcome your feedback in the comments section below. Additional Resources  For the latest SEI technical reports and notes, please visit http://resources.sei.cmu.edu/library/.

According to our new study on communication in relationships, couples who argue effectively are ten times more likely to have a happy relationship than those who sweep difficult issues under the rug. And what are the most difficult topics couples usually avoid or harmfully debate? The study found that the three most difficult topics for couples to discuss are sex, finances, and irritating habits. Other interesting statistics include: Four out of five say poor communication played a role in their last failed relationship and half cite poor communication as a significant cause of the failed relationship. Fewer than one in five believe they are usually to blame when a conversation goes poorly. Those who blame their partner for poor communication are more likely to be dissatisfied with the relationship. Many couples operate under the myth that when they avoid discussing sensitive issues, they avoid an argument. And most couples mistakenly assume that avoiding an argument is ultimately a win for the relationship. However, what we don’t talk out, we eventually act out. In reality, it’s not how much you argue, but the way in which you debate sensitive issues that ultimately determines the success of your relationship. The good news is that with the right set of skills, crucial conversations can strengthen your relationship. Here are five tips for effectively holding crucial conversations with your significant other: Manage your thoughts. Soften your judgments by asking yourself why a reasonable, rational, and decent person would do what your significant other is doing. Affirm before you complain. Don’t start by diving into the issue. Establish emotional safety by letting your significant other know you respect and care about him or her. Start with the facts. When you begin discussing the issue, strip out accusatory, judgmental, and inflammatory language. Be tentative but honest. Having laid out the facts, tell your significant other why you’re concerned—but don’t do it as an accusation, share it as an opinion. Invite dialogue. After sharing your concerns, encourage your significant other to share his or hers—even if he or she disagrees with you. If you are open to hearing your significant other’s point of view, he or she will be more open to yours. Related Material:Crucial Applications: Overcoming the "Nasty versus Nice" Debate Crucial Applications: Talking About Holiday Finances Crucial Applications: Delivering Bad News

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 have a coworker who abuses my open-door communication policy. Our offices are side-by-side, and we both benefit from this arrangement by discussing dilemmas and sorting through issues to prioritize our group’s efforts. However, my coworker has a very reactive way of coping with an e-mail she does not like or a phone call from someone who disagrees with her. She will come rushing into my office to rant about this e-mail or that coworker, or this phone call or that situation. This happens five to six times a day! This behavior is distracting because she expects me to put aside what I’m working on to pay attention to her. She’s also thin-skinned, very volatile, and I suspect less than receptive to a conversation that centers on her negative behavior. Any suggestions? Signed, Open-Door Abuse Dear Open-Door, This is an interesting question because it’s hard to say which issue you should address. The first skill of crucial conversations is picking the right conversation. Your two options are: Reset expectations. This one is fairly straightforward. The key is to make it about you and not the other person. This is you realizing you need a different boundary in order to be productive in your work—not blaming your coworker for interrupting you. If you set it up that way, there is minimal chance of defensiveness. Address your coworker’s volatile behavior. There are two reasons to address this issue first. One reason is if you think—no matter how careful you are—you’ll be unable to focus on resetting expectations. If this is true, then you have to address your coworker’s volatile behavior first. The second reason is if it is more important to address her behavior than it is to reset expectations. When you use words like "volatile," it sounds as though you may have been putting up with abuse for some time and even enabling her misbehavior by not asking for things you want or need in your work relationship. If this is true, you have to hold an entirely different crucial conversation. If you decide to reset expectations, as I said, make it about you and your needs—not a criticism of your colleague. This is both true and easier to express without creating defensiveness. Go in with a specific proposal—not just a vague criticism. For example, you might simply say, "I’ve noticed that I go home many times feeling disappointed in how much I get done. I’ve realized that one reason is that I don’t focus. I am going to start creating "islands of focus" in my day—when I do not respond to e-mail, talk with colleagues, or schedule meetings. This will put a cramp in the spontaneous conversations we sometimes have, but I want to try this. Can I ask that from 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. you not tempt me with interesting topics?" You’ll then need to maintain this agreement and give reminders if there are encroachments. If you don’t, then you will be colluding in undermining your own request. So be firm and consistent—odds are it will only take a couple of reminders and you’ll have a bit of solitude. Confronting her behavior will be more difficult. I might be reading more into this than I should—but I’m inferring not just to volatility (i.e., she gets animated when expressing frustrations) but to hostility (she is defensive and rude when you confront her about concerns). If I am correct, you may want to hold her accountable on this issue. You may also want to give some thought to how you may be rewarding this pattern by allowing it to cause you to tiptoe around other behaviors that don’t work for you (like constant interruptions). Over time, a weakness like this can turn into a technique when those around her reward it too consistently. If you decide to address this issue, once again, start with safety. When confronting a longstanding pattern that you’ve colluded in, a good way to do this is to acknowledge your part. For example, "I’d like to discuss a concern that I’ve put off addressing for a long time. I realize the pattern we’ve fallen into is as much my fault as yours—as I’ve been staying silent and blaming you for my silence. I’d like to discuss the problem—including how I might be contributing to it—and find a way to work together that is acceptable to both me and you." From here, you’ll need to describe two or three examples of the pattern. Be careful, because each time you describe an instance, she’s likely to offer excuses for that instance. For example, you might say, "Last week when I pointed out misspellings on your PowerPoint slide you called me a loser. Then laughed and walked away." If she then says, "I was joking!" You need to return her to the pattern. Say something like, "I realize there might be special reasons you said things in each circumstance I raise. And yet, what I’m asking you to notice it that there is a pattern—one that is unacceptable to me. If it happened just once, I wouldn’t be discussing this. This is something that happens regularly. Can you see that?" This will be tricky, but the key is to maintain safety while being fully honest. You need to begin exercising a firmness you have not in the past. If you do, there is a good chance you can get closer to the kind of relationship that will work for you. Best wishes, Joseph Related Material:Influencing Corporate Policy What if the other person refuses to open up?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR   David Maxfield is coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I have two employees who are categorized as management yet they do not have any direct reports nor do their job descriptions indicate any responsibilities specific to management. Because it is a large company, I am unable to modify the job classification. I would like to delegate increased responsibility to their role, but there is also an issue of trust. These two employees do not have the desire to grow as leaders. They are content with working their eight hours a day and going home. As much as I try to help them develop, they just aren’t interested. Do you have any suggestions for motivating or developing managers? Motivated Manager Dear Motivated, Thanks for describing an interesting influence challenge that many managers face. Organizations ask managers to develop their people, and the workload makes it important for people to take on larger roles, but some employees seem comfortably stuck in their status quo. Or maybe you’re a mom or dad whose son or daughter is comfortably stuck in the status quo—or whatever you call their basement bedroom. You want your child to launch a career, but he or she doesn’t seem interested in doing what it takes. How do you get a person who is comfortably stuck to take action? Avoid the fundamental attribution error. When people are stuck, we have a strong tendency to blame their personal motivation. More often than not, we describe them as lacking character, willpower, grit, or determination. This bias is so strong that psychologists call it the "Fundamental Attribution Error." However, when a person is stuck—even comfortably stuck—there is usually a lot more going on than simple laziness. I’m not saying the employees you described aren’t lacking personal motivation. I think you described their poor initiative quite well; however, there is a good chance that personal motivation is not their only problem—it’s just the most obvious one. Diagnose all six sources. When people are stuck, it’s usually because all Six Sources of Influence are working in combination to hold them fast. Their world is perfectly organized to create the behavior (or lack of behavior) you are currently seeing. Here are the questions we use to diagnose obstacles in all six sources: Personal Motivation. Left in a room by themselves, would they want to take on greater responsibilities? Would they enjoy it, find it meaningful, and aspire to it as an important part of their identity? Would they take pride in it, or see it as a moral imperative? Ideas for action: Invite choice. As part of the performance-management process, ask each employee to prepare a two- to three-year plan. Ask them to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) your organization and your department face. Then have them anticipate how they see your department and their jobs changing in order to take advantage of these SWOTs. Finally, have them describe what they would like to be doing in two or three years and what they need to do now in order to prepare themselves. Try small steps. Identify the crucial moments when it would be most helpful for your employees to step up to greater responsibilities. Think of times, places, and circumstances when you could really use their help in a particular way for a short period of time. It will be most effective if you can include them in finding these crucial moments. People are more trusting when they discover crucial moments for themselves. Then ask for their help during these brief and occasional crucial moments. Personal Ability. Left in a room by themselves would they have all the skills they need to feel confident taking on greater responsibilities? Do they already have the right knowledge, skill sets, experiences, training, and strength? Ideas for action: Training that focuses on critical dependencies. Ask your reluctant employees to identify skill sets that are new, are becoming more important, or are in short supply. These skills would make a person indispensable. If they aren’t quick to identify these skills, work with them to identify the people in your organization who could help and ask your employees to interview them. Training that fills in missing skills. Suppose your reluctant employees did accept a greater role, what parts of an expanded job would they find most difficult, tedious, or noxious? How could you skill them up so they’d be confident, efficient, and effective in these areas? We often say, "If it’s taking too much will, add some more skill!" Maybe an ounce of skill will yield another pound of motivation. Social Motivation. Are the right people encouraging them to take on greater responsibilities? Do the peers they respect, the managers they look up to, and their family members encourage or discourage them from stepping up? Ideas for action: Get them some feedback. Do they know how others see them? Most of us want to believe we are doing our fair share. Motivate change by using a 360-degree feedback tool to get feedback from their peers and customers. Make it clear that the feedback is for development—not evaluation—purposes and make sure you have solutions for whatever negative feedback they receive. Otherwise, this kind of feedback can be more demoralizing than motivating. Connect them with a greater purpose. Get them involved in field trips where they meet with their internal or external customers. Make the connection as personal as possible. Have them report to your team on what they learned and on how your team can improve. Social Ability. If your employees take on greater responsibilities, are the people around them ready to lend a hand? Do they have mentors, trainers, and peers who can give advice and step in to help? Ideas for action: Make them coaches. Sometimes people step up when they become responsible for someone else’s success. Consider assigning them to work with another person in your group. Structural Motivation. Does your organization provide incentives such as performance reviews, pay, promotions, and perks that could motivate these employees to take on greater responsibilities? Your employees’ job descriptions don’t include management activities so it’s hard to use the formal reward system, but there may be other routes to explore. Ideas for action: Recognize incremental improvements. Try small assignments, projects that can be completed within a week, and then give your honest, heartfelt appreciation when they complete them. Then gradually increase the number, size, duration, and importance of these projects. Continue to show your appreciation as you deem appropriate. Structural Ability. Is there a way to use the environment, data, tools, cues, or systems to make it easier and more convenient for these people to take on greater responsibilities? Ideas for action: Discover and remove obstacles. Ask yourself (or your reluctant employees), "If you wanted to take on a few additional responsibilities, what are the biggest obstacles you would face?" One good guess would be time. If nothing else about their jobs changed, they would have to work longer, harder days. How could you change that? What could you take off their plates so they would have more time for higher-value work? Showing your flexibility may encourage them to become more flexible as well. I hope these ideas help you generate more strategies tailored to your exact situation. Notice all these ideas involve an investment of time, energy, and thought on your part. It would be easier to write off the employees as unmotivated slugs, but that would mean abdicating your own responsibilities as a manager. It would also be a very costly write-off, since they are likely to remain on your payroll. Whether you’re dealing with reluctant employees or a child who is still living in your basement, never lose faith! When you marshal the power of all Six Sources of Influence, you can truly change anything. David Related Material:Change Anything: Motivating Weight Loss Putting Skills into Action Does the path to action still include telling a story?

