Title: Fierce Conversations Author: Susan Scott Publisher: Piatkus/ HHA There's a glut in the self-help market these days, made obvious by bookshops allocating more space to John Grey and Deepak Chopra than Dostoyevsky and Joyce (now there's a thought - imagine using the latter two as your soul guides!) Too often it's obvious that the tomes are nothing more than get rich quick prompters or cheesy feel-good one liners that line a bin better than a moral set. So it's with much joy that I write about Fierce Conversations, a book that tells the reader to interrogate their own reality first, to start changing themselves, and that's all in Chapter One. Don't worry, it's not some boot camp for the conversationally challenged - it's more a way to improve your life by improving how you relate/converse with others. Scott's methods are based on the understanding that when we have a relationship with someone, the relationship is based on conversations, and each conversation is important in the success or the failure of those relationships, whether personal, business or familial. She argues that most of us are engaged in "unreal" conversations, for fear of truth and hard realities, yet our avoidance of these is expensive on a personal and public level. Scott's writing, with ample examples and assignments, is encouraging, enough for me to try some of it myself. Listening instead of talking, asking questions instead of finding examples in my own life to impose on others, not jumping to give advice, but sitting to listen to what the silence is telling me - they've all been helpful, and they helped me cope with a week of (normally draining) socialising where I found out more about my friends in an hour than I knew in the last year. Getting used to the bravery needed to skip chit chat and share deeply, or deal with the unresolved issues by prompting others to converse with me, well that took time and energy. But it paid off. Last week was one of the best weeks in recent months, certainly the most rewarding. Fierce Conversations then is the work that asks the reader to ask the hard questions, and deal with the responses. It's a book that calls us to live better not just in terms of improving our work environments, but to live honestly, authentically and fiercely. Start talking.