Summary of Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, & Al Switzer's Crucial Conversations is a nonfiction book that offers simple yet effective tools for engaging in productive, healthy dialogue, even in the most emotionally and politically charged situations. The authors, organizational performance researchers, set out to learn about what they call "crucial moments": times when people's actions disproportionately affect their organizations, their relationships, and their lives. Yet, in the course of studying what they call "influencers"—a term for individuals who are known by their peers as effective and possessing an innate authority regardless of the position they hold—for 20 years of research that involved more than 100,000 people, the authors learned that the crucial moments could be linked to crucial conversations. The three defining characteristics that make a conversation crucial are a high-stakes topic of discussion, differing opinions about the topic, and high emotions about the topic...