To help more of our readers with their crucial conversations, confrontations, and behavior change challenges, we recently introduced the Community Q&A column! Please share your answers to this reader’s question in the comments below. Dear Crucial Skills, What can we do as a company to optimize our cross-cultural performance? As a multi-national corporation, our employees live in different countries and time zones, have different cultural backgrounds, and speak different languages. The situation is further complicated because we usually don’t have the luxury of face-to-face contact. Can you share tips and examples for using Crucial Conversations to handle cultural differences? Cultural Balancing Act Related Material:Crucial Applications: Bridging the Cultural Communication Gap Crucial Conversations about Climate Change Crucial Applications: Overcoming the "Nasty versus Nice" Debate

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Switzler is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, I have attended Crucial Conversations Training and try to practice the skills, but it’s difficult when the person I am trying to communicate with doesn’t "play along." For example, when I try to ask how he or she is feeling or why he or she feels a certain way, I receive a response such as, "I don’t know," or, "I don’t want to talk about this." This ends the conversation and I feel stifled and defeated. What do I do? Playing Along  Dear Playing Along, It is very frustrating when you want to talk something out with someone and the only response you get is, "I don’t know," or "I don’t want to talk about this," or worse, an icy-cold stare laced with a fake smile. I hear you. I’ve been there. So what should you do when the other person won’t play along? I think you have an advantage—you’re motivated and able because you’ve gone through the training and practiced your skills. Good job. Whether it’s at work or at home, you feel the need to hold a crucial conversation and the other person won’t talk to you. He or she won’t engage and won’t "play along." What I hope to provide here are tips that might give you some additional options for reaching dialogue with a stubborn companion. 1. Start with heart. I suggest you Start with Heart and ask yourself, "What nonverbal messages am I sending?" Sometimes we have behaviors—subtle or overt—that demonstrate our purpose or intent more loudly than our words. A common pattern is to start a conversation very pleasantly and nicely but then quickly let our emotions escalate as we press for the solution we want. Or sometimes before we even open our mouths, we enter a conversation with our eyes and gestures signaling, "I have held court in my head and found you guilty; let’s talk." When that happens, other people don’t want to play. These kinds of patterns cause people to disengage from the conversation. Here’s a personal example. Years ago, my third daughter found every excuse to avoid talking with me. She was fourteen years old and all I got was a cold shoulder. Finally, I asked her why she was acting that way around me, and in a tender moment, she opened up. She shared with me that no matter what I asked her—whether it was about school, friends, or something else entirely—I always, always got around to discussing just two topics, her grades and her messy room. Sometimes, we are so good at debating that the other person prefers to disengage or stonewall rather than argue. Make sure you get your emotions in control before you open your mouth. Make sure you build Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect before you begin and work to maintain both throughout the conversation. The other person needs to know you have a mutual purpose rather than a selfish or opposing one. 2. Choose CPR. We often find that people choose the wrong topic to discuss. When having a crucial conversation, we tend to choose simple over complex; recent over distant; and easy over hard. In reality, we need to discuss the right issue instead of the most convenient one. We use the acronym CPR to help you determine what the right issue really is. C stands for content and deals with the immediate incident or concern. P stands for pattern and references the fact that the immediate incident has actually occurred more than once and probably frequently enough to make you upset. R stands for relationship and is a conversation you hold when you realize that the pattern is so pervasive and unwanted that it is now affecting your thoughts, feelings, and interactions with that person. You need to hold a conversation not about the content, but about the pattern you’re experiencing—the way in which you two talk, or don’t talk. You need to explain the pattern you’ve noticed and how it’s affecting your relationship. I can see the conversation going like this: "Bob, every once in a while, I feel the need to talk about an issue here at work. The last two times I have tried to talk to you, you said, ‘I don’t know,’ and ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’ I know having conversations about issues like budget or deadlines can be tough. I don’t want to make it tough. I want to be able to talk about these issues so we can work together in the most effective way. Why do you think it’s difficult for us to have these talks? What’s going on?" If the person still refuses to talk, I’d ask, "Will you please think about it? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I do want to deal with some of these issues so we can work well together. Can we schedule a time tomorrow to meet and talk about our working relationship?" 3. Explore natural consequences. In Crucial Confrontations, we teach the difference between imposed and natural consequences. So far, I’ve only introduced the natural consequences of being unable to communicate. Helping people understand what will happen naturally if you don’t deal with the issues is an educational step that motivates them to comply. For example, you could explain how the lack of talking about issues is affecting colleagues, deadlines, budgets, and customers. If your colleague still won’t comply, then you’d impose a consequence. In this case, you’d probably ask someone else to help or communicate the situation to your boss and ask her to convene a meeting. 4. Use your skills; keep your cool. When you have situations like the one you’ve described, it’s easy to slip into less than helpful behaviors. Make sure you avoid gossiping about the other person, getting angry and flying off the handle, or withholding information or avoiding the other person. What you do when it matters most will determine the results you achieve, the relationships you build, and how you feel about yourself when you look in the mirror. Inviting people to dialogue, being persistent and patient, and maintaining your professionalism will eventually pay big dividends. While I believe you can make progress and there is great potential in your relationship, I will close by saying that not all conversations work. You can’t always get into them and you can’t always get the things you want out of them. However, crucial conversations skills improve your chances of getting results and building and preserving valuable relationships. Best wishes,Al

