Ten years ago, when a book was first published, we expected the book to be a huge success and, at the same time, hope that it would help people build more harmonious relationships.Happily, ten years later, we see that the book has lived up to our expectations. During this time, readers have been emailing us with life-changing conversations, or telling us "my wife gave me this book and it turned out to be a really good book ".Through the emails, we learn all kinds of life stories that revolve around the conversations: Marriages that were already shaky get back on track; siblings who break up are finally reunited; children who are too scared to sleep alone finally overcome Inner fears; passionate conversations about death, love, and other topics on a friend's deathbed.In addition, we also learned that many parents who felt helpless in raising their children found a suitable way of communication through this book, developed a set of educational strategies for their children, and successfully reached out to the teenagers at home. Helping hands; at the same time, the neighbors are no longer troubled by various trivial matters in life, and the neighborhood relationship has been greatly improved.Here, we would like to express our heartfelt thanks to those readers who have generously shared their life stories with us.

In addition, the book had a strong response in the business world.Many workers invariably choose this book as their public relations textbook, and use the conversation skills taught in the book to face and deal with the most difficult challenges in their work--shareholders who need to balance all interests finally make a difficult but wise decision. The company's managers overcame difficulties and completed the performance feedback report; the executors of the work finally solved the problems satisfactorily, so that the work that was not running smoothly was completed smoothly; the team leader resolved internal conflicts and maintained the team Internal unity and unity.This book can help people boost morale and break through work barriers - from the new employee to the president of the company, almost everyone can find the tips they need in the book - leading people through the seemingly "harmonious" but contradictory situation. Work misunderstanding, into an efficient, open and mutual respect working atmosphere.

What is most astonishing about this book, though, is its breadth of reach.As far as we know, dance teachers have used the communication methods in the book to teach Argentine tango; the Arabic version of the book has helped Palestinian educators establish a communication plan; Immediately after the Hebrew version, it was applied to the mediation of external and internal disputes and conflicts; of course, the reason why the Hutu and Tutsi leaders after the war were able to gather peacefully to discuss solutions to conflicts, The French edition of the book is equally invaluable.In addition, many organizations around the world have also used the communication skills introduced in this book to manage and solve various internal or external challenges brought about by cultural differences.According to statistics, this book has been translated into 25 languages ​​and sold well in many countries and regions in the world; some people even told us that this book has been sent to the International Space Station (where huge cultural differences and work pressure often lead to various conflicts and contradictions).

The book has become one of the textbooks used by many large companies for employee training: operators of North Sea oil rigs, negotiators working on the oil-rich North Slope of Alaska, and leaders of Arab-American oil companies have all studied it. the content of the book.In addition, the headquarters and regional offices of BARCC (Boston Area Rape Crisis Center), the United Nations, and the Center for AIDS Prevention have used the techniques in this book to resolve disputes and address communication challenges.In the United States, almost all doctors and nurses in hospitals around the world have read this book and have applied the communication methods in the book to their actual work, aiming to provide better medical services for patients and build a more harmonious and pleasant environment for themselves. working environment.Within the U.S. government, employees of the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Reserve Board, and the National Postal Service have read this book.In the White House, this book is even one of the must-read textbooks for 1,600 high-level political officials in the White House!In universities, law schools, business schools and other colleges also use this book as a textbook. Therefore, the readership of this book is very wide, from students to teachers, from life mentors to clinical psychologists, and even high-ranking officials. Almost all government ministers or cabinet ministers have read this book.

Why is this book able to cause such a big response all over the world?In fact, the reason is very simple, because its subject is people - those of us who are not perfect but real: ●The company you work in is not big, the cooperation among colleagues is close and harmonious, and the number of employees and job design in the company are reasonable, but even so, you are still full of dissatisfaction with your boss. ●You have four emails and two voicemails, and the distance between you and five close colleagues is only a few feet away, but none of them know how to communicate with you, talk about them Thoughts on your "confrontational" style of talking.

