Improving Our “Signals” and “Beings”

This is a book review of Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time.

If you have ever felt the need to have an important conversation, but you couldn’t bring yourself to having it, then this is the book for you. Susan Scott details the exact methods to bring us to having those conversations that we know will change our life and other people’s life. It is important to overcome this barrier because a conversation is not about the relationship, it is the relationship.

When people see the word “fierce”, they may think pain, tough, or brutality. As it says on the book’s cover, “fierce” means robust, intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, and unbridled. The premise behind having a “fierce conversation”, as mentioned in the book, is bringing authenticity in your life by communicating who you are and what you believe.

Fierce Conversations will get you having the most important conservation you can have with someone, right now. After all, if you want someone or something to change, you are the one responsible for initiating the change. If something is bothering you, you need to be the one who does something about it.

Whether through fear of hurting a person, receiving retaliation, or having someone point out our own mistakes, we delay having the conversations we need to have. A large part of the problem comes down to how we present ourselves to others, in our conversations, and when we are by ourselves. All conversations are with yourself, and some are with others.

It is the book’s purpose to achieve four outcomes: interrogate reality, provoke learning, tackle tough challenges, and enrich relationships. These are achieved through the following 7 principles of fierce conversations:

1. Master the Courage to Interrogate Reality
2. Come Out from Behind Yourself into the Conversation and Make It Real
3. Be Here, Prepared to Be Nowhere Else
4. Tackle Your Toughest Challenge Today
5. Obey Your Instincts
6. Take Responsibility for Your Emotional Wake
7. Let Silence Do the Heavy Lifting

These principles, and other ideas and models in the book, are mostly applied in an organizational context. As a consultant for Fortune 500 companies, Susan leans the book towards communication in an organization. However, as she mentions in the book, if someone has communication problems at work then the same problems are likely to show up in their personal lives.

Fierce conversations needs to be used with employees, customers, colleagues, family members, and friends; not just in business. You will find Fierce Conversations especially helpful if you have trouble expressing yourself, talking with others who have trouble expressing themselves, dealing with passive-aggressive people, or resolving an ignored issue that people know exists.

Susan gives you a series of simple and practical exercises to do at the end of each chapter to help you begin using the chapter’s communication skills. She provides insightful scenarios of her experience with clients using the communication models and the powerful change that has taken place as a result.

Fierce Conversations is no emotional walk in the park. You are faced with some hard questions about your reality. “It takes a certain fearlessness to make your private thoughts public.” Susan says. “But if what you’re thinking makes you squirm and wish to wriggle away, you are probably onto something.”

Should you choose to awaken to the truth that confronts you by beginning to have fierce conversations, your relationships will grow before your very eyes. You will begin to talk about what everyone is pretending to not know. Don’t miss having that one conversation that could change your life. Achieve success at work and in life, one conversation at a time by getting your copy of Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations directly from Amazon.com by clicking here today.

Related Media Links

1. Video and audio links - Links on the Fierce Incorporated website with Susan Scott.
2. Companies, careers built or lost one conversation at time - An article published in a Seattle newspaper by Susan Scott discussing how conversations, one by one, shape our lives.

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I'm creator of a highly praised program called "Communication Secrets of Making People Like You". You can read about it here and order it here.