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’m tired of attending meetings where there’s no agenda, the wrong people are in attendance, and people carry on side conversations and otherwise violate good meeting etiquette. How can we use our Crucial Conversations skills to get our meetings back on track? Miffed by Meetings  Dear Miffed, One of the first training sessions we designed was aimed at just this problem. We gathered people and taught them about the importance of developing and following an agenda, the need to avoid being critical when brainstorming, and other such standard meeting fare. We thought we were done. Then trainees went back into their meetings, saw things go wrong, and said things such as, "Hey bozo, we’re trying to brainstorm here and you’re being critical. That’s not allowed!" Or, "Wait a second, you don’t have an agenda. What were you thinking?" "What have we created?" we wondered as we watched people "fix" problems they observed in their meetings by verbally attacking anyone who strayed from strict meeting protocol. The cure they were administering to the flailing meetings was often worse than the original ailment. From this, we learned that you can’t merely teach what should happen in meetings, you also have to teach what to do should the meeting turn south. This all took place before we had learned the ins and outs of crucial conversations, so we got no help from that research. But it wasn’t before we had learned the technique of watching effective people in action and learning to see what can actually work with real people in real organizations. So, we watched all kinds of people in all kinds of meetings. Most individuals sat quietly as the meeting staggered from topic to topic like a mad dog on its last walk. An angry few, after they could take it no longer, made harsh comments to the "loud mouth who carried on a side conversation." Others directed ugly stares at the offending party—followed by the ever-popular eye-roll. These were some of our first glimpses into silence and violence. But then there were a few people who spoke up in a way that wasn’t offensive. They said and did things that helped get the meeting on track without looking like they wanted to take over or blast people who didn’t stick to the right agenda. And best of all, they followed a pattern that worked for most meeting problems—from dozing off to arriving late to straying from the agenda. You didn’t have to apply ten different techniques to ten different problems. The most notable part of every effective response was that they all reflected the same philosophy and feeling. They noticed something that wasn’t working very well (at least for them), realized it was probably best to talk about it rather than simply let it continue, and decided to check with the group to see if it made sense to change what was currently happening. In summary, the pattern looks like this: (1) here’s what I see; (2) here’s what I think we might want to do instead; (3) what do others think? This three-part response was always delivered tentatively (after all, not all deviations are mistakes), respectfully (there’s no reason to assume others are purposely causing problems), and inclusively (asking others for input turns the solution into a shared plan rather than your plan). At the scripting level, here’s what the three steps sound like. A group moves through an agenda and nears the end of their meeting, but one of the people present keeps referring to a previously put-to-bed agenda item. The person is mostly ignored until eventually someone hints that the group is now talking about another issue so please get on board. Finally, someone deals with the deviation by stating, "Tim, I notice that you keep returning to the budget discussion we had earlier. We’ve moved on, thinking it was a closed issue and now I’m wondering if you want to return to it and re-open the discussion. Is that what you want, and if so, what do others think about the idea?" It turns out that the person did want to return—feeling that the topic wasn’t fully discussed—and, given time constraints, the team agrees to schedule the item for further discussion in the next meeting. Now, most people are uncomfortable intervening in any way for fear that they might be the only one who is concerned. Plus they want to avoid the appearance of hijacking the meeting. Notice how the three steps indicated above solve both problems. You check with the group to see if the problem is not merely yours and you also involve others in the potential solution. For instance, someone has violated the primary tenet of brainstorming by criticizing suggestions that cost money, and someone else in the meeting remarks, "Kim, it looks like you’re concerned about solutions that cost money. Do we want to put cost in as a constraint right now so we don’t spend time recommending financial solutions, or should we continue coming up with any solution that might work? What do others think?" Another example: a meeting rolls along with lots of ideas flowing and nobody takes notes. It’s not your meeting but you’re worried about forgetting ideas, so you say, "A lot of ideas are being recommended here and I’m worried we might lose some of the ideas unless we record them. What do others think?" One more example: a couple of people are talking on their cell phones and someone says, "It looks like others have some urgent issues they need to deal with. Should we take a break to handle the calls that are coming in?" Notice that the person bringing up the issue isn’t criticizing others for taking calls. It could well be that they are handling an emergency and do need to break. If they aren’t, they’re likely to get right back to the meeting. Either way, you’re simply describing what you’re observing, passing no judgment, offering no criticism, and then checking with the group. Again, the process of stating what you see, what you think the group might want to do instead, and asking what others think can be applied to almost any problem, in almost any meeting, and from anywhere in the room. Try it in your next derailed meeting and let me know how it goes. Kerry Related Material:Wasting Time in Meetings Outbursts During Church Meetings How do you balance discussion with staying on track?

Recently, as my six-year-old daughter asked me for yet another Barbie, I said, "You don’t always get what you want, you need to earn it." She then said, "That’s not fair, you always get what you want. How do I get what I want?" The Crucial Conversations book happened to be sitting on my desk, so I handed it to her, and laughing I said, "Read this, it gets you what you want." Now she refuses to put down the book. It goes in the car with us everywhere—to school, you name it. When someone asks why she is reading the book, she says, "Dad said from now on I’m going to get what I want." As many conversations are with my six-year-old, the full conversation was actually quite a crucial conversation about how to earn what you need and communicate that need. For the record, she "earned" the Barbie a few days later from her grandmother through some effective communication.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Candace Bertotti is a Master Trainer. READ MORE As an Influencer trainer, I struggle to help participants with their change plans when they base them on soft skills such as being too direct in communication with their family members or coming across as intimidating to team members. I especially have a hard time coming up with strategies for sources 2, 5, and 6. I’d appreciate some help! Thanks for the great question! Coming up with strategies for all the sources—particularly for change plans based on soft skills—can take some creativity. Let’s look at each of the sources you listed: Source 2: Personal Ability Engage in Deliberate Practice. Since soft skills are still skills, encourage participants to engage in a considerable amount of deliberate practice—using realistic and challenging situations to build confidence that they can handle even the toughest situations. Even with family or team situations, you can practice scripts for when you are triggered; bounce language off a trusted friend or coach; and test alternative words, body language, and actions to see if you get a different response and result. Participants could also practice mastering their stories—reminding themselves that people do things for more than one reason—and transform their negative emotions (that might lead them to be too direct or intimidating) into curiosity and dialogue. Learn New Skills with Training. Participants may want to consider attending Crucial Conversations or Crucial Confrontations training, where they can learn and apply new skills for speaking up respectfully to get better results. Increase Personal Capacity. Don’t forget that it’s hard to use most any skill when we aren’t first taking care of ourselves. For example, when you get hungry or don’t have enough sleep you’re likely to be less able to stay cool in tough situations and more likely to snap or come across as intimidating. A new strategy could be "before my in-laws come over, get a good night’s sleep and eat breakfast." Source 5: Structural Motivation Create a Motivating Plan or Game. Challenge participants to develop communication improvement goals—perhaps a seven-day or thirty-day plan. Then they can make this plan into a game or an experiment. Use Incentives and Loss Aversion. Have the participants name what incentives motivate them and what punishments they want to avoid, and then have them incorporate those into their change plans. Loss aversion works well here—if they don’t meet their goals, they have to donate money to a rival university or sports team. Source 6: Structural Ability Use Cues. Have participants consider ways to remind themselves of the behavior they want to enact—a reminder on a post-it note on the bathroom mirror, a summary of the skill they want to employ on a screen saver, a daily reminder on their phone, etc. Survey the Environment. Encourage participants to take inventory of their environment and determine where they are having trouble. Does the problem come up when they are talking on the phone while driving, in e-mail, or over text? Does it happen when they are multi-tasking, or after they feel icky and crabby from eating unhealthy food just because it was around? Is it after walking into their home greeted by dirty dishes and laundry they didn’t expect, or walking into an office with an overflowing inbox and a new crisis they could have avoided if they’d seen e-mail #214? Encourage participants to find ways to change their environment to set them up for success. Perhaps they need to limit phone communication and have more face-to-face dialogue. Is their office an inviting space for dialogue—do they have an extra chair for someone to sit and talk? Are healthy snacks (instead of caffeine and sugar) nearby that may help them approach communication challenges with a clear head? Many, many possibilities in this area! Gather Data and Use Tools. Encourage participants to gather data to increase self-awareness. Participants could create a survey and send it to friends, family, and colleagues. Some examples of simple survey questions are, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how respectful am I when I communicate?" and "On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do I listen to other points of view?" Participants could then use this data to help inform their progress and adapt their change plans. Encourage participants to think of other tools they might need to set themselves up for success—the Crucial Confrontations audio book to listen to while driving, a smartphone that allows for video calls if a face-to-face meeting isn’t possible, etc. Related Material:How can I help participants pinpoint the difference between source 3 and source 4 in the "Master My Stories" lesson of Crucial Confrontations? How can I help participants who are creating their own change plan in Influencer Training create an actual results statement? How do I respond to participants’ concerns about participating in training?

