Author
Douglas Stone
The Harvard lecturer who taught a generation to hear what a difficult conversation is really about.
1 book on BookYol
The story and the impact
Douglas Stone taught at Harvard Law School and worked with the Harvard Negotiation Project before co-writing Difficult Conversations with Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen in 1999. He later co-founded Triad Consulting Group with Heen, teaching the method inside companies, governments and universities.
With Heen he wrote Thanks for the Feedback in 2014, which turned the same lens on the receiving end of criticism: why feedback lands badly even when it is fair, and how to take it without either collapsing or dismissing it. Together the two books cover both sides of the conversations most people avoid.
The signature
Stone's signature is the shift from I understand to help me understand. He treats the other person's story as data you do not yet have rather than a mistake to correct, and he is unusually honest about the feelings and identity questions that hide under a factual disagreement. The writing is clear, kind and specific.