ABSTRACT
Stressful conversations are unavoidable in life, and in business they can run the gamut from firing a subordinate to, curiously enough, receiving praise. But whatever the context, stressful conversations differ from other conversations because of the emotional loads they carry. The author focuses on the three basic stressful conversations that people bump up against most often in the workplace. The techniques the author have identified for handling stressful conversations all have tucked within them three deceptively simple ingredients that are needed to make stressful conversations succeed. These are clarity, neutrality, and temperance, and they are the building blocks of all good communication. One of the most common occurrences in stressful conversations is that people all start relying far too much on their intentions. Intentions can never be that powerful in communications -and certainly not in stressful conversations. In stressful conversations in particular, the emphasis is on what is actually said, not on what people intend or feel.