One word comes to mind to adequately describe the VitalSmarts REACH 2012 trainer conference: AMAZING! For two days in August, trainers from around the world gathered at the base of the majestic Rocky Mountains in Salt Lake City for a truly remarkable experience. The new BIG Idea sessions—twenty-minute keynote speeches on a wide variety of topics—were a huge hit! With keynote speakers such as renowned psychologist Albert Bandura, VitalSmarts authors and international licensees, acclaimed author and Influencer Brian Wansink, and Facebook’s Learning and Development Manager Mike Rognlien—the BIG Idea sessions educated and entertained participants, providing them with innovative ideas to implement in their organizations and training offerings. There were plenty of surprises along the way too—including a guest appearance from VitalSmarts video actress Jackie Houston and a ballroom dance BIG Idea session on deliberate practice where participants were invited on stage to strut their stuff! Brian Wansink conducted a top-secret food experiment with the REACH participants and demonstrated the power the environment has on our eating habits. And the Trainer Appreciation dinner reached new heights with world-class entertainment from the Piano Guys! The breakout sessions throughout the two days were outstanding, offering trainers hands-on opportunities to learn new best practices and connect with trainers from across the globe. The client sessions were inspirational and educational, offering trainers new insights into how to successfully roll out VitalSmarts training offerings and change their organizations for good. What did the trainers think of REACH 2012? They overwhelmingly expressed that REACH 2012 was one of the best professional development conferences they had ever attended! But don’t just take our word for it—take a look at some of the REACH 2012 BIG Idea sessions on our VitalSmarts YouTube page and save the date for REACH 2013 to experience it all for yourself, live and in person! We hope to see you there! Related Material:From the Road: Insight from REACH 2010 From the Road: What Happens in Training, Stays in Training From the Road: Do You Know Where Your Participants Are?

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin - This is not just speculation by a writer, this is experimentation by a person with keen insights. I like writers who share vital behaviors and Gretchen does a great job. Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov - Wonderful, powerful, and very specific behaviors for improving teaching—at all levels and all kinds of situations. Written by someone who stood at the back of the room and noticed the difference between the good teachers and the great teachers. The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha - American poet William Carlos Williams once commented that, "Poetry is the stuff for the lack of which people die miserably every day." The Book of Awesome helps us smell the roses and find the poetry in every day. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card - Sci-fi and an interesting look at leadership and organization, of team work and commitment. Card is a great writer and has great insights into people. Related Material:Off the Author’s Bookshelf: What Ron’s Reading Off the Author’s Bookshelf: What Joseph’s Reading

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ron McMillan is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, My team is doing more work through conference calls. However, we struggle to keep everybody involved when the call consists of several people in one room and three or four people on individual call-in lines. Those of us who are "remote" feel we interrupt if we "jump in" to the conversation since we don’t get to raise our hand or see the non-verbal cues that would let us take advantage of a natural break in the conversation. This causes us to feel excluded and we don’t always get to have a say in the conversation. Can you share some strategies for getting everybody involved in a conference call? Conferenced Out  Dear Conferenced Out, To answer your question, I want to begin by sharing a sad but true story. I was a participant in a critical, but boring conference call involving twenty-two people. Someone was discussing something I wasn’t very interested in when a call came in on another line. I cleverly put the conference call on hold and answered the other line, talked for a few short minutes, and returned to the conference call. I immediately noticed the person speaking was talking so loud he was practically shouting for a few moments then he began speaking in a normal tone. A few minutes later, another call came in so I put the conference call on hold, took the new call, conversed for a few minutes, finished, and then returned to the conference call. This time there was total silence on the line. The call host then said, "Now it’s stopped. This is so strange. Why would music suddenly start playing in the middle of our conference call then stop and suddenly start again and then stop again? I’m sorry. I’ve never experienced this before." After the conference call, with a bit of experimentation, I realized that when I put people on hold, our office phone system immediately starts playing elevator music for whoever is on hold, which in this case was all of the conference call participants. My bad. There are many lessons you could learn from my story about my relative intelligence, but the lesson I would like to point out is that it’s very difficult to hold everyone’s attention on conference calls. Come on, admit it. How many of you have read and answered e-mails during a conference call? Without the face-to-face interaction, it’s more difficult to hold others’ attention and to be personally accountable to the person speaking. I absolutely believe John Naisbitt, author of Megatrends, was right when he wrote, "As human beings become capable of anonymous electronic communication they [will] concurrently need more close-up personal interaction." Let me start by saying that I strongly recommend you never have a crucial conversation using e-mail or instant messaging. Too much of the meaning is ambiguous or lost. When someone writes a sentence in all caps, does that mean he’s shouting? Excited? Mad? What does it mean when the font is all red? Use e-mail to share information, but when emotions run strong, you have opposing opinions, and stakes are high, it’s time for a face-to-face conversation. In difficult circumstances when distance or time will not allow it, then, with the greatest of reluctance, you may have to resort to the phone but know that you will be missing half of the critical data—the visual information. You will not see facial expressions, gestures, or body language. True, you will be able to hear the other person’s voice and intonation, but you have to ask a lot of clarifying questions to make sure you understand. For example: "After my last point, there was a long silence. Are you thinking about what I said or do you disagree?" When we "manage by phone" or "team by speaker," we run the risk of sacrificing effectiveness for efficiency. When using "high tech" to communicate, the "high touch" becomes much more important. This means meeting face-to-face when possible, and when it’s not possible, spending a lot of time listening, checking for understanding, and having individual conversations. When leading a meeting over the phone, use an agenda and structure questions and requests for input into the agenda. Throughout your meeting, frequently ask the following questions: "Does anyone have any questions?" "Can anyone build on that idea?" "Who has an opinion on this?" "Does anyone see this differently?" Also, remember to ask individuals specifically for their comments: "Leroy, what do you think of this proposal?" "Sabrina, I haven’t heard your view on this issue. Would you mind sharing?" Sometimes a roll call is in order on important issues: "I want to get each of your ideas on this. Let’s start with Benjamin . . ." Remember to use your AMPP skills (Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, Prime) and intentionally Explore Others’ Paths. If you are not the leader of the call, these ideas still apply. Even if you aren’t the leader, you can still say, "Rachael, how do you see this problem?" and invite others to participate. When you are a participant in a conference call and not the leader, you need to STATE your path—share your facts, tell your story, ask for other’s paths, talk tentatively, and encourage testing. You also need to initiate more than you otherwise would to get your meaning in the pool. Consider using these phrases: "I’d like to add something . . ." "Before we go on to the next topic, I would like to comment on the recommendation . . ." "I have an opinion I would like to share . . ." "Sorry to interrupt, but I want the views in our region to be considered . . ." I have personally seen the introduction of these skills change the culture of a team within three conference calls. Whether advocated by the leader or just modeled by a caring team member, we owe it to ourselves and others to get all the relevant meaning into the Pool of Shared Meaning. If we do, we not only get to enjoy the efficiencies of technology by saving time and the costs of travel, but we can also reap the benefits of being an effective team. Ron

