We’ve spent the last thirty years studying the factors that make conversations turn crucial and the vital behaviors for handling them well. First, let me define what crucial conversations are and why they are important and then I’ll share five things you must do in a crucial conversation to secure results and improve relationships.

When we first published Crucial Conversations in 2003, we made an audacious claim. Since then, in those intervening ten years, we’ve seen no exceptions to that claim and now confidently declare it the Law of Crucial Conversations: if you’re stuck in some aspect of your life, either at home or at work, there is a crucial conversation you not holding or not holding well.