Crucial Conversations
Based on Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler and Gregory's book Crucial Conversationsby Train To Negotiate · 13 modules · 39 cases · Free
39 sparring drills across the book's 13 chapters: stepping up to the conversation you have been avoiding, choosing the right topic, getting your motives straight, mastering your stories, spotting silence and violence, making it safe, stating your path, exploring theirs, taking hard feedback, and turning talk into who does what by when.
What you'll practice
Each case is a short role-play against an opponent who wants something else. You play it out in your own words, a referee rules on every move, and a coach debriefs you after the sparring match.
Module 1 · Chapter 1, What Is a Crucial Conversation?
Opinions differ, stakes are high, emotions run strong. The damage is done in the lag time between noticing a problem and talking about it: talk it out instead of acting it out.
Fourteen Emails Deep
A monthly handoff has been late three months running and the two of you have fought about it entirely by email, managers on copy. She has finally agreed to a call, and she has the whole thread open in front of her.
Sign Here
The foreman has skipped a safety step twice this week to keep the line moving, and now he is holding out the daily safety log for your signature. You saw it both times and said nothing.
The Notes on the Fridge
Your roommate is two months behind on his half of the utilities and keeps forgetting. Six weeks of sticky notes and jokes have bought you nothing but an empty kitchen whenever you walk in.
Module 2 · Chapter 2, Mastering Crucial Conversations
Refuse the Fool's Choice between honesty and the relationship. Get your meaning into the shared pool, candid and respectful at the same time, so the group decides with everything it knows.
Do You Like It?
Your younger brother is about to put his entire savings into a frozen-yogurt franchise and has just asked whether you like the plan. You have read the numbers, and you do not.
Six Weeks and Silence
The product director wants every lead in the room to commit to a launch in six weeks before the meeting ends. The other leads have gone quiet, and the test cycle alone needs five.
Ninety Miles from the Customers
The owner wants the new warehouse in his hometown, the leadership team wrote the criteria that rule it out, and everyone at the table has gone quiet. He has just turned to you.
Module 3 · Chapter 3, Choose Your Topic
Unbundle the issue with CPR (content, pattern, relationship, and the process), choose the one that stands between you and what you want, say it in a sentence, and hold that level when the other side slides back to the latest incident.
Was I Wrong About You?
Your new boss has already promised your six-month project for the end of the quarter, and when you push back she asks whether she was wrong to call you a team player. More than one conversation is on the table.
This Week's Brief
Your designer hits every deadline, and the work has quietly gone flat over the last six months. Every time you bring it up, he wants to talk about this week's project instead.
Forty Guests and an Old Score
You and your sister have five weeks to plan your mother's seventieth, and every planning call turns into the same decades-old argument. This time something new comes out.
Module 4 · Chapter 4, Start with Heart
Work on yourself first. When you feel attacked, ask what you really want for yourself, for them and for the relationship, and find the 'and' instead of winning or hiding.
The $38,000 Offsite
You asked every team to cut 15 percent. In front of forty managers, the bluntest one of them asks about your leadership offsite. Everyone is watching your face.
The Parking Thread
The building group chat about the new guest-parking rule turned into a brawl, and your reply was the one everyone screenshotted. Now you and the neighbor you took down are alone at the mailboxes.
The Pickup Schedule
Your ex has been late for the Tuesday pickup four weeks out of six, and he opens by accusing you of keeping score. You have a list. The question is what you do with it.
Module 5 · Chapter 5, Master My Stories
Between what you see and what you feel sits the story you tell. Separate facts from story, catch Victim, Villain and Helpless stories, and tell the rest of the story before you open your mouth.
Passed Over Three Times
Three director openings in two years, three polite rejections, and a story about politics that has kept you warm. The division head has given you twenty minutes.
Ten of Eighteen Slides
Your co-presenter talked through most of your half of the deck and fielded every question. Two days of silent fury later, you have asked him for ten minutes.
The Phone at the Door
You came home from five days away, took a work call on the doorstep, and the evening died right there. The morning after, the kitchen is very quiet.
Module 6 · Chapter 6, Learn to Look
Watch the conversation as well as the content: the moment it turns crucial, the signs of silence (masking, avoiding, withdrawing) and violence (controlling, labeling, attacking), and your own style under stress.
Always and Never
The CFO reviews your budget request in absolutes: this never works, you always underestimate. You know your own temper, and you know he is wrong. Both of those are the problem.
Fine, Whatever You Think
Your most experienced analyst has signed off on the new plan twice this week with the same three words and a short laugh. Her reports have shrunk by half. The steering group meets Monday.
Two Days of Silence
You emailed your remote teammate a proposal to split the shared client account. Two days, no reply. Now you have him on a call and he is being very, very polite.
