Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
$20.90$20.90
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: MFGBOOKS
$11.94$11.94
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: LiquidationFactor
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Image Unavailable
Color:
-
-
-
- To view this video download Flash Player
- 2 VIDEOS
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most Paperback – November 2, 2010
There is a newer edition of this item:
Purchase options and add-ons
We attempt or avoid difficult conversations every day-whether dealing with an underperforming employee, disagreeing with a spouse, or negotiating with a client. From the Harvard Negotiation Project, the organization that brought you Getting to Yes, Difficult Conversations provides a step-by-step approach to having those tough conversations with less stress and more success. you'll learn how to:
· Decipher the underlying structure of every difficult conversation
· Start a conversation without defensiveness
· Listen for the meaning of what is not said
· Stay balanced in the face of attacks and accusations
· Move from emotion to productive problem solving
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Books
- Publication dateNovember 2, 2010
- Dimensions5.1 x 0.6 x 7.8 inches
- ISBN-109780143118442
- ISBN-13978-0143118442
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together
More items to explore
From the Publisher
|
|
|
---|---|---|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews
Review
—The New York Times
“These talented communicators blend a daunting array of disciplines into highly readable and practical advice.”
—Booklist
“I’m on my third reading. Half the pages are dog-eared. This is a mind-bogglingly powerful book. For life.”
—Tom Peters
“A user-friendly guide to mastering the talks we dread . . . a keeper.”
—Fast Company
“Emotional intelligence applied to life’s toughest moments.”
—Daniel Goleman, bestselling author of Working with Emotional Intelligence
“The only people who shouldn’t read Difficult Conversations are those who never work with people, anywhere.”
—Peter M. Senge, bestselling author of The Fifth Discipline
“How do you confront your ex-spouse who’s late picking up the kids? How do you tell a client their project took longer than expected and the bill is twice as high? How do you say ‘I’m sorry’? Start by picking up Difficult Conversations.”
—Citizen
“Difficult Conversations will be appreciated by readers who wish to improve oral communication in all aspects of their daily lives.”
—Library Journal
“Stone, Patton, and Heen illustrate their points with anecdotes, scripted conversations and familiar examples in a clear, easy-to-browse format.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The central insights of Difficult Conversations so resonate with common sense that it is easy to overlook just how remarkable of a book it is . . . a must-read.”
—Harvard Negotiation Law Review
“Examples more clear-headed and advice more precise than we’ve seen before.”
—Dallas Morning News
“Stone, Patton, and Heen have written an extremely clear and unpretentious exposition of how to develop effective communication skills and a guide to achieving openness and constructive outcomes in dialogue . . . this book is, and probably for some time to come will be definitive.”
—Southern Communication Journal
About the Author
Stone and Heen are the authors of Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Even When It Is Off Base, Unfair, Poorly Delivered, and Frankly, You're Not in the Mood) (Viking/Penguin, 2014)
Roger Fisher is the Samuel Williston Professor of Law Emeritus, Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, and the founder of two consulting organizations devoted to strategic advice and negotiation training.
Product details
- ASIN : 0143118447
- Publisher : Penguin Books; Anniversary,Updated edition (November 2, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780143118442
- ISBN-13 : 978-0143118442
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.1 x 0.6 x 7.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #17,108 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3 in Communication Reference (Books)
- #154 in Interpersonal Relations (Books)
- #514 in Success Self-Help
- Customer Reviews:
Videos
Videos for this product
0:31
Click to play video
Highly Recommended - Difficult Conversations
🛍️ Kumo Shops
Videos for this product
0:41
Click to play video
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
Amazon Videos
About the authors
Douglas Stone is a principal at Triad (an international corporate education and organizational consulting firm based in Cambridge, MA), and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School.
Sheila Heen has been with the Harvard Negotiation Project for twenty years, teaching negotiation and difficult conversations at Harvard Law School and in Harvard's executive education programs.
She is also CEO of Triad Consulting in Harvard Square, where she specializes in working with executive teams on issues where there is strong disagreement and emotions run high. She has worked with corporate clients on six continents, with the US White House, the Singapore Supreme Court, and with theologians with disagreements on the nature of truth and God.
Visit Sheila and Doug's author page at www.stoneandheen.com, and Triad Consulting at www.triadconsultinggroup.com.
