Crucial Skills | Management & Accountability
The Crucial Skills Podcast, by Crucial Learning, applies behavioral science to real-life workplace and personal challenges. Each episode explores skills like turning disagreement into dialogue, holding others accountable, building better habits, and leading change. Grounded in decades of research, the podcast offers practical insights and relatable stories to improve communication, management, and accountability. It aims to help listeners achieve better results at work and at home.
Episodes
How to Negotiate Salary After a Job Offer | Advice from Joseph Grenny
You got the job offer! But the salary doesn't match the role, the cost of living in your city, or your expectations. What do you say?Joseph Grenny, a co-author of Crucial Conversations, reviews a real listener letter from someone caught in exactly this situation. He talks about the frustration and disappointment that come with this type of interaction, and exactly what you should do to figure it o
Victim or Villain? How to Stop Your Thoughts from Sabotaging Your Crucial Conversations
Imagine your manager sends a message that says, "We need to talk." What story does your brain instantly write? Scott Robley dives into what may be one of the most personally transformational principles in Crucial Conversations: Master My Stories. Scott shares that most Crucial Conversations go sideways because of the stories we tell ourselves before we even speak with someone else. Drawing on rese
What to Do When Your Boss Is a Bully
What do you do when your boss is a bully?Emily Gregory, a co-author of Crucial Conversations and a Crucial Learning speaker and consultant, responds to a reader who has this very problem. Emily takes this scenario and uses it to highlight the reality of this situation in many workplaces, and what you can do to navigate workplace bullying.She breaks down the difference between observation and judgm
Healthy Boundaries, Stronger Relationships | How to Speak Up Without Burning Bridges
We've all experienced people crossing our boundaries, both in our professional and personal lives. How do we set and maintain those boundaries without settling?Joseph Grenny, coauthor of Crucial Conversations, makes the case that boundaries aren't just a nicety. They're actually one of the most overlooked drivers of engagement, trust, and performance in an organization. Joseph argues that the lag
Leadership Confessions: Accountability Skills to Set New Leaders Up for Success
Brittney Maxfield sits down with Justin Hale, co-author of the newly released third edition of Crucial Accountability, to discuss why so many new managers struggle in their leadership roles. Justin explains why more than a third of managers feel they were promoted for the wrong reasons, and dives into three skills new leaders need in order to succeed. Justin walks through the tools at the heart of
Turn Conflict into Connection | The Relationship Skills Every Team Needs
Relationships are the currency of high-performing teams, families, and communities. But, today, we're struggling more than ever to build and sustain them. Authors Justin Hale and Emily Gregory dig into why so many of our everyday interactions tend to create friction. They talk about what the research reveals about the motives driving how we connect, collide, and recover with the people we work and
How to Deal with a Passive-Aggressive Boss
When a manager communicates vaguely and then gets upset when their expectations aren’t met, the workplace can quickly become a source of frustration.Crucial Conversations co-author Emily Gregory responds to a letter from a team dealing with exactly this problem. This situation has left the employees feeling criticized, confused, and stuck. Emily unpacks why situations like this feel so demoralizin
Why AI Implementations Fail | The Behavioral Fix Most Leaders Miss
What happens when organizations invest heavily in AI tools only to watch them underperform, or fail, altogether? Joseph Grenny is joined by JaeLynn Williams, a leader with firsthand experience implementing AI across healthcare, aviation, and technology companies. They dive into a question that is haunting many executives: why aren’t AI initiatives delivering the results they promised? The answer l
A Manager's Guide to Delivering Tough Performance Feedback
What do you do with an employee who believes they're excelling, but the data tells a different story? Justin Hale, coauthor of Crucial Accountability, tackles this problem head-on, showing how to initiate these uncomfortable conversations. While it is hard, putting them off rarely makes the gap close on its own. And mishandling them can damage trust and stall progress for good.Justin breaks down f
Confessions of a New Manager: How to Set Your New Leaders Up for Success
Stepping into a management role for the first time is harder than most new bosses let on, and harder than most employees realize. Joseph Grenny shares findings from a study conducted with new managers, revealing four surprising "confessions" about how new leaders see themselves and how their teams actually experience them. The data paints a picture of what organizations are getting wrong about pre
How to Handle Criticism Without Getting Defensive | Three Practical Ways to Turn Feedback Into Growth