Module 7 · Chapter 7, Make It Safe
People get defensive about intent, not content. Step out of the content, restore Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect with good intent, an apology, Contrasting or CRIB, then step back in.
Sunday Brunch
Four months of unemployment on your side, 60-hour weeks on hers, and a home that has gone quiet except for the remarks about the dishes. You pick a calm Sunday morning to talk. Her first answer is a jab.
The Promotion and the Move
A promotion with a $28,000 raise, 1,900 miles away. Your partner has said no before you finished the sentence. Two people who want the same family, pulling in opposite directions.
The Skipped Showcase
Your quality team worked through the night to show a visiting vice president their new process. The VP left without seeing it, and nobody told the team. Now their lead is standing in your doorway.
Module 8 · Chapter 8, STATE My Path
Share your facts, tell your story tentatively, ask for the other side's path, and encourage testing: persuasive, not abrasive, even when you are sure you are right.
The Held-Back Year
The teacher wants your 7-year-old to repeat second grade. You think she and the school psychologist are wrong, and you have 30 minutes to say so in a way she can actually hear.
The Short Till
The register was $140 short on Saturday, the third time in a month, and every time it was the same clerk's shift. Your gut has already decided. The conversation has not started yet.
Twice a Day
Three months in, your manager still wants two check-ins a day and every idea cleared before it reaches a project. Nobody else on the team has that. You have decided to say something.
Module 9 · Chapter 9, Explore Others' Paths
When they blow up or clam up, get curious: Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, Prime. Then agree where you agree, build where they left something out, compare where you differ.
Mostly Fine
A customer of twelve years picks up her dog after a $900 procedure, says it went 'fine, mostly', and reaches for her card. You have about two minutes to find out what 'mostly' means.
The Bypass Road
Your uncle is for the new bypass, you are against it, and he has been talking over the whole table since the soup. The town hearing is on the 20th. Can you get him to listen without a fight?
The Corporate Guy
Headquarters sent you to rescue a project that is three months late and has already cost one manager his job. In your second status meeting, the team's veteran engineer stands up and tells you exactly what he thinks of you.
Module 10 · Chapter 10, Retake Your Pen
Receiving hard feedback without handing the other person your worth: Collect yourself, Understand, Recover, Engage, and find the kernel of truth.
More Like Your Brother
You asked your uncle, the man who built the family firm, for honest feedback. What you got was a comparison with your brother. It stings, and there may be something in it.
Fighters, Not Doormats
Your quarterly review opens with a verdict instead of a question: your boss says you let other departments walk over your team. He has not said what he is looking at yet, and your pulse is already up.
You Start in the Middle
A peer stops by your desk and, within earshot of half the floor, tells you that people have started avoiding you. She was asked to say it. You have ninety seconds before your next meeting and a long list of things you could say back.
Module 11 · Chapter 11, Move to Action
Dialogue is not decision-making. Decide how to decide (command, consult, vote, consensus), then finish with who does what by when and how you will follow up.
Thanks, Great Talk
The hard part of the conversation is over, it went well, and the team lead is already thanking you and reaching for her laptop. Nothing has actually been decided.
The Deposit
Last week you both agreed a beach week sounded good. This morning your partner forwarded a booking confirmation with a non-refundable deposit, for the exact week your sister is visiting. He thinks you will be thrilled.
Why Did You Even Ask Us?
You gathered five leads for input on the next release, took their views, then decided alone. The engineering lead thinks you held a vote and ignored the result. The feature list is already out.
Module 12 · Chapter 12, Yeah, But
The tough cases: no initiative, a missed deadline that broke trust, a partner who cannot take feedback. The same skills, applied where people say they cannot work.
One Try and Stop
He does exactly what he is asked and not one step more. Last week a locked portal and a single voicemail cost a $12,000 order its cutoff, and you have quietly been doing his follow-ups for months.
Eleven Days Late
Phase one of your kitchen came in eleven days late and $2,300 over. Phase two is worth $18,000 and the contractor is standing in it, ready to start Monday. You are no longer sure you trust him.
Our Little Hoarder
Your partner's joke about your son's messy room has become his nickname at the table, and this week he has started eating in his room. She hears any comment on her parenting as an attack, so for months you have said nothing.
Module 13 · Chapter 13, Putting It All Together
Full-length conversations that need every principle in sequence, from choosing the topic to moving to action.
Mom's House
Four years of caring for your mother, a house, some savings, and a sister who arrives already braced for guilt. Everything you have learned has to work in one conversation.
One Word in the Term Sheet
Seventeen pages agreed, one word left, forty-eight hours on the clock, and a counterpart whose last call ended in shouting. Winning the clause is not the same as closing the deal.
The First Day Back
The strike is over, the crew is back, and nobody is working. The union chair has agreed to one meeting with you. The plant is losing money every week it runs like this.