Difficult Conversations: holding the room when stakes are high

Stone et al.'s published shift: blame asks "whose fault is this?" (backward-looking, defensive, generally wrong). Contribution asks "how did each of us contribute to this situation?" (forward-looking, usually has multiple true answers, opens the path to fixing it). The published claim: blame conversations almost always stall; contribution conversations almost always move. The shift in language is small; the shift in outcome is large.