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 When I was seven years old I learned how to ride a bike. I learned on my brother’s old, stripped-down, J.C. Higgins. It was a pathetic little thing possessing no fenders, no handle bar grips, no hand brakes, no . . . just about everything. Then, of course, I wanted to ride the bike every chance I could get, but since it was my older brother’s pride and joy, well, you can guess how that worked out. Yearning for a vehicle of my own, I tried to save money to purchase my own bike, but at age seven I only earned 50 cents a week allowance and I usually spent 40 cents of it on a trip to the movies. Every week, I was torn between watching Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and the other heroes of my youth—and saving for a bike. Mom saw my dilemma, and after watching me eyeball my brother’s bike for the thousandth time came up with a plan. My grandmother had recently married a rather wealthy lawyer who was so desirous to show his love for her that he gave her a 200-pound ironing machine (the kind usually used at hotels). Grandma appreciated the gift, but had other ideas. She figured she could use her newfound wealth to send her laundry not through a giant ironing machine but to a professional establishment. So, Grandma hired a moving company to haul the thing to our house. "With your bad back and all," Grandma explained to my mother, "I’m betting this newfangled contraption will be just the ticket." In truth, the machine was absolutely terrific—if you happened to work for Barnum & Bailey and needed to touch up a tent. Unfortunately, the huge appliance was hard to operate, "ate" shirts and blouses, and only made Mom’s back feel worse. Eventually, the monster was moved to our basement where it sat next to my brother’s bike—the one I so sorely coveted. "I bet," Mom explained one night over dinner, "we could take that silly ironing machine that is just gathering dust in the basement and auction it off." "We could certainly use the money," Dad replied. "Yes, and I know just what to do with it. Billy has grown too big for his bike so I figure we can sell the ironing machine at auction and then turn around and buy Billy a bigger, better bike." This wasn’t going well for me. "And then Kerry can have Billy’s old bike." Things were looking up. Now, you might be thinking: Why did my mom’s plan end with me owning the hand-me-down bike while my brother Billy, who already had a bicycle, would get the new (to him) bike? Those of you who are a younger sibling know the answer. As a kid brother it was my job to recycle cast-offs. My clothing store, for example, was my older brother’s chest of drawers. And when it came to sporting goods, well, I was thrilled with the idea of getting my brother’s bike. It was a bike. I didn’t have a bike. Was there any other way to get one? Two weeks later, when the local auctioneer placed the ironing machine up for bid, Dad turned to me and explained that, judging from the crowd of hayseeds that had gathered, it was doubtful that anyone would want the curious offering we had placed on the block. "We’ll need to get about fifteen dollars if we expect to turn around and buy one of the bikes that are going up for auction," Dad explained. "I don’t think anyone around here even knows what that machine is." Now I was worried. Would I ever get a bike of my own? Dad was right. At first, the curious apparatus just sat there while people poked at it with their index fingers. Perhaps a carburetor had fallen off a passing space ship. Eventually, the auctioneer read the instructions from the metal plaque soldered to the body. "Why, it’s a fancy ironing machine," he announced with an air of achievement. Soon the bidding was off and running until a woman with a large feathered hat bid fifteen dollars. "Sold!" When we returned home later that day, my brother Billy jumped for joy at the sight of the second-hand Schwinn bike Dad had purchased while I rushed to the basement to claim my windfall. I was ecstatic. At last, a bike of my own! Unfortunately, I couldn’t ride my bike just then because it was now raining and the dirt road in front of our house had turned into a river of mud. Since the bike didn’t have fenders, if I ventured out onto 25th street, it would paint an ugly brown stripe up my back, neck, and head. Finally, after a week of unrelenting drizzle, the sun dried the road enough to be useable. I hopped on Billy’s old bike (I still thought of it that way) and rode around frenetically while shouting and yipping for joy. It was a dream come true. For about five minutes. Then I came to the realization that I didn’t really have any place to go (I was seven. Where would I go?) Nor did I have any smooth surfaces to take me there—just a bunch of rutted hills that led to more rutted hills. Plus, the bike only had one gear. It was really hard to pump. In fact, it was so hard that one day as I tried to get up speed to shoot across the slimy, hand-hued wood bridge that crossed the creek near our house, I skittered off the bridge and into a muddy stream—turning myself into a ball of mud and slime and ruining my brand-new white corduroy pants. So I parked the stupid bike where the ironing machine once sat until I eventually outgrew the thing and my mother gave it to Goodwill. This wasn’t the last time I yearned for something I was convinced would bring me happiness, only to discover I was dead wrong. (If you’ve ever saved up for a Slinky, you’ll know what I’m talking about.) You’d think that after a string of disappointing purchases we’d all have learned that owning things doesn’t exactly guarantee happiness. Unfortunately, the vivid advertisements that pump out of our TV sets at the rate of about 100,000 a year continue to preach otherwise. Copywriters tell us that buying things will bring us all sorts of spectacular benefits. For instance, when I was a teenager, the hair product Brylcreem was said to make you so attractive that women would chase after you, wrestle you to the ground, and run their fingers through your hair—something that I thought sounded mighty promising at the time—but that never actually panned out for me. But then again, it’s not as if having more money (and the things that go with it) never helps. For instance, a recent study revealed that happiness does actually go up with income—to a point. And then it levels off. Not having enough to pay the rent or get your teeth fixed wears on you, so happiness rises with an infusion of cash. But when you reach a certain level of owning stuff, your happiness quotient stays the same. More stuff doesn’t boost your score. That is, researchers found, unless you do a couple of different things with the extra money. You can use it to create memorable family experiences or to help others. When you do one or both of these, more money can indeed yield more happiness. At some level, we all understand this concept. But then again, at a deeper, more visceral level, we think: Yeah, I know more money won’t make me happier, but with more money I’d be in Paris being the same degree of happy, and maybe even driving a sports car. It only stands to reason that driving a sports car in Paris creates a higher order of happiness than driving a Honda in Omaha. Meaning, of course, that try as we might, we can’t find a way to believe that owning more toys doesn’t guarantee more happiness. Last week, I witnessed for myself the serving-others aspect of the recent research finding. My twelve-year-old granddaughter Rachel was dusting shelves for her mother while a friend stood by in tennis gear waiting to go play doubles at a nearby court. Rachel’s three-year-old sister Lizzy was toddling behind her, and after Rachel dusted each shelf, Lizzy would plead: "Help me!" Rachel would then lift Lizzy who, in turn, would drag her miniature duster over the same surface. To me, it was precious. Nevertheless, you’d figure that since Lizzy wasn’t actually helping move the job along, Rachel would ditch her baby sister in favor of finishing sooner and playing tennis. But she didn’t hurry. You could tell by the broad smile on her face that she took genuine pleasure from indulging her little sister. "Rachel enjoys helping others more than doing just about anything," her mother explained. "She learned that at an early age." What a blessing to have learned at such a young age that serving others (be it with your extra resources or your time) can be a great source of happiness. This idea, of course, can’t be sold through infomercials nor sponsored by celebrities, so it won’t spread across the country like the latest design in running shoes. In fact, unless the world experiences some sort of cataclysmic upheaval, one of the most important principles ever known to humankind will continue to be overshadowed by a deluge of messages that suggest we can’t really be happy unless we own things. But then again there’s no knowing for sure. An ironing machine might be just what you need. A new bike could really help you out. The hair product might even make your hair shine. But then again, maybe all of these things will let you down. Most assuredly, none of them can be counted on to bring you anything as important as happiness. You want happiness? Use your time and resources to genuinely and freely serve others: visit a shut in, read to a sick friend, compliment a coworker on a job well done, write a thoughtful note, or take homemade cookies to your grandparents (one of Rachel’s favorites). In short, find a way to bring others happiness. It’s the fast track to joy. Related Material:Kerrying On: The Password Kerrying On: Tombstone Talk Getting Out-of-Control Meetings Back on Track

To help more of our readers with their crucial conversations, confrontations, and behavior change challenges, we recently introduced the Community Q&A column! Please share your answers to this reader’s question in the comments below. Dear Crucial Skills, I live in an apartment complex built around a grassy area and parking garage. Ten boys between five and ten years old (including my son) live in the complex and love to play together on the grass. Sometimes they get a bit too noisy, which upsets many of the neighbors. Those annoyed neighbors wrote an angry e-mail to management telling them to "do something about the boys." Ironically, those annoyed neighbors never speak to the boys’ parents about their concerns and even come out to tell the boys off when the parents are inside and run away when the parents come back out. I want to build a community spirit and get people talking, but I don’t know where to start. How can I get my neighbors talking so we can resolve this issue without involving management? Seeking Neighborly Dialogue Related Material:Community Q&A: Encouraging Others to Cut Back Community Q&A: Overcoming Cultural Differences with Crucial Conversations Community Q&A: Making His Ex-Wife Feel Safe