Sheila's husband, John Richardson, also teaches negotiation -- down the street at MIT. He is the author of "Negotiation Analysis" with Howard Raiffa and of "Getting it Done" with Roger Fisher and Alan Sharpe. They are both schooled in negotiation daily by their three children.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
What lawyers know about humanity comes down to this: From the ersatz "god particle" POV of lawyers, we are all part of the problem, all the problems. If even lawyers, with their two or three years of graduate education, can paint any individual human as at fault in any problem--And they can. That is what they do for a living.--then we all can face our own implication in the reproduction of relational messes. Prioritizing reintegrating human relations, we can tell our important relations how important they are to us, and show them how important they are by recognizing and affirming their brand (the identity they instrumentally and emotionally cling to), and by being curious about what they have to say about what's gone wrong, only after which, we can then tell our story.
I know what some of you are thinking: This book is wildly tone-deaf in a cancel-culture era vibing off the hallowed traditions of capitalist debt shame and the grueling legacy of shame-based religious population control. Yes. Yet if we want to have better relationships with important people in our lives, we need to get right with what it means to be a social human: We are all implicated, though certainly to varying degrees, given social hierarchy. But in the important *micro* relations that we live in--like work, family, and friend relationships, we tend to be a bit more equally implicated in the mess. It's just what it is to be social, to be human rather than an autonomous, mythical angel or demon.
To extricate ourselves from dehumanizing relationship incapacity, we learn to overmaster our fear of shame, blame, and righteous affect. People grip their self-righteous identities, which they have borrowed from aging political and commercial campaigns, and they use them to jockey for resources. But we also hope that people in our lives will take the responsibility to prioritize reason and caring above righteous affect. We can be that leadership.
I thought about "Difficult Conversation's" insights, and tried the communication recommendations. It feels a lot better than drowning in myopic, psychological-warfare storytelling with someone you need. It's not a one-shot deal, though, to reintegrate a long-bruised relationship. It's multiple conversations over time, in each of which it can be helpful to gird yourself to take on conversational responsibility. Imma keep this book around. Perhaps with practice, I will incorporate the approach and be able to more skillfully conduct difficult, reintegrative conversations--whether heading off trouble or restoring broken relationships-- with the important individuals in my life.
“Difficult Conversations,” written by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen, offers constructive tips on how to navigate through those encounters. The authors tell us that “…human interactions are complex. Trouble arises from the intersection of styles, behaviors, assumptions, and interests, not because one person is all good and the other all bad.” In a potentially volatile conversation, it is normal to hear what we think is being said without fully understanding the other person, which can lead to defensiveness and blame. At other times, we believe so strongly that what we are saying makes sense that we fail to recognize that what the other person is saying makes sense, too.
Authors Stone/Patton/Heen offer up new paradigms in easily understood explanations. Countless examples of different conversations are offered, some demonstrating how many of us instinctively react followed by demonstrations of how we can turn the discussion around. While ideas like reflective listening are included, the authors target the problems that prevent us from achieving positive interaction, explaining how things like emotions can get in the way and how to deal with them. Reducing blame, managing what is referred to as The Three Conversations, and other helpful tips like reframing are fully explained in such a manner that it seems easy to add these tools to our repertoire and begin using them right away.
The authors, however, recognize that these conversations are not always easy, and they also address those stumbling blocks with multiple examples. In the end, Stone/Patton/Heen can’t prepare us for every possibility to come alone, but if we perform the preparations outlined in the book, we can’t help but continue to improve and become more adept at using the ideas they have shared. If you would like to improve any of your work or personal relationships, this is a fantastic book. Five stars.
While the lengthy preface and foreword etc. were off putting and the beginning of the book appeared unpromising, in the sense that it seemed to follow the typical pattern of many such books by promising much. Therefore, I was afraid, similar to many it might turn out to be all smoke and mirrors. This book delivered. It is obvious that the authors have an impressive command of their subject matter, which is discussed in an interesting and easily understandable manner. It truly deserves its best seller status.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone seeking proficiency in the art of negotiation.
Top reviews from other countries
Aplica a cualquier área social: familia, trabajo, amigos, etc. Es un libro que regalaría a la gente que aprecio sin dudarlo.
Reviewed in the Netherlands on February 20, 2023