Reynolds - The Discomfort Zone: How Leaders Turn Difficult Conversations Into Breakthroughs

More praise for The Discomfort Zone

Marcia Reynolds gives leaders the tools they need to go beyond basic coaching. Both provocative and practical, she lays out a framework for getting to the heart of the matter in conversations and includes vibrant case studies to ensure you apply what you learn.

Jennifer B. Kahnweiler, PhD, author of Quiet Influence

This book leaves leaders and coaches no excuse for avoiding difficult issues. Its time we all go beyond our comfort zones to do our best work.

Prof. Konstantin Korotov, PhD, Director, Center for Leadership Development Research, European School of Management and Technology, Berlin, Germany

The Discomfort Zone presents valuable techniques to harness friction, break down limiting perspectives, and create shifts in thinking. I learned how to constructively challenge my team by expanding their minds and facilitating growth. You wont seek being comfortable again!

Bettina Hein, founder and CEO, Pixability

In The Discomfort Zone, Marcia Reynolds clearly describes how leaders can be most effective in communicating and coaching their teams to greater success even in the most stressful situations.

Victor F. Trastek, MD, Emeritus CEO, Mayo Clinic in Arizona, and Associate Director, Professionalism and Leadership, Mayo Clinic

They say leaders make lemonade out of lemons; with The Discomfort Zone, you can turn conflict into career wins!

Jeffrey Hayzlett, show host, Bloomberg TV; bestselling author of The Mirror Test and Running the Gauntlet; and sometime cowboy

Marcia Reynolds shows us that it is time to quit diffusing difficult conversations and embrace them. She guides us to use our head, heart, and gut to create the learning and growth needed to foster an innovative environment with engaged employees.

Betty-Ann Heggie, former Senior Vice President, Potash Corporation, and member of Canadas Top 100 Most Powerful Women Hall of Fame

No one has approached leadership conversations like this author. She gives her reader a clear path to progress. Dont just read and nod at the ideas here; put them to work immediately.

Beverly Kaye, founder of Career Systems International and bestselling coauthor of Love Em or Lose Em

This supremely practical book will guide you to help others move beyond their resistance. As you develop the confidence to embrace challenging interactions youll liberate tremendous creative energy and become a more effective leader at work and at home.

Michael J. Gelb, bestselling author of How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci and Creativity on Demand

Dr. Reynolds helps us go beyond just getting through difficult conversations. A master coach, she synthesizes the deepest wisdom from neuroscience and leadership to give us something really useful. This will be my new go-to guide for leaders.

Madeleine Homan Blanchard, cofounder of Coaching Services and CD2 Leadership, The Ken Blanchard Companies

Marcia Reynolds shows how the discomfort zone provides the fastest path for helping others fulfill their potential. Her brilliant book is a guide for leaders at all levels to make a real difference.

Jesse Lyn Stoner, coauthor of Full Steam Ahead!

Marcia Reynolds reveals the thought processes and techniques used by masterful coaches to engage others in transformational conversations. If youre looking to take your coaching capabilities to the next level, The Discomfort Zone will prove an insightful and invaluable guide.

Dianna Anderson, CEO, Cylient, and coauthor of Coaching That Counts

The Discomfort Zone provides solid practices for making challenging conversations a powerful tool for helping others learn, perform, and excel.

Chip R. Bell, coauthor of Managers as Mentors

Its crazy-making for leaders when they cant communicate with their people. They need to enter the discomfort zone where real connections take place, creating the possibility for breakthrough conversations.

Darelyn DJ Mitsch, President, Pyramid Resource Group, and author of Team Advantage and Zombies to Zealots

The Discomfort Zone

How Leaders Turn Difficult Conversations into Breakthroughs

Marcia Reynolds

The Discomfort Zone

Copyright 2014 by Marcia Reynolds
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

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First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-62656-065-9

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-62656-066-6

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-62656-067-3

2014-1

Interior design and project management: Dovetail Publishing Services

Cover design: Wes Youssi, M.80 Design

Author photo (page 163): Tina Celle

The Discomfort Zone is the moment of uncertainty when people are most open to learning.

On the day I resigned from my last corporate position, one of the vice presidents came into my office and said, You cant go. Who will I talk to? I recalled our first heated encounter five years earlier when he was the head of quality and I was the touchy-feely new girl hired to make the employees feel better about the changes that were happening in the organization. We were aliens from two different worlds. Yet together, we created a program that seeded the cultural transformation that helped the organization become the top performing IPO (initial public offering) in the United States in 1993.