Serving San Francisco Bay Area Based Organizations

Crucial Confrontations

Crucial Confrontations® Training

Crucial Confrontations is a two-day course that teaches a step-by-step process for enhancing accountability, improving performance, and ensuring execution. By learning how to talk about violated expectations in a way that solves problems while improving relationships, you’ll improve individual, team, and organizational effectiveness.

What Does Crucial Confrontations Training Teach?

Crucial Confrontations teaches participants how to:

  • Hold anyone accountable, regardless of position or temperament.
  • Determine the potential root causes of misaligned or bad behavior.
  • Empower others by working together to diagnose and come up with solutions.
  • Agree on a plan, follow up using good reporting practices, and manage new expectations.

What Kind of Results Can I Expect?

When people can effectively step up to and discuss gaps in performance or expectations, it can have a number of positive consequences, including:

  • Greater accountability and fewer missed deadlines
  • Better one-on-one performance discussions
  • Increased individual and team effectiveness

"Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations were relevant and immediately effective for our teams in realizing better results in strategic planning. Richard is an outstanding instructor – his delivery of this material is motivating. It was especially rewarding to hear the accolades from my team colleagues after sponsoring this program."

Tom Carhart, VP, Strategy and Corporate Development, HP

Where do You Stand?

To measure your skill level and see how Crucial Confrontations can best serve your needs, complete our Self-Assessment Tool and check your score.

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Crucial Confrontations

Crucial Confrontations® Training Course Details

Crucial Confrontations Training infuses fourteen hours of classroom time with more than 120 original video clips to provide a straightforward step-by-step process for identifying and resolving performance gaps, strengthening accountability, eliminating inconsistency, and reducing resentment. Discover how Crucial Confrontations training will enact change for good throughout your organization

Train-the-Trainer

Use our train-the-trainer program and Leader's Resource Kit to enable your trainers to offer the highest quality in-house training program available today. We also advocate leader-led training and certify line managers as the most effective approach for acquiring and retaining new skills.

Crucial Confrontations

Participant Materials

  • Crucial Confrontations Participant Toolkit (192-page training workbook)
  • Crucial Confrontations Action Planner
  • Contract cards and model card
  • The book Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior
  • Crucial Confrontations Audio Companion (6-CD workout for strengthening Crucial Confrontations skills)
  • Certificate of completion
  • Free subscription to the Crucial Skills Newsletter, a weekly e-mail service
  • Follow-up Web resources (a selfassessment, video examples, downloads, and more)
  • Access to our complete line of books, Audio Companions, and Web Seminars at www.crucialskills.com

If your team or organization struggles to deal effectively with difficult subjects, undercommunicates, or fails to act with unity and conviction, Crucial Confrontations Training is for you. Call today at 650-529-8980 or register for one of our upcoming workshops.

Day One (* class times vary, actual agenda is flexible)

7:30 A.M.
Breakfast

8:00 A.M.

Introduction

  • What is crucial confrontation?
  • Are you and others avoiding crucial confrontations?
  • Are you working around real issues?
  • Consequences of avoiding a crucial confrontation.
10:15 A.M.
Break

10:30 A.M.

Lesson One:
Choose What and if

  • "Work on me first" to make sure your intentions and motives are right.
  • Select a right issue by asking "What do I really want?"
12:00 P.M.
Lunch

1:00 P.M.

Lesson Two:
Master My Stories

  • Why would a reasonable, rational, decent person do this?
  • Are there ability barriers?
  • How are others (including me) playing a role?
  • What "things" are influencing?
3:15 P.M.
Break

3:30 P.M.

Lesson Three:
Describe the Gap

  • Share your intentions and seek common ground.
  • Share what was expected vs. what was observed.
  • Does the other person agree that there’s a problem?
  • What’s the source of the problem: motivation, ability, or both?
5:00 P.M.
End of Day One

Day Two (* class times vary, actual agenda is flexible)

7:30 A.M.
Breakfast

8:00 A.M.

Lesson Four:
Make It Motivating

  • Explore the three sources of motivation.
  • Examine both short and long-term consequences.
  • Link to existing pain.
10:15 A.M.
Break

10:30 A.M.

Lesson Five:
Make It Easy

  • Don't lead with your ideas. If you have no ideas, brainstorm.
  • If you're facing "bad" ideas, explore consequences.
  • Check for both ability and motivation barriers.
12:00 P.M.
Lunch

1:00 P.M.

Lesson Six:
Stay Focused and Flexible

  • Place a bookmark.
  • Decide What and If.
  • Return to the original problem.
3:15 P.M.
Break

3:30 P.M.

Lesson Six:
Stay Focused and Flexible

  • Step out of the content.
  • Contrast.
5:00 P.M.
End of Training

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Crucial Confrontations

Case Studies & Research

 

What People are Saying

 

“Crucial Confrontations was relevant and immediately effective for our teams in realizing better results in strategic planning. Richard Lee is an outstanding instructor.”

-Tom Carhart
then VP of Strategy and Corporate Development, Hewlett-Packard

 

 

“Crucial Confrontations became one of the highest rated programs ever with broad application in our project teams and relationships with our customers. I recommend it to any organization that wants to improve its performance and level of satisfaction at work."

-Todd Pierce
then CIO, Genentech / Roche

 

 

“We just piloted Crucial Confrontations and got rave reviews from all who attended. We have a very difficult group of associates to impress, and they all felt the class as not only worthwhile but essential. I would highly recommend this program to the Home Office.”

-Laila Tarraf
then VP of HR, Walmart.com, now VP of HR at Peets Coffee & Tea

 

 

“Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations were relevant and immediately effective for our teams in realizing better results in strategic planning. Richard is an outstanding instructor – his delivery of this material is motivating. It was especially rewarding to hear the accolades from my team colleagues after sponsoring this program.”

—Tom Carhart
VP, Strategy and Corporate Development, Hewlett-Packard

 

 

“We began our work with Crucial Conversations in 2004 as part of a transformation of our IT culture and leadership. The skills and insights gained from the program immediately improved our ability to deal with difficult situations and to strengthen our capacity for teamwork and higher performance. When Crucial Confrontations was developed, it became one of the highest rated programs ever with broad application in our project teams and relationships with our customers. Together, these programs have deepened our capacity to build and improve relationships and to handle difficult situations with greater confidence, ease, and effectiveness. With nearly half of our employees completing the program, it has become an integral part of our culture and our way of working together. I recommend it to any organization that wants to improve its performance and level of satisfaction at work.”

—Todd Pierce
CIO, Genentech

 

 

“Richard Lee is a very talented and effective consultant and trainer that drives impactful business outcomes by aligning and building individual, team and organizational capability. He has in-depth expertise in Learning and Development, Executive Coaching and Facilitation. Richard is highly collaborative and insightful, always focused on the needs of the business and his clients. Richard possesses an outstanding ability to deliver state of the art programs such as Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations. He engages his audience and provides them with relevant and tangible tools. I highly recommend Richard Lee.”

—Joan Cronin
formerly VP HR Applied Biosystems

 

 

“Richard and I have partnered together to bring Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer to Sun Microsystems. Richard’s in-depth experience in both the learning field and the high-tech industry has been instrumental in implementing the Vital Smarts training programs in our fast paced technical environment.”

—Denise Wolf
formerly Sun, now Leadership Development, Oracle