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 am one of three people on our executive team, and I am struggling with the excessive amount of time our CEO spends on outside issues. He spends about ten to fifteen percent of his time working on company issues and the rest on his outside activities. He has accepted positions on multiple boards that are not relevant to our company but provide networking and resume building opportunities for him. He reports to a Board of Directors who doesn’t know of or understand these time-altering behavior patterns. Our small company is struggling in the recession and yet all the oars are not in the water. Other employees see this and question why. What do I say to our CEO about his time-wasting behavior? Signed,Lonely Exec  Dear Lonely, For the sake of my response, I’m going to take your statements at face value. I need to point this out in advance because I’m going to make a very strong suggestion for how you should handle this. If my assumptions are wrong, then my response may be excessive. Based on what you’ve written, I don’t think it is. I’m going to assume the following: 1. Your CEO is paid a full salary. 2. He is truly working ten to fifteen percent of a full-time job (i.e., this number is not an exaggeration on your part). 3. He might be receiving compensation for some of the outside work—or at a minimum is receiving personal gain through networking. 4. Your board is a governance (not just an advisory) board. In other words, they are responsible to represent the shareholders by holding him accountable. 5. You have fiduciary responsibility as one of the executives. If these statements are even largely true, then I have three crucial conversations and one piece of advice for you. Crucial Conversation #1: You owe it to your boss to confront him about the enormous gap you see between a normal CEO’s level of engagement and his current performance. You need to do this somewhat tentatively to begin with because there is some possibility he has a special employment relationship with the board that you are unaware of. If that turns out to be true, then you will discuss your concerns about whether this arrangement is functional for the company or not. If there is no special arrangement, and as you suspect, the board does not know, then you must move to . . . Crucial Conversation #2: You must let him know he is stealing from the company and that you have been an accomplice through your silence. Furthermore, you must inform him that you cannot continue as an accomplice. You would prefer that he raise the issue with the board and gain their approval for whatever work pattern he is willing to provide. If he does not, then you must move to . . . Crucial Conversation #3: You must report this concern to the board. Since I don’t know your board, I don’t know if it would be safest to meet with the chair privately, another board member who is a confidant and would trust your views, or with the full board in session. You’ll have to decide based on what will get your data the best hearing. Most people would never do this—but would either suffer in silence or just resign and blow the whistle after they leave. If you follow the order above, I believe you will hold yourself to a higher standard of loyalty and integrity. You will give your CEO the chance to restore his integrity, you will honor your loyalty to him, and you will restore the integrity you have lost through your silence. This is a much lonelier and more emotionally difficult path than the easier ways out—and that’s why I suggest making this choice requires impeccable character. Finally, the advice. Obviously, this approach is fraught with risks. The CEO could turn against you and try to get you fired. The board could disbelieve your perspective (by the way, you had better have data when you approach them). They might believe you but feel they have to be loyal to the CEO (a weak but possible outcome). In any case, you will have left neutral ground forever when you start this series of conversations. So you should have a backup plan in place. It’s easier to feel confident jumping off the cliff if you’ve checked the water depth first. This is a matter of integrity. You need to take these steps. But give yourself enough time to prepare escape plans that protect your interests and those of your family as best you can. I have not given tactical advice for the conversation. Please know that the statements I made above reflect the points you need to make in the crucial conversations—but they are not a "how to" for the conversation. Use all the skills we’ve described over time in this column—make it safe, lay out facts before tentatively sharing conclusions, and invite disagreement. If you follow those skills, you’ll give the CEO the best chance of understanding your legitimate concerns without taking personal offense. I’ve seen it done before. Practice, practice, practice in advance so you can approach this in a healthy way. Please drop me a line to let me know what you do. I will be happy to respond to more specific requests for coaching if it will help you get through this most crucial conversation. Sincerely, Joseph Related Material:Wasting Time in Meetings

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Al Switzler is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE   Dear Crucial Skills, One of my coworkers said I didn’t involve him in a decision I made, but I did. I told him I relayed his input—he is the expert in this area—to another person, as he asked me to do. He said I made the decision to meet with this person without inviting him. When I try to explain what really happened, it just gets worse. What do you do when you feel you are falsely accused? Falsely Accused  Dear Accused, The situation you described certainly qualifies as a crucial conversation. High stakes are involved—potentially the project and certainly the working relationship are at risk—emotions are high, and you see things differently. As I try to answer the question you have posed, I want to do so by looking at a couple of options. Option 1 - Prioritize the incident. Your first option is to find enough Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect to create safety and talk this incident through. I’m referring to your misunderstanding as an incident because it seems this is a one-time situation. The core problem is that you don’t agree on the facts. You see the same incident so differently that you have arrived at different conclusions and emotions. In teams and relationships (and even organizations) where there is little trust or where processes involve many steps and many people over a long period of time, individuals are required to write commitments down. Doing so makes the facts clear, or at least clearer. Also, people don’t have to rely on memory—which is not very reliable and thus not very safe. If you and your colleague had done that, some of the facts would have been clearer. However, some facts might still be unclear. Perhaps neither of you would have articulated that he expected to be invited to the meeting, so you would be at the same point—arguing about the facts. I bring this up to suggest that, while helpful, writing down all commitments is not a completely effective strategy. I will add emphatically, however, that when the two of you had the initial conversation about what you and he would do, if you had made sure you touched all the bases of WWWF (Who does What by When and how you’ll Follow up) you perhaps could have minimized the assumptions and the frustrations. Because it doesn’t sound like you were able to discuss all of these factors, I suggest you prioritize the incident by solving it quickly if you can or moving past it if you can’t. Option 2 - Clarify how you’ll work together in the future. To begin this conversation, you might want to say, "It’s clear that we see the incident about the meeting with Sarah very differently and we’ve not been able to agree on the facts. I’m wondering if we could talk about what we learned from it and how we can work better in the future so this kind of thing doesn’t happen again?" If the two of you can focus on going forward rather than dwelling on an incident in the past, you can find Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect that will allow for dialogue. The purpose of dialogue is to learn, clarify agreements, make better decisions, and take committed action. By using the incident as a learning point, you can make agreements that will make future work better. In such a conversation, you might agree that when you make commitments together you’ll also consider what you’ll do if you run into conflicts, changes, or barriers. How will you touch base? How will you modify the plan you created? How will you assume the best until you can talk to your colleague if you hear of changes? So rather than trying to "solve" every incident, you agree on a process that will help you anticipate problems and act in ways that either resolve them or prevent them. I want to touch on your statement, "When I tried to explain what happened, it just got worse." If you hold this conversation about working together in the future well, you should be able to talk about what to do if future conflicts arise. Then, rather than disagreeing about what has already happened, you can have a conversation about how you plan to move forward. When colleagues or couples have had difficulties in the past, a good option is to learn from these misunderstandings and let those insights influence future behavior rather than simply clinging to the past. I wish you well,Al Related Material:Responding to Accusations Responding to Unwanted Parenting Advice Responding to Confidential Feedback

Attending Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations Training has been of great benefit to me both personally and professionally. I am diligent about sharing the books, audio companions, and the Crucial Skills Newsletter with my staff. I work in a non-clinical department within a trauma center staffed by very experienced nurses in emergency and/or critical care—which contributes to the amazing and thorough work they do in their current roles. I shared your recent Q&A article, "Coping with the Loss of a Loved One" with my staff and received the following e-mail, titled "I felt like a nurse again," in response: "Last Wednesday as I was leaving the ICU, I did something I have often wanted to do but didn’t feel comfortable doing. A woman was walking down the hall toward the waiting room, and she was crying—not an uncommon sight. I slowed down, walked along side her, and said I was so sorry for whatever she was going through. I thought it was probably related to one of my patients, but I wasn’t positive. She seemed relieved and said, "It is so hard." I kept walking with her and asked if she was alone and if I could get her a drink of water. She said family was in the waiting room and that she had a bottle of water in her bag. Just before we got to the ICU waiting room, she stopped and leaned toward me for a hug, then stood for a few minutes before going into the waiting room. At that point, I left. "If it hadn’t been for the Crucial Skills Newsletter you sent and a recent experience with another coworker who recently lost her husband, I don’t think I would have had the courage to actually approach this woman. I am very thankful that I did so. "Years ago, I read a book written by a man whose young wife died in the ICU and he says the longest walk of your life is from the hospital to your car after your loved one has died. I have often wondered if there is any way someone can walk out with those folks who stand alone at the bedside when their family member dies. This is just another example of how a small gesture can make a large impact." So, I want to thank you for making these resources available to me and my staff. We still contribute to the profession we love and demonstrate this commitment to our patients, families, and associates.

