hi, do you happen to know how to respond to when things get that “crucial”? I am in sort of a similar thing and Im exploring different responses.

Second, I’m disappointed that the article and advice stopped where it did. The response failed to realistically address the what if’s. There is no “ask” in the message. One of the delineated goals is to get back the girl’s shoes. Yet, the response stops well short of describing a path to that outcome. For lots of folks, that is the hardest part of practicing Crucial Conversations–how to ask for what we want and knowing how to respond when the other person goes directly to silence or violence despite our best efforts. This response would have been much more useful and cross-situation relevant if it had gone on to say to deal the possible (likely) response of the second girl demanding whether the first was accusing her of stealing her shoes, strongly affirming she bought the shoes herself. That’s when the conversation gets truly “crucial.”

You could not be more wrong in this instance. The young lady has only two real alternatives in this situation: (1) go to her school counselor with this matter, or (2) learn a hard lesson of life that thieves will steal anything that they have an opportunity to take (and say goodbye to the shoes). The dynamics of this school environment are not known to you and addressing the matter with the thief could have some rather dire results for the victim no matter how understanding she might try to be.