I just finished Difficult Conversations, by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen. They come at the subject from a business perspective, working with the Harvard Negotiation Project, but their book encompasses all sorts of difficult conversations.
They pinpointed the three underlying subjects that get people into trouble when they're not raised - what actually happened, feelings, and identity. They covered how we often assume our opponent's intentions and that the other person knows the impact they've had in our life, and assume that our intentions were completely innocent and that we know the full impact in their life. Also, when we don't identify and bring up our feelings (that's plural for a reason), they fester and leak out somewhere eventually. And our identity is terrifying to bring up, but often difficult conversations flow out of a threat to our perceived image of ourselves.
They offered some great tools: focus on contribution instead of blame, shift your purpose for having the conversation to learning and sharing, and reframe accusations into feelings and truth into perceptions.
It was well worth the read. I'm feeling encouraged to have some difficult conversations I've been avoiding!
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