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Susan Scott

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Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time Kindle Edition

by Susan Scott (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.6 2,157 ratings

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Fully revised and updated—the national bestselling communication skills guide that will help you achieve personal and professional success one conversation at a time.

The master teacher of positive change through powerful communication, Susan Scott wants you to succeed. To do that, she explains, you must transform everyday conversations at work and at home with effective ways to get your message across—and get what you want. In this guide, which includes a workbook and The Seven Principles of Fierce Conversations, Scott teaches you how to:

• Overcome barriers to meaningful communication
• Expand and enrich relationships with colleagues, friends, and family
• Increase clarity and improve understanding
• Handle strong emotions—on both sides of the table
• Connect with colleagues, customers and family at a deep level

Includes a Foreword by Ken Blanchard, the bestselling co-author of The One Minute Manager

Review

“A reminder that ‘the way out is through,’…she provides great techniques for navigating the passage.”—David Allen, New York Times bestselling author of Getting Things Done

“A life-affirming primer for moving us toward the conversations we need to have most.”—Doug Stone, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Difficult Conversations

“Those whose conversations with co-workers or family members aren’t producing the results they want will find plenty of helpful tools and assignments in this succinct guide.”—Publishers Weekly

“Scott’s workbook exercises will allow readers to have effective, life-changing fierce conversations of their own.”—Booklist

About the Author

Susan Scott maintains an international consulting practice through her firm, Fierce Conversations Inc., which provides Fierce Conversations, Fierce Leadership, and Fierce Coaching programs to CEOs and company leaders. For fourteen years, she ran think tanks and seminars for business leaders through TEC International, an organization dedicated to increasing the effectiveness and enhancing the lives of CEOS around the world. Scott has extensive experience assisting companies with mission, vision, values, leadership development, cultural transformation, strategic planning, and executive coaching.

Amazon.com Review

Susan Scott believes that interpersonal difficulties--at work and at home--are a direct result of our inability to communicate well. Fierce Conversations is based on principles from her international consulting practice, in which she teaches executives how to conduct such exchanges more dynamically and ultimately more effectively, thereby improving the relationships they enjoy with their various dialogue partners "one conversation at a time." Using identifiable anecdotes from her experience to inspire and inform, along with a series of practical exercises designed to impart the requisite skills, Scott walks readers through the individual steps she's developed to build better associations through more robust and honest discourses. Addressing all aspects of the process, from several methods for listening more attentively to specific ways she's fashioned to confront and resolve issues "that stand between you and success," Scott offers the type of concrete advice and confidence-building counsel that should help even the most reticent improve their communication skills dramatically. --Howard Rothman --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Publishers Weekly

An offshoot of Scott's international consulting firm, Fierce Conversations Inc., this book lasts as long as a Monday morning shuttle. Yet its thesis, that relationships both professional and personal hinge on how conversations go, and that the best conversations require determinedly gentle honesty and a willingness to listen, lingers long enough to make an impact. "It takes a certain fearlessness to make your private thoughts public. But if what you're thinking makes you squirm and wish to wriggle away, you are probably onto something," she says. On the book's Web site, a streaming-video talk feels fake and rehearsed. But Scott's written words contain substance and, as an author, she's levelheaded and funny. She quotes a wide variety of writers, from Ernest Hemingway to Maya Angelou to Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and clearly explains her key concepts, including "obey your instincts" and "let silence do the heavy lifting." Careerist marketing ploy it may be, but this cleanly written, if cliche-laden, book boasts enough psychological sensitivity to merit success. Those whose conversations with co-workers or family members aren't producing the results they want will find plenty of helpful tools and assignments in this succinct guide.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

Scott maintains a consulting firm, Fierce Conversations, which provides leadership programs on creating positive change through powerful communication. The conversations she refers to may be the very ones that you have been avoiding in your relationships at work or at home. They involve bringing those brutally honest and sometimes painful subjects to the surface with your coworkers, your spouse, and especially yourself. The case studies from her consulting practice are very instructive. Typically, personal conflicts may be so destructive as to sabotage the day-to-day operations of a company and affect performance, morale, and income. In her meetings with coworkers, Scott attacks the issues head-on, getting everyone to speak up about the things that he or she has been thinking but dares not say. The result is a clearing of the air, a breaking of tension. Sometimes people are "made available to industry," her euphemism for being fired. The results are usually powerful, and Scott's workbook exercises will allow readers to have effective, life-changing fierce conversations of their own. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Author

Susan Scott is the founder of Fierce, Inc., a global training company whose clients include Yahoo, Starbucks, Cisco, BP, General Dynamics, New York Life, Nestle, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Lego, C.A.R.E., Best Buy, Coca-Cola, and Ernst & Young. Scott is the author of Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life—One Conversation at a Time. She lives in Seattle, Washington. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Print length

365 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Berkley
Publication date

January 6, 2004
Reading age

18 years and up
File size

3032 KB
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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000P28V2M
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Berkley; Reprint edition (January 6, 2004)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 6, 2004
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3032 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 365 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0349417369

Best Sellers Rank: #177,656 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #9 in Communication in Management
- #165 in Business Communication Skills
- #376 in Personal Success in Business

Customer Reviews:
4.6 2,157 ratings

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Susan Scott

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Bestselling author Susan Scott has been working as a leadership development architect for more than two decades. She is the founder of Fierce, Inc., a global training company that helps Global 1000 companies generate significant results by transforming the conversations central to their success. Fierce, Inc.'s clients include Yahoo, Starbucks, Cisco, Nestle, and Coca-Cola. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

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2,157 global ratings

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Jayshellr

I love this read

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2023

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This book is awesome and everyone should read it.

