Fierce Conversations Required
Friday, September 12th, 2008This morning I had the privilege to attend the NWEN breakfast featuring Susan Scott, CEO of Fierce, Inc. and author of the best-selling book, Fierce Conversations. Her presentation was actually quite interesting. (truth: I had expected it to be a bit fluffy and was really only there for the networking)
The main idea behind her talk was that business is really just a conversation. In fact, all relationships in our lives are really just deep conversations. And if that makes sense to you (as it does to me), then you realize that every conversation that you have has to power to radically alter your life; for better, or for worse. In fact, it might even be the conversations that you are NOT having that are having an impact on your life.
As an example, she talked about the young married man, who, for the life of him, could not figure out why his wife was always wanting to talk about their relationship. “Didn’t we just talk about this?” was always his thought. “Wouldn’t it be easier if we had just one really big conversation about our relationship, and then we could just kind of coast for a year?”
As some years passed, he eventually had a breakthrough and realized that the conversation that his wife always wanted to have wasn’t about the relationship, it WAS the relationship!
Think of this another way; if your conversation stops with your wife or business partner, what happens to the relationship? I’m sure you can do the math.
Trent Dyrsmid is the author of this post and Founder of Dyrand Systems Inc., which provides community banks and credit unions with a virtual IT department.
