![]() It’s a good premise in that all relationships are series of conversations. Here’s hoping!įierce Conversations has made its way into the conversation of Steven Covey, John C Maxwell and Ken Blanchard style self-improvement and business books. I hope, with its guidance, I can begin to help turn some of the educational conversations at my school around. I believe that I will refer back to it in the future when I know “fierce conversations” are called for. ![]() However, I AM glad I read it and I do feel like I learned a lot. A few people encouraged me to drop it when I said I found it only moderately interesting. This book was not as easy a read for me as “Switch” was I really had to make myself read and finish this book. First, this book was chock full of great quotations! I am really looking forward to getting the students’ take on sayings like: “It is better to fail at your own life than succeed at someone else’s” and “The truth may set you free – but first it may thoroughly irritate you!” Another quotation from the book that really resonated with me is: “You get what you tolerate.” I think somewhere else in the book she said, “You deserve what you tolerate.” OUCH! The chapter on Principle 6 reminded me that everyone experiences everything from their own context, and I need to take that into consideration, along with the words I use when speaking, because the emotional wake I leave lasts and lasts long after I’m gone.Īs I teacher, I also gleaned a few things to take back to the classroom. The chapter on Principle 4 gave an outstanding outline for how to prepare for a “confrontation” on a heated issue. I particularly appreciated the chapter on Principle 4: Tackle Your Toughest Challenge Today and Principle 6: Take Responsibility for Your Emotional Wake. Shoot! But, as the book went on, I found a great deal of guidance on how to address challenging topics with groups of people who hold varying viewpoints. Everything felt too business, too corporate, too CEO… I was struggling to see how this could help me at school. Initially, I was disappointed with the book. According to Scott, “fierce conversations” adhere to several principles:ġ) Master the courage to investigate realityĢ) Come out from behind yourself into the conversation and make it realĦ) Take responsibility for your emotional wakeĭuring the course of the book, all of these principles are explained, examples are given, and the reader is given assignments to help in putting the seven principles into action NOW. “Fierce conversations” are robust, intense, passionate, authentic dialogs that seek to build, educate, and improve the people involved in them. ![]() Over the years, workshop attendees encouraged Susan Scott, the CEO of the company, to publish a book to spread her message and help more people engage in “fierce conversations.” To clarify, “fierce conversations” are not yelling, screaming, throwing matches. One star, no doubt.įierce Conversations, Inc is a company that works with business and industry CEOs to help them be more effective leaders and build more effective teams. Of the 20+ books I've read this year so far, this is the one I regret starting the most. Get to the point! Unfortunately, Susan Scott fails miserably at this. The above extract added no value to what she had to say about the central matter and no one is interested in hearing her wax lyrical (and badly at that) about orcas and how the sea looked like. Striking swathes of ultramarine and emerald-green currents stippled the water." Not to be harsh, but this really isn't what most people signed up for when they picked up the book. ![]() Here's a sentence selected from the book at random: "From the plane I glimpsed pods of orca whales. You can also tell from her heavy reliance on movies and the way she writes that Scott is essentially a failed novelist masquerading as a businessperson. Statistics would have helped in this book but on the odd occasion she does employ data to back up her points, it comes from random sources like The problem with this heavy reliance on anecdotes is that it's dangerous to derive principles from them (and I would most certainly not live my life a certain way just because "Hey! This movie character said this/ did that!"). in this book she tries to get her points across via Winnie the Pooh, what Scott's high school classmates wrote about her in the yearbook, and reams and reams of movie scenes) Even the simplest messages are wrapped around lengthy stories that run for pages. Here's the crux of the problem: Susan Scott doesn't appear capable of saying anything without using an anecdote or drawing reference from things that should have no bearing on the topic (eg. In short, it is a terrible read because it teaches very little, and the little it teaches is taught in an awful way. I don't usually like to leave negative reviews but this book compelled me to.
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