Summary

What s a Crucial Confrontation?

• A crucial confrontation consists of a face-to-face accountability discussion ”someone has disappointed you and you talk to him or her directly. When handled well, the problem is resolved and the relationship benefits.

• At the heart of most family, team, and organizational problems lies the inability to hold crucial confrontations . If you walk away from disappointments or handle them poorly, the costs can be horrendous.

• Learn one set of skills ”that is, how to master crucial confrontations ”and you can look forward to significant and lasting change in every problem you choose to confront in every domain of your life.

• In short, learn how to master crucial confrontations and you ll never have to give into your fears and walk away from a problem again.

Additional Resources

To supplement your efforts to master crucial confrontations, visit www.crucialconfrontations.com. Here you ll find a variety of tools that have been designed to help you turn ideas into action. For readers groups, download a list of questions to help stimulate a group discussion of the key principles and skills. You can also find these questions in Appendix D (Discussion Questions for Reading Groups) of this book.

What s Next?

If stepping up to crucial confrontations and handling them well can have such a huge impact on your life, how do you know which problems to address and which to avoid? If you re like most people, there are so many areas that could be improved. Surely, you can t talk to everyone about everything, so how do you choose wisely? Let s see . . .