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2023

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It took me a little to get into this book and then all of a sudden I couldn't put it down! So good!

One person found this helpful

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Life Changing

Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2009

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If your relationships at home or work could use improvement, then this is a must read book. The title is probably a little misleading and perhaps intimidating. After all, most people I know do not like confrontation. And the title sounds like you will be having toe to toe, screaming matches. But a fierce conversation is not about who can shout the loudest.

The book is based on the fundamental truth that most of the time we have polite conversations rather than real ones. We talk about things that are safe rather than the things that really need to be talked about.

Susan Scott has written a wonderful book that address the importance of having real conversations and then tells you how to make sure you can pull them off.

For starters, she says the purpose of a fierce conversation is to
interrogate reality, provoke learning, tackle tough challenges and enrich relationships." The last point is so important. Lots of people have tough conversations but often these cause the relationship to deteriorate.

If you follow the steps, you will not only talk through the tough issues, you will build better relationships. This is true for work relationships as well as personal relationships.

Scott addresses five different types of conversations. They are: team conversations, coaching conversations, delegation conversations and confrontational conversations. And she gives the model and example for each.

Susan gives seven principles to guide a person in their fierce conversations. They are: Master the courage to interrogate reality, Come out from behind yourself and make the conversation real, Be here, prepared to be nowhere else, Tackle your toughest challenge today, Obey your instincts, Take responsibility for your own wake and Let silence do the heavy lifting.

I do not know anyone who uses silence as they should. Most people are too eager to tell their story, show how much they know, they forget to let silence into the conversation.

The book does a marvelous job of discussing how to truly have fierce conversations. But an underlying theme of the book is that most conversations are with your self. On occasions, other people are involved. If you want to truly master fierce conversations, you must master them with your self first.

It is not a book to just read and file away. This is a book you need to keep handy, refer to often. The appendix has some wonderful worksheets and questions and there is a User's Guide at the end.

The book is well written, easy to read with lots of helpful examples. If you implement just a portion of the wisdom in this book, it will change your life.

The big lesson is to interrogate reality in all your conversations. What are you pretending not to know? What are you afraid to discuss with your boss/ co-worker or spouse?

A polite conversation is a failed conversation because you did not talk about the issues that are crying to be addressed.

Truly a life changing book. Susan has written a companion book that I also highly recommend - Fierce Leadership - check it out.

20 people found this helpful

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David Taylor

Provides good guidance for having the tough, difficult, brutally honest conversations that need to happen for growth to occur

Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2014

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This book provided several great take-aways regarding the importance of having great, thorough and honest conversations that allow you to feel a remarkable sense of integrity and self-authenticity (i.e. being honest with and to yourself). These conversations can be change-agents. They can dig deep to core-issues that may manifest themselves all over a person's life and not just in isolated instances. This book instructs the reader to have the conversation that is needed and it does so by also offering great instructions for how to do so, even when the conversation is difficult. She does a great job of including both on-the-job and at-home stories and applications so that this material is relevant in all contexts, not just the business world. This book increased my understanding of the importance of being open to having the difficult conversations and also to receiving the difficult conversations.

Some outstanding quotes include:

* "...our very lives succeed or fail gradually, then suddenly, one conversation at a time." (1)
* "The conversation is the relationship." (6)
* "For some people, win/win translates to I win. I win again." (16)
* "One of the goals in a fierce conversation is to get everyone's reality out on the table, so it can be interrogated. Everyone's!" (23)
* "Ground Truth - what's actually happening on the ground versus the official tactics...You have to get at ground truth before you can turn anything around." (47)
* "If your behavior contradicts your values, your body knows." (53)
* "I may think I see you as you are, but in truth, I see you as I am." (83)
* "The issues in my life are rarely about you. They are almost always about me." (83)
* "When someone has a behavior at work that is causing a problem, it is inevitably showing up elsewhere in his or her life, causing similar problems." (161)
* "The most valuable thing any of us can do is find a way to say the things that can't be said." (174)
* "Recognize that everything you say creates an emotional wake." (207)

The Appendix provide useful worksheets for using: Mineral Rights; Questions For One-To-Ones; The Decision Tree; Preparing An Issue For Discussion; The Confrontation Model.

My critique of the book is that it could have been organized better. For instance, when she introduced Mineral Rights, I had no idea what it was or what it looked like until much later in the book. I figured she would expound better what it was, but instead, she gave an example that illustrated it but did not really set the boundaries for what it actually is. Also, I felt that her chapter titles did not align with the content of the chapters. For instance, chapter four, "Tackle your toughest challenge today" sounds like chapter to motivate immediate action and to reject procrastination. Instead, while it focused on tackling issues, the "today" aspect of it was missing.

Overall, it is an easy read with many stories and illustrations that provides good guidance for having the tough, difficult, brutally honest conversations that need to happen for growth to occur.

26 people found this helpful

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Marco M.

Great book at a great price

Reviewed in Canada on May 27, 2023

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Great book at a great price with a quick delivery

Mr. D Turner

Genius book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 29, 2022

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This is a brilliant book -a real bible for life. Need to be read every year or two to make it sink in, but its really useful for life.

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Francesco

Really Amazing Book

Reviewed in Italy on August 26, 2019

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This book was really amazing, it helped lot in Communication and some of Internal Training between department, it's also good in life because it will teach you some little tips, to work on, and some things that you retain obvious will be more focussed. Shipment and Everything was on time. (my first order)

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Reviewed in India on July 18, 2017

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The product hasn't been delivered to me till date though its been more than a month i have ordered

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