BookYol
tren

Concept

Tentative telling

Tentative telling is stating a strong conclusion in a form that invites correction: 'I may be missing something, but it looks to me like the close cannot be trusted.' It says the thing and leaves the door open; certainty says the same thing and closes it.

Crucial Conversations pairs talking tentatively with encouraging testing: after you say your story as a story, you make it genuinely safe for the other person to say you have it wrong. This is not weakness or hedging. A conclusion stated with certainty, 'clearly you don't care about this', forces the other person to defend, because agreeing would mean accepting the verdict. The same conclusion stated tentatively can be corrected without anyone losing, which means it can also be confirmed without anyone losing. Annie Duke makes the same point about probabilities: 'I'm about 70 percent' invites 'why not 60?' where 'I'm sure' invites 'you're wrong'.

A real-life example

'I have started to wonder whether something is pulling you away from this work, and I might be wrong' gets an honest answer about a father in hospital. 'You are clearly not committed' would have got a defence and nothing else.

How to use it

  1. 1Introduce your conclusion with 'I've started to think' or 'it looks to me like', then say it fully.
  2. 2Follow it with a real invitation: 'tell me what I'm missing'.
  3. 3Mean the invitation; if you would argue with the correction, it was not tentative.