●Sales, manufacturing, and product R&D have all been completed quite successfully, but the staff of each department are not convinced with each other, and no one is willing to listen to each other's opinions, which makes the whole work fall into what we often say in a state of "disorder from lack of appreciation". ●In business cooperation, the customer always changes the order; the supplier is often late when delivering the goods; over time, the partners find that although the two parties have the same interests, this does not guarantee that the two parties can maintain harmony cooperation relationship.

Man is a complex individual.Everyone has opinions, thoughts and emotions, and so do we, and so do the people we work with.This is an eternal fact, it was true ten years ago, it was true a hundred years ago, and it is very likely that it was true 10,000 years ago: "After all, I facilitated this hunt and managed to capture the prey, Is this my reward for my hard work? Do you think it's fair?" We don't want to exaggerate or downplay the power of difficult conversations.However, difficult conversations are indeed ubiquitous, whether it is the best place to work, the most efficient organization, or the family that everyone thinks is perfect; Difficult conversations will be encountered.In fact, there's every reason to believe that handling difficult conversations is a sign of a healthy relationship.Some pressures in life are unavoidable, and only those relationships that can tolerate and properly deal with these pressures can stand the test of time, and in real life, those who are willing and able to "share thick and thin" tend to trust each other more, And they have more confidence in their relationship with the other person, because they have had the experience of coping with the other person's difficulties together, and they have witnessed the fact that their relationship with the other person has survived the test.

Therefore, one of the answers to the question of why people have such a strong interest in this book is that no matter in life or work, when people solve the difficult problems in interpersonal communication through their own efforts, and make the interpersonal relationship in a dilemma Nothing can compare to the sense of accomplishment and joy when turning danger into disaster.However, we believe that the need for this book may be greater in commercial work than in life, and its application may be wider-in terms of long-term benefits, the reason why many institutions and companies can survive and succeed , depends largely on their ability to handle the difficult conversations that occur at work.Now, the competition for "difficult conversations" has kicked off.

Why do you say that?Because the ability to cope with and handle difficult conversations is a prerequisite for an enterprise or institution to be able to change itself and adapt to the requirements of the environment.After all, global competition and technological development have made rapid change and adaptation to the environment a necessary condition for corporate survival. Of course, when it comes to the topic of "initiating the next big change", many workers and businessmen often show a look of disapproval, and some people even sneer at it.We often hear that the managers of a certain company are determined to carry out reforms. During this period, the company will spend a lot of manpower and material resources on learning organizational structure, product quality management, and redesigning business processes. Ideas spring up before our eyes like mushrooms after rain.At the same time, consulting companies are also using various research data to show and prove to us that the implementation of the new method will bring huge potential and benefits to the enterprise. However, the final result we see is that various reforms Measures have been left behind, and only a fraction of the huge benefits and changes promised at the beginning of the reforms have been realized.why?

In our view, this anticlimactic situation did not arise because of errors in the research data or because managers overestimated the impact of reforms.Effective reforms can indeed achieve the expected results.Of course, this situation is not because the company's employees are lazy or irresponsible.In fact, many people in the company poured great enthusiasm into this reform and put great effort into various reform projects. We believe that the main reason why work and effort to change the status quo often go to waste in our day-to-day work is that implementing and enforcing change effectively often requires difficult conversations—yet these enthusiastic Workers often have not mastered the skills of this dialogue, that is, they are not prepared.In the process of change, people often have different views on issues such as priorities, investment levels, standards for measuring the success of reforms, and what is the most correct way to implement reforms. This is an issue that cannot be changed or avoided. fact.