I hear this question from participants almost every time I facilitate Crucial Conversations. Here are some thoughts: I often ask participants, "When you are trying to push (interesting choice of words) your purpose? What is your strategy?" The common response, in one form or another, is usually "verbal persuasion." At that point, I usually pull a Dr. Phil on them and ask them, "How’s that working for you?" The response is often, "Not so good!" After some gentle questioning and exploring of others’ paths, many participants come to the conclusion that verbal persuasion is usually not a Mutual Purpose process but rather a "Your Purpose" process. I then ask, "So, what do you do when verbal persuasion fails you?" You can see learners put on their thinking caps. The customary response to that question is, "We usually compromise at that point." And that leads us to the following question: "Is compromise a bad thing when you are trying to create Mutual Purpose?" In life we make many compromises. We compromise in our homes with loved ones. We compromise at school with fellow students and teachers. We compromise at work with fellow employees, bosses, and other stakeholders. You may even have to compromise with the IRS! (Whoa—too much information!) Compromising is not a bad thing when you are stuck, but there are better options. Merriam-Webster defines a compromise as "a settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions." And there’s the rub. A mutual purpose feels good—both parties contributing to the Pool of Shared Meaning and achieving something they care about. A mutual concession doesn’t feel that good—the pool feels like it has sprung a leak. When you compromise, it is sometimes very difficult if not impossible to create a true Mutual Purpose. An old football coach I once knew hated ties. He had been quoted more than once saying that a 7-7 tie with your neighboring town’s team was like "kissing your sister." It’s a nice gesture, but not a whole lot of fun. The same thing can be said about compromising to try to get to Mutual Purpose. A compromise or a concession makes most people feel a little disappointed and not overly positive, which hampers the Mutual Purpose process. So what can you do when you are at cross-purposes? And if you live on planet Earth, you will often be at cross-purposes. Create Mutual Purpose using the following four skills: Commit to seek Mutual Purpose Recognize the purpose behind the strategy Invent a Mutual Purpose Brainstorm new strategies With these skills, you don’t give anything up in a compromise. You actually create new ideas that incorporate the important points from everyone’s original thoughts, ideas or decisions. The more I work with these four skills, the more I see how important they are in helping you align your ideas with others to get better results. One last big idea on creating Mutual Purpose: many people think that inventing and brainstorming are the most important of the skills, but I would argue that committing to seek Mutual Purpose and recognizing the purpose behind the strategy are the most crucial. These skills allow you to build safety with the other person and get to inventing and brainstorming in order to truly create a Mutual Purpose and get you the result you both want.

ABOUT THE EXPERT Steve Willis is a Master Trainer and Vice President of Professional Services at VitalSmarts. READ MORE This classic scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off comes to mind each time I prepare to train a new group. For those of you who have seen the movie, you’ll remember this scene. Ferris is absent from class. His teacher monotonously says his name during roll call in hopes that repetition will work its magic and Ferris will somehow show up. I’ve realized over the years that, like Ferris Bueller’s teacher, our participants are hoping that we show up—and not just physically. It’s one thing to be physically present, but the participants of today expect more. They expect us to be present with them, not just present in the room. Able to read the group’s interest level and respond accordingly. Able to apply the material to their circumstances. Able to inscribe a personalized message on their heart, mind, and soul! Well, or at least a personalized message on the inside cover of their participant guide. I think you know what I mean. So what’s your trick—what do you do in your preparation or during the session that allows you to be present with your participants? I’m interested in two categories of responses here: 1) what advice do you have for trainers who are fairly new to the VitalSmarts suite of programs and 2) what advice do you have for trainers who are so familiar with the suite they run the risk of phoning in their training? Join the conversation by sharing your thoughts below. Related Material:From the Road: Break the Plane From the Road: At the End of the Day From the Road: Do You Know Where Your Participants Are?

Romney and Obama aren’t the only ones taking sides in intense debates this election season. According to our recent poll, 62 percent of Americans have found themselves in heated debates and the victims of verbal attacks when discussing politics—with their friends. According to the survey: Three out of five say they’ve had a political conversation damage a relationship with a friend, family member or coworker, and 14 percent say the relationship never truly recovered. Only 15 percent of respondents believe they can express their full political views to others without getting upset. Rather than risk an emotional verbal battle, 86 percent avoid political discussions and one in 10 report they stay away from political banter at all costs. You don’t have to be a pushover or stay silent in order to keep your friends this election season. Here are four tips for successfully talking politics with friends, family, and coworkers: Look for areas of agreement. Let the other person know you share common goals, even if your preferred tactics for achieving them differ. Avoid personal attacks. While you don’t have to agree with the other person’s view, you can still acknowledge that his or her view is valid, rather than "idiotic" or "evil." Focus on facts and be tentative. Consider the source of your facts, and ask the other person to do the same. Ask two questions: Could the facts be biased? Could they be interpreted differently? Look for signs of disagreement. If the other person grows quiet or starts to become defensive, reinforce your respect and remind him or her of the broader purpose you both share. Related Material:Crucial Applications: How to Talk Sports and Keep Your Friends Crucial Applications: Talking About Holiday Finances Crucial Applications: Keeping Your New Year’s Resolutions

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Maxfield is coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I’m in a weight loss program to lose the first fifty pounds and had a breakthrough of why I sabotage my weight loss efforts. I realized that I am negatively affected by my mother’s years of criticism of me and others who are overweight. I want to rid myself of these negative feelings, but I don’t know how to do that. Can you help me overcome my negative feelings so I don’t keep sabotaging my weight loss efforts? Sabotaged Efforts  Dear Sabotaged, Thanks for your question. Many of us are working to lose weight or conquer other stubborn habits and your question taps in to several of the reasons we struggle. If we can answer your question, I think we’ll all benefit. I’m going to use concepts from our book, Change Anything, to suggest some possible solutions. Be the scientist and the subject. We are all subjects in other people’s science experiments. People poke, prod, and provoke us to see if they can influence our behavior. The challenge is that many of these people are marketers and salespeople who don’t have our best interests at heart. Even when they do want what’s best for us—as your mother probably did—their actions often backfire, hurting us more than they help. The solution is for you to become the scientist as well as the subject. Study your own behavior the way a scientist would. Instead of being discouraged by your setbacks, be curious about them. Notice, it was when you became curious about your self-sabotaging that you discovered the link to your mother’s criticism. This is a good first step. Turn a bad day into good data. What you’ve discovered is a crucial moment—a time, situation, or circumstance when your success is especially at risk. Your particular crucial moment occurs when broken records begin to play in your head, repeating criticisms you remember from years ago. The risk in these crucial moments is that you will respond the same way you did years ago—with defiance. For example, the record in your head says, "Nobody will love you if you look like that . . ." and your automatic response is, "Oh yeah? Watch me eat this dessert and prove you wrong!" Use a personal motivation statement. You need to find a way to replace your automatic, unhealthy response with a positive, healthy one. One tactic to try is a personal motivation statement. The statement should refute the automatic response and reconnect you with the positive reasons for sticking to your change plan. For example, it might say, "This isn’t about my mother or what she wanted. It’s about me, and what I want. What I really want is . . ." You might write this statement on a 3×5 card that you take out and read when broken records are playing in your head. Learn new ways to manage your moods. Many of our bad habits are misguided attempts to manage our moods. For example, we eat when we feel down or we smoke when we feel frustrated. My bet is that the records you play in your head don’t just provoke your defiance; they make you feel lousy inside. If that’s true, then you need a healthy, positive way to boost your mood without busting your diet. Managing our moods is a skill many of us never learned or never learned well. Our mood management attempts often involve spoiling or indulging ourselves. But there are far better ways to improve our state of mind. For example, recent research shows that doing something for someone else is far more effective than indulging ourselves. My mother says, "If you feel you need help, then go help someone," and she’s right. Become the scientist again, and look for better ways to boost your moods. For example, the Pleasant Events Schedule is a list of 320 different activities that people enjoy and is one place to begin your search. You can sort through the list and pick five or ten that might boost your mood. Try them. Test them out until you find a few that reliably work for you. Just make sure they boost your mood without introducing or reinforcing unwanted habits. My closing suggestion is to remain the active scientist. Be the one who takes the reins and designs the experiments that will move your life forward. And remember that many of our bad habits started as solutions to problems that were real and remain real. We can’t just stop these bad habits; we need to replace them with more effective and healthier ones. David Related Material:Crucial Applications: A Six-Step Formula to Help Kids Lose Weight Change Anything: A Weight Loss Mind-set

