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

Our most valuable currency is relationship. Emotional capital.

If you recognize that there may be something to this, that the conversation is the relationship, then if the conversation stops, or if we add another topic to the list of things we just can’t talk about because it would wreck another meeting, another weekend, all of the possibilities for the relationship become smaller and the possibilities for the

Conversation = Relationship

Fierce conversations have four objectives, which we’ll cover in depth throughout this book, along with the meaning of “real”: 1. Interrogate reality 2. Provoke learning 3. Tackle our toughest challenges 4. Enrich relationships

a fierce conversation is one in which we come out from behind ourselves into the conversation and make it real.

In Roget’s Thesaurus, however, the word “fierce” has the following synonyms: robust, intense, strong, powerful, passionate, eager, unbridled, uncurbed, untamed.

They got to these good places in their lives, these amazing achievements, these satisfying career paths, these terrific relationships, gradually, then suddenly, one successful conversation at a time. And they were determined to ensure the quality of their ongoing conversations with the people central to their success and happiness.

Once the members of my CEO groups reflected on the path that led them to a disappointing or difficult point and place in time, they remembered, often in vivid detail, the conversations that set things in motion, ensuring that they would end up exactly where they found themselves. They lost that customer, that employee, the cohesiveness of their tea

Our careers, our companies, our relationships, and indeed our very lives succeed or fail, gradually, then suddenly, one conversation at a time. My first “apostrophe” arrived courtesy of Ernest Hemingway. In The Sun Also Rises, a character drinking with friends in a bar is asked, “How did you go bankrupt?” He answers, “Gradually, then suddenly.” At