Because people tend to take it for granted that their point of view is correct, and the reason why other people raise objections is purely out of consideration for their own interests, so, unconsciously, the process of work slowly stops , began to stand still.In addition to the lag in making decisions, those who make decisions often do not take into account the views and opinions of those who implement them.As a result, the relationship between the two parties began to change, becoming subtle and sensitive.Workers became more and more frustrated, and eventually, they gave up and turned their energy and attention to new challenges or the next big project. Therefore, the ability to handle difficult conversations is a foundational ingredient for almost any significant change. Of course, the role of this ability to talk is not limited to major changes in the work, in fact, it is also applicable to the maintenance of daily work.The huge pressure of modern business competition makes enterprises and companies have to expand their scale, so as to further improve work efficiency through large-scale production, so that companies can maintain a place in the competition.Now, many industries have extended their development tentacles to the whole world.At the same time, businesses also need to respond to market requirements in a timely manner—fast, flexible, and adaptable—and this demand has forced many companies and organizations to streamline their organizations, speed up information circulation, and use the highest Efficiency Respond to complex and changing market conditions, make and change decisions in a timely manner, and complete work tasks. Faced with the resulting more difficult and sharper conflicts, the countermeasure we give is: handle the relationship with more people. These people must be people with different views, thoughts and emotions. People who have more than one idea about companies and organizations! Think about it: In your company or organization, when people have conflicts at work, do they routinely deal with disputes directly?Does this work well?Or do all the emails and meetings around company work tend to be superficial and fail to get to the heart of the matter—even those important conversations can’t avoid the awkward situation?Over the past 30+ years we have worked with companies of all sizes, all over the world.Through the experience of cooperating with these companies, what we want to tell you is that the only reason why these companies can survive in the brutal business competition is that they have a strong ability to talk and can properly handle those matters that are related to the business. Conversations about the big topics of life and death. Anyone in the business world today feels the pressure to work effectively and efficiently.In the past 20 years, people have been focusing on using high-tech and scientific methods to shorten the production process, improve the technical level, and reduce production costs.Now, our workflow and costs have been streamlined to the point where it can hardly be streamlined any more. Therefore, in the next 10 years (or even 50 years), whether we can make further breakthroughs in our work will depend on people, on whether we can learn how to deal with conflicts at work more effectively, on whether we can Seize this opportunity and create favorable competitive conditions for yourself.In fact, when done right, we can turn conflict and differing perspectives into real estate that enhances our own competitiveness—an engine that fuels our rapid learning and innovation! All in all, if a company can pay attention to cultivating the communication ability of leaders and regard this ability as the core competitiveness of leaders, then the company will be able to develop rapidly and steadily, and its magnificent development momentum will definitely be Leaves its competitors in the dust. ★★★ In this second edition of the book, we have had the pleasure of preserving the entire contents of the first edition, and based on this we have gathered new information and many targeted questions and notes. Certain additions and modifications.As for this part of the newly added content, we will present it to you in the form of questions and answers.We hope that these new contents can help you to further deepen and broaden your understanding of difficult conversations and mastery of skills. Likewise, we look forward to your reading this part of the content and asking us more new questions. We would also like to express our heartfelt thanks to the editor of this book, Rick Knott of Penguin. ★★★ In the past ten years we have received many letters from readers, and finally we have selected one letter from which we intend to use the story in this letter as the conclusion of the preface to the second edition of this book.We try to respond as quickly as possible to every letter from our readers, and sometimes, as in this letter, we throw ourselves into the conversation with our readers. In early 2002, Sheila received an email from Ali.In the email, Ali told us that there were some problems in his relationship with his son, and he was confused and didn't know how to deal with these problems.Through observation, he found that his son would take money from his wallet without telling him, but when he questioned his son about it, the boy denied it.He asked us "what should I do". "From reading your books, I've learned," he wrote, "that blaming is not the right way to solve problems. I agree with that, but sometimes fathers and sons have to be honest with each other and talk things out. clear." After receiving this email, Sheila’s first thought was to affirm Ali’s thoughts. Yes, as a parent, sometimes, he has to confront his children or punish him, especially when the children steal and when lying.In the reply, she told Ali her thoughts, but on this basis, she also added some deeper thoughts on this matter-Ali needs to continue to understand her son's feelings and views, and this At the same time, he also needs to keep reminding himself that he, as a father, may not fully understand the whole situation of the whole situation. A few days later, Sheila received the following email: Thank you, Ali, for sharing this moving conversation with us about you and your son.We would like to dedicate the second edition of this book to you, and to all those who have shared their courage and stories with us!

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