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 To pay homage to the tens of millions of people out there who labor long and hard for all of us (often with little pay and virtually no recognition), today I honor my grandfather, The Merchant of Bellingham. During WWII, my father worked for Boeing as the team leader of a group of craftsmen. They produced the mechanism that makes it possible to lower bomber landing gear by hand (should something go wrong with the automated equipment). When the war came to an end and there was no longer a need for life-saving bomber equipment, Dad was out of work. That is, until he stumbled on the idea of owning and operating a small grocery store—the kind you could find just about every six blocks in the mid-forties. As it turned out, Dad wasn’t cut out for such employment (he ended up in apartment management), so Grandpa took charge of the store. He moved in, we moved out, and over the next twenty years, my grandfather (a fiery five-foot-two Irishman with a cigar stub perennially stuck in the corner of his mouth) became "pop" to everyone who stopped by the store to pick up a quart of milk and chat about the weather. One day when I asked Grandpa what he called himself (I knew what he did, I just didn’t know what to call it), he told me he was a "merchant." I haven’t heard anyone use that term since then, but when Grandpa claimed the title, it was clear that a merchant was something special. He always dressed in wool suit pants, a white shirt and tie, and a crisp green apron. And whether he was candling eggs, putting away redeemable bottles, or standing patiently as a child picked out five cents worth of penny candy, Grandpa attacked the task with the pride and precision of a physician performing surgery. After all, he was a merchant. I remember watching Grandpa patiently wait on people of every ilk and disposition. Since his store was located in a rather poor neighborhood, there was no telling who would walk in the front door or what they might require. Several individuals who were learning disabled frequently found their way to his establishment. They’d shyly point at the items they wanted, reach into their pocket, and pull out a handful of crumpled bills and loose coins. Then, without making a big deal of it, Grandpa would pick out the right amount of money, bag the groceries, and send the customer on his or her way with a hearty "thank you." One time, a couple of teenage boys who were in the store ridiculed an adult customer who had been unable to count his money, and later that day when the boys returned for a soda pop, Grandpa counseled them on showing respect for all people. Grandpa had spent the first forty years of his career as a bit of a celebrity in the lumber business. He was such a whiz with numbers that he could walk through an entire lumber mill and keep track of the board footage in his head. He had earned a great deal of respect performing these calculations, so you might suspect that in his senior years, he’d find the task of waiting on people to be beneath him. But he didn’t. Grandpa often told me it was an honor, even noble, to help others meet their needs. After all, he was a merchant. People counted on Grandpa and Grandpa knew it. After my first year of college, I prepared to travel abroad for two years. One Sunday afternoon, and at the very last minute, I asked Grandpa to attend my going-away speech at church. He replied with a look of utter shock, "I can’t close the store!" (He kept it open thirteen hours a day, seven days a week.) "What if Mrs. Eherenfieldt needs some cheese for her casserole? Or what if Ronnie Kepler falls and skins his knee? Where will Mrs. Kepler get a Band-Aid?" My father had made precision landing gear that saved whole bomber crews. Grandpa provided cheese and Band-Aids and saw himself as equally important. And he was. Along with the cheese and Band-Aids, Grandpa doled out friendly banter and helpful advice. I remember watching him celebrate with a young man who had just been admitted to a prestigious college. Granddad had watched him grow up. A penny-candy kid who excelled in math and who Grandpa saw as one of his protégés. Grandpa had taught him math tricks and study techniques. It was all part of the services rendered at Noonan’s Grocery. Sometimes, people came to the store, glanced around nervously, and then timidly whispered in Grandpa’s ear. Years later, I learned that they asked for credit. They needed food for their tables and Grandpa would be the one who supplied it. Over the years, I heard some criticize Grandpa for extending credit to people whom nobody else would ever float a loan. Most paid him back, but a lot never came up with the money so at the end of the day, Grandpa didn’t make much of a profit. When I asked him about the practice of making bad loans, he smiled knowingly and explained that his mission covered more than simply making money. One day, as I stopped by the store to pick up a loaf of bread, two rather somber looking gentlemen in dark suits were exiting the place. "Those fellows were FBI agents," Grandpa explained. "They come by every once in a while when one of the locals applies for a Federal job that calls for a background investigation. They talk to me about the candidate. You know, did he steal stuff as a kid? Things like that." Grandpa loved being a merchant who sat in the social and commercial center of the neighborhood. Partly because of the nature of the job and partly because he simply loved to work. In 1966, when my folks moved to Arizona, they invited Grandpa to come live with them in the land of sunshine and oranges. Grandpa wrote back that he’d enjoy the change in weather, but that he’d be staying in Bellingham. After all, (and I quote from his letter) "you know how hard it is for a man my age to find a job." Grandpa was eighty-six at the time and hadn’t realized that Mom was asking him to retire. The thought had never entered his head. Two years later, while fetching a cold bottle of soda pop for Tim Harmon (a young man with learning disabilities who had grown up hanging out at the store), Grandpa had a stroke and fell to the floor. Tim, not knowing how to operate a phone to call for medical help, ran out the front door and tried his best to flag down a passing car until someone pulled over to lend a hand. Tim gently cradled Grandpa in his arms until an ambulance eventually arrived. "Pop" had fallen and Tim, loving him like his own grandfather, gently comforted the man who had served so many for so long. "Call the bread man and ask him to remove the stock from the shelves. It’ll go bad," Grandpa managed to utter as the ambulance pulled off. "We can’t be selling stale bread. Mrs. Eherenfieldt will never be satisfied with stale bread." And such were the last words of the Merchant of Bellingham. Related Material:Kerrying On: Just a Child Kerrying On: My Favorite Gift Kerrying On: Tombstone Talk

To help more of our readers with their crucial conversations, confrontations, and behavior change challenges, we recently introduced the Community Q&A column! Please share your answers to this reader’s question in the comments below. Dear Crucial Skills, I have a three-year-old daughter, and I am concerned about the frequency with which I lose patience and "talk down" to her. My own father was very judgmental and intolerant of mistakes and inefficiencies. My daughter is three, and she is the epitome of inefficient! As much as I try not to, I sound like my dad way too much. I hear the disapproving tone in my voice and know I shouldn’t use it, but I get so annoyed with her at times. I don’t want to raise her to be afraid to make mistakes and I want her to have positive self-esteem. How do I stop myself from repeating the patterns I was raised with? Frayed Patience

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, Some time ago, I rejected a perfectly good job offer. I now realize that I made the biggest mistake of my life. The line manager actually personally called me after the interview process to reassure me that he was very eager for me to join his team. Is it a good idea to call him back to inquire about possible opportunities? Provided I am granted a face-to-face meeting, how do I ask to join his team after I rejected a previous offer? Overcoming My Biggest Mistake  Dear Overcoming, By all means, make the call! Now! You have nothing to lose. It’s possible that the hiring manager will only feel flattered that you reconsidered. Of course, he may have found another candidate already. Or he may have felt hurt if you gave some indication that you would accept and then didn’t. Or if you just went silent and never actually shared your decision to decline, he may feel insulted or have a negative view of your emotional maturity. Here are two possible scenarios as well as tips for handing each conversation. Scenario 1: You clearly and respectfully declined the offer. You need to do three things in your conversation: Reaffirm your original feelings about the offer. Help him make sense of your change of heart. Make it easy for him to let you know the position was filled. This might sound like, "I know it’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve spoken, and I fully understand that you may have extended another offer for the position. If it is still open, I want you to know I have changed my mind about staying where I am. I realize now that I let a fear of the unknown keep me back from something that would be truly exciting to me. This job would give me a chance to use the full range of skills I’ve been trained for. I’m ready to jump in if the job is available. And if it’s not, I want you to know I would like to talk about other options in the future." Scenario 2: You didn’t handle it well. If you expressed enthusiasm then changed your mind, or if you waited too long to let him know you wouldn’t be coming, or if you offended him in some other way, start there. For example, you might say, "I want you to know I’ve changed my mind about your offer, and I’d like to explain why. But I also want you to know I’ve been feeling some guilt over how I may have offended or inconvenienced you when we discussed the position earlier. I was embarrassed to let you know I had changed my mind so I waited two days to call you. In retrospect, I think I may have caused you to waste time in filling the position. I am sorry if that is the case . . ." Let him respond by either acknowledging that this was an issue or bringing up any other concerns you might have created. Give him permission to factor these concerns into his decision about reconsidering you. Then move on to explain why you’ve changed your mind. I wish you the best in this decision. I know making such a leap can be scary. I hope it works out well for you and the organization you’ll join. Warmly,Joseph Related posts: Changing Behavior After Training