Have you ever heard the phrase "constructive criticism" and immediately felt your guard go up? You're not alone. For many people, feedback feels personal, uncomfortable, or even discouraging, especially when it's delivered imperfectly. But what if the key to growth isn't changing how feedback is given, but changing how we receive it?Emily Gregory explores why so many people struggle with criticism
Feedsmacked: Crucial Skills to Receive Tough Feedback
Most of us have spent years learning how to give feedback well, but what about when you're on the receiving end of something unexpected or blunt? Joseph Grenny looks back on 35 years of his own research to explore this exact problem: how we receive feedback, and why our emotional response may have less to do with the delivery than we think.Drawing on a study of 445 “feedsmack” episodes, Joseph sha
Working with Difficult People | How to Increase Understanding with Brittney Maxfield
We've all had that person at work whose style rubs you the wrong way. It's easy to write them off as difficult. But what if the story you're telling yourself about them isn't the full picture?Brittney Maxfield introduces a powerful framework called the Strength Deployment Inventory® (SDI ®) that reframes the way we see frustrating behavior at work. The SDI shapes these behaviors not as character f
The Accountability Difference | Building Teams That Make and Keep Commitments with Justin Hale
Accountability is one of the most talked-about topics in organizational culture, yet one of the least understood. We’re here to fix that.Justin Hale, coauthor of Crucial Accountability, makes the case that accountability isn't just a personality trait or a matter of willpower. It's a skill set that can be taught, practiced, and embedded into any team. Justin introduces the concept of 200% accounta
Why We Fear Feedback | 3 Steps to Deliver Feedback Well with Justin Hale
Have you ever avoided giving feedback because you didn’t want to create tension, damage a relationship, or say the wrong thing?Justin Hale breaks down why feedback conversations often go wrong and shares a practical framework for making them more productive, respectful, and effective. Rather than focusing on scripted responses or perfect wording, Justin shares practical principles that help people
How to Fix Your Accountability Problem | Three Crucial Conversations for Leaders with Joseph Grenny
In recent years, "quiet quitting" has made headlines as employees grow increasingly burned out and disengaged. But while it feels like a recent phenomenon, is it actually new?Joseph Grenny, New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Crucial Learning, explains why quiet quitting is really a rebranding of a decades-old leadership challenge: a lack of discretionary effort. Or, discretionary
How to Leave a Bad Boss on Good Terms with Emily Gregory
Have you ever had a boss you just didn’t like? Did it ever make you want to leave? You’re not alone—and there’s a better way to handle it.Emily Gregory breaks down what it’s like navigating a difficult boss. Rather than focusing on the frustrations that come with poor leadership, Emily reframes the conversation around self-awareness, perspective, and professionalism. She offers a practical approac
The Manager’s Dilemma | Balancing Empathy and Accountability with Emily Gregory
What makes a good leader? How do you balance caring about your people with holding high standards? Hosts Brittney and Justin step aside to feature Emily Gregory, co-author of Crucial Conversations and a Crucial Learning Master Trainer, as she breaks down what she calls “the manager’s dilemma.” It highlights a common challenge: how leaders can care about their people while still holding them to hig
Psychological Safety for Leaders | Creating Healthy Conversations in the Workplace
You know psychological safety matters. But here's the part most people miss: your leaders need it too—and when they don't have it, it changes everything about how they show up in the room.Crucial Conversations coauthor Joseph Grenny brings to light the topic of creating psychological safety for leaders in conversation. Just like any other employee, people in leadership positions are prone to feeli
Start With Heart: The First Step to Effective Communication | Shift Your Intentions to Improve Every Conversation
There is one fundamental skill that determines whether a conversation leads to conflict or connection—and most people overlook it. Scott Robley explains why the most important part of any high-stakes conversation isn’t what you say, but the intent behind it. When emotions run high and opinions differ, your motives shape everything from trust to outcomes.Drawing on insights from the Crucial Convers
Welcome to the Crucial Skills Podcast | Building Skills That Will Transform Your Conversations
Welcome to the Crucial Skills podcast!Hosts Brittney Maxfield and Justin Hale share the mission, philosophy, and practical impact behind Crucial Learning’s work. The focus is on a small set of high-leverage communication behaviors—the ones that show up in high-stakes conversations and consistently determine whether things go well or sideways. Brittney and Justin emphasize that lasting change comes
Welcome to the Crucial Skills Podcast
The Crucial Skills Podcast is brought to you by the authors and experts at Crucial Learning, home of Crucial Conversations for Mastering Dialogue and Crucial Conversations for Accountability training.
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