when facing a high-stakes conversation or a crucial conversation one of the most important elements to ensure results is your motive what is it that you really want and the reason it's one of the most important elements is because you can do everything else right in a crucial conversation you can have the setting right you can say the right words and if you get this part wrong you're likely to fail what most of us do is we see a situation and we hold court in our heads and we find that other person guilty that we're about to talk to and the motive that emerges is I want to be right I want to blame I want to punish I want to avoid this altogether and instead I want you to ask yourself in the moment or if you have the luxury of time to prepare what is it that you really want for yourself what is it that you want for the other person what do you want for your relationship what do you want for your organization and the motives that then start to emerge are things like I want to have a better working relationship with this person I want to get better results I wanted to both be successful I want to learn so I want to give you an example of how asking that question in the moment what do I really want can change the trajectory of your conversation and your likelihood of getting the results that you intended so the other day I heard a colleague of mine speak and he's someone who has much more power and authority than I do and I was listening and right in his opening remarks he said something that I thought was just really offensive and I my blood was boiling and I was steaming and I was sitting in my seat and oh and then I thought Candice you teach this stuff you teach critical conversations how to have effective dialogue that's so I took a deep breath and said okay just go talk to him afterwards so I got out my pen and I started writing down what I was gonna say so by the time he was finished speaking I was ready to go talk to him and so I walk over to him and I was feeling a little confident and I thought about America get out the video cameras watch the teacher a Crucial Conversations have a crucial conversation watch the magic happen and as I started my opening and shared what I had in my head he immediately got defensive and I thought what did I do wrong and I realized in that moment that I had indeed held court in I head I found him guilty of being offensive and I was just going there to let him know and anytime we hold court in our heads we find that other person guilty we are likely to fail and in that moment I ask myself what do I really want and so I said to him I'm really sorry I didn't mean to start the conversation off this way can you help me understand what you meant in your opening when you said this my motive shifted from wanting to be right to wanting to understand his emotions shifted from being very defensive she was smiling and being very open to have a conversation and he said I'd be happy to talk about my opening why don't we get some coffee sit down and talk about it we did we had a great conversation I learned that what he said actually wasn't offensive at all and he explained that in his talk but I stopped listening and I think that happens a lot in real life that we see something we judge and then we don't even notice that that person has apologized or that they've done something to redeem themselves and I'd argue that my listening have been allowed for him to have more respect for my candor in perspective he heard what I was trying to say and you realized maybe other people left like you feeling really offended and he was really open to coaching and changed the way he presented that speech from there on out and we had a stronger relationship afterwards now when I say you should have a healthy goal you don't want to have a motive of being right or punishing or blaming I just want to clarify that I am NOT saying we should be soft I am not saying we should swipe problems under the rug or that we should be nice there's more than one way to be direct what I hope to do today is give you a different way of being direct that will lead you to greater results one word of caution is that we often say we have a healthy goal but we don't act like it what I see happen all the time it in the workplace is people say oh I'm so approachable if anyone has an idea they should come talk to me someone has criticism they should come tell me to my face if someone's got an idea I want to hear it but then when people do approach you you get defensive you shut down you give them the silent treatment or have on your blackberry you're not really even listening and so we say we are approachable but we don't act like it and so if there's one the that you can do to dramatically increase the effectiveness of your Crucial Conversations whether you've got 10 days to prepare or 10 seconds is to ask yourself in the moment what do I really want