STATE My Path

Five skills that help us share our tough messages can be easily remembered with the acronym STATE.

It stands for:

The first three skills remind us what to do. Influential people use them to speak in a way that maximizes candor while minimizing defensiveness. The last two skills remind us how the meaning should be shared. Combined, the STATE skills help us strike a balance between confidence and humility. They help eliminate the Sucker's Choice.

Effective communicators share tough messages by beginning with what they see and hear and them moving to stories and feelings. The less skilled tend to do the opposite. They jump in with their feelings and stories but share few facts.

When we share our facts and stories, it's important to do so tentatively. This means we tell our story as a story, not as a fact. This does not mean we don't have confidence in our conclusions, it just means that we don't hammer someone over the head with our conclusions.

The Silence to Violence Continuum

Many of us tend to toggle back and forth. As we try to deal with crucial conversations, we toggle between two ends of an unproductive continuum. We hold things inside by going silent until we can tolerate it no longer – then we drop a bomb. We may not become physically violent, but we do say things that attack the ideas and feelings of the other person. In other words, we "do violence" to the relationship.

The Crucial Conversations Dialogue Skills

Start With Heart > Learn To Look > Make It Safe > Master My Stories > STATE My Path > Explore Others Paths > Move To Action