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It's the start of another working day and in more than a few places -- on an early morning run, in the shower, on the subway, in the car -- people are rehearsing. They are moving their lips. They're staring earnestly into their bathroom mirrors, they're even saying out loud: "Frankly Bill, I just don't see it that way." Or: "Samantha, I've decided to take you off this project." Or: "Here's why I deserve that raise."

Ah difficult conversations, so much a part of our working lives and so guaranteed to tie us up in knots. Forget hiding behind e-mail, voicemail, memos and faxes. Sooner or later, we need to have a difficult face-to-face talk with a colleague, an employee or a boss. (Or all three.) You can't change your career path, work out a conflict, or even get the go ahead on a project without having such a conversation. It could be about a lukewarm performance review, or about something you've let build up from an annoyance to an explosive issue. (Being human, we all avoid these discussions.) All you know is that this difficult conversation -- or its outcome -- is vitally important to you.

But, then, the conversation begins and your heart sinks. After all that bathroom blather, the actual talk goes by in a blur: You manage to say one thing you really meant to say, several things you didn't even know you thought, and in the whoosh of hot air or cool silences, you listened -- but did not really hear or understand what the other person had to say. And so you walked out frustrated, your so-called "talking points" crumpled in your pocket.

I develop talking points for every crucial encounter in my life. And that, according to Bruce Patton, is my first problem.

"Talking points are only half the story. Your questions for the other person are the other half," says Mr. Patton, deputy director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, and co-author of two classic books on the subject of crucial conversations.

He co-authored, along with Roger Fisher, the 1991 bestseller Getting to Yes, (which has sold more than three million copies worldwide); and with Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, he wrote the lesser known Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. The paperback edition was published in 2000.

As he wrote in Difficult Conversations, delivering a difficult message is like "throwing a hand grenade."

Feeling armed and a little dangerous lately, I called him for a personal refresher on how I could, as his book promised, "get out of the hand grenade business."

One of the best methods for approaching difficult conversations is to go armed all right, not with certitude and "truth," Mr. Patton says, but with curiosity -- you need to genuinely want to know what the other person is thinking, even if it's something negative about you.

We should also remember, he says, that there "has to be something in this conversation for the other person." Does he mean that tired old phrase "win-win"? "I don't like to use win-win" he responded, "because it implies I end up happy, and often, that's not the case."

Instead, the most important thing we need to do is to "unhook ourselves from needing a specific outcome" he says. If you absolutely need something, you begin to push other people and they become very uncomfortable about your desperation. And, he says, "if your self-respect doesn't hinge on the successful outcome of this conversation, then you're more likely to get it."

In the Harvard group's analysis, every difficult conversation consists of three separate conversations.

First, there's one about "what happened," in which case there are three stories -- yours, theirs, and the one you have together. If, for instance, your boss thinks you flubbed an assignment, while you think he doesn't have a clue what pressures you were under, then the third story is a combination of both your stances, leaving blame out of it. Best to start with that relatively neutral third story, Mr. Patton says.

The second is about feelings, which are often the entire reason for the conversation to begin with: You felt "slighted" when your idea was ignored at a meeting. Yet, we often try to suppress any acknowledgment of our feelings. They will come out anyway, so you might as well carefully express them.

And the third is what Mr. Patton calls "the identity conversation" -- what does this situation mean to me, to my sense of self, and even to my future? We are always, whether we admit it or not, looking for validation in our conversations.

But we need to avoid that all-or-nothing response -- if someone raises a criticism of our work, for instance, it should be the one piece of information we receive, and not something that defines us as utterly incompetent.

(Friends have told me they were "trashed" at a meeting, when, if we back up and go over it point by point, what they usually mean is that they were not given the keys to the kingdom.)

Mr. Patton, who is also a management consultant, modestly refers to Difficult Conversations, as "a perennial" -- like a hardy plant in your garden that you don't fuss too much over. But, I know one Toronto consultant who periodically swoops down on bookstores and buys 10 copies at a time to hand out to his clients because he doesn't think any other book so simply and eloquently explains how to talk the difficult talk.

In the years since its publication, the question of how we manage our interpersonal relationships at work has become more critical -- we're working longer hours, spending more time at work relating with others (or not). Working together successfully in teams, with all the so-called soft skills that that requires, has become one of the most pressing business challenges of the future.

Mr. Patton's tips on how to have a difficult conversation can be used in all areas of life. I consciously tried them out recently, remembering that I often assume I know what the other person's intentions are (when I don't), and reminding myself to reach for that "third story;" I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome.

I also liked the suggestion of "knowing your emotional footprint" -- being aware what feelings are easy for you to express or accept, and what statements trigger anxious reactions. "There's usually a clear and an unclear reason for having the discussion" he says, and if you don't own up to the unclear one, "it can sabotage your conversation."

Self-knowledge, of course, is really the key to handling any difficult discussion -- having a clue not just what we truly want out of the discussion but, more modestly, what we can also accept, if necessary.

So, perhaps the most difficult conversation of all is the one we need to have with ourselves. Tell that to your bathroom mirror.

jtimson@globeandmail.com