Workscripts: Perfect Phrases for High-Stakes Conversations

Preface

This book is, more than anything else, a survival map. The workplace of today isn't just different, it's dangerous. I describe it in some detail in Chapter 1, but to make that long story, short: The rules that used to serve as guideposts have crumbled; the practices and behaviors that were standard, have been thrown to the side of the road. Most of us feel anxious and angry, and with good reason. It is scary out there in the working world, whether you've 25 years on the job or are have just graduated college.

That's the bad news.

Here's the good news: There is a way to make it through this unknown territory and emerge in a better place.

It starts with understanding how the dynamics of workplace communications have changed and adapting your attitudes and behaviors to match the new reality. That's what I've tried to help you accomplish in the following pages.

The book is filled with a great deal of situation-specific advice; tactics for typical scenarios you'll encounter, if not every day, then at least every month in your working life. There are also a number of recurring strategies which you'll find running throughout the chapters.

But if there's one main lesson you need to absorb about workplace communication today, it's this: everyone is talking at, not with each other.

In years past there were chances to change peoples' minds and attitudes; opportunities to win others over to your point of view; times when you convince someone to modify their position. It might have required ...