Question 1 urges you to look at your situation clearly, focusing on the facts. What exactly is going on?

To do this, first, put all your emotions and opinions aside and consider the facts only. Think of yourself as a camera, moving to all angles in turn and snapping the facts as images of the situation. You'll record only the people, places, and things involved. Emotions, opinions, judgments, points of view are out of the picture; only hard facts prevail at this point.

Now let's look at a list of queries you might ask yourself to help answer Question 1:

We'll follow one woman's situation to highlight the process.

Kim was a senior associate at a consulting firm. She loved her work, and especially loved the travel involved. However, her colleague, Tony, (also a senior associate) with whom she often traveled, tended to intimidate her. When they sat together at client meetings, she would slowly shut down and let Tony take the lead. Tony gladly allowed this to take place, and eventually left Kim out of the discussion entirely. She'd sit there mutely as Tony ran with the project, wondering why she was even there.

In time the situation deteriorated further. Tony would delegate tasks to Kim that she found particularly demeaning. Finally, Kim decided that she had to do something about the situation and, putting her emotions aside, she began to examine the facts of the situation:

By dispassionately examining the situation in this way, Kim had answered Question 1 for herself.

It is important to be dispassionate and thorough when you begin to address Question 1—keep in mind the camera perspective.

Once you have a clear grasp of the situation, you can begin to determine what are both the important and noncritical components you need to solve your dilemma. Question 2 invites you to sift through the facts to identify what you're willing to negotiate, give away, or compromise in order to solve your problem.

Asking "what's negotiable?" is another way of saying, "I realize that not everything is critical to produce a successful result. To figure out what I want to do, I need to know which elements are vital to my perspective, and which are not. Being able to sort through all these possibilities will help me arrive more quickly at a game plan."

The questions to ask yourself, in order to answer what is negotiable, are:

When Kim asked herself "what's negotiable?" she came up with this list of items:

Typically, when we first come face to face with crucial decisions, everything seems important. The situation seems to be the most important one we have ever been confronted with, and the options can be overwhelming. Asking "what's negotiable?" allows us to examine everything associated with the situation and determine what is and isn't crucial.

When Kim made a list of what was negotiable, she felt less overwhelmed. Once she knew what she could give up, she could move on to Question 3.

On the other side of the equation, we need to also look at which items or aspects of the conflict are immutable. By asking ourselves what's nonnegotiable, we decide where we are not willing to budge, where we will stand fast and say, "No." It may be drawing a line at how we are being treated; it could be a dollar amount; it could be any item involved in the conflict. Whatever it is, we make a choice not to concede this item. In truth, Question 3 actually asks, "What are you willing to fight for?" That gets translated to, "What's nonnegotiable?"

Let's continue with our friend, Kim, who is now ready to ask herself, "What's nonnegotiable?"

Here's what she came up with:

Kim vacillated between what was negotiable and what was nonnegotiable until she felt that she had a balanced-enough list to move to the next question. Going back and forth between Questions 2 and 3 allows for the development of more comprehensive answers to each.

Let's consider now what happens when more than one person has something at stake in the decision-making process. In this situation, each person should determine what he or she must have and what he or she is willing to give up to achieve the best end result.

For example, assume you tell your boss that taking Christmas week off to be with your kids is nonnegotiable: by making this clear, he or she knows where you stand and can plan for your absence should any future decision-making opportunities arise.

When I worked in corporate management, I considered meeting deadlines to be nonnegotiable. I expected my staff to either meet their deadlines or, well in advance of the deadline, come to me to explain why they couldn't and negotiate a new due date. Everyone who worked for me knew I did not want to have to remind them when their projects were due. They certainly knew where I stood, and in this way, I was able to deal efficiently with transgressions and never had to face any unpleasant surprises.

A manager, when dealing with his or her team, can ask what's negotiable and nonnegotiable in any situation. Included in the answer could be:

The more we know about each other's critical and noncritical items, the less likely there will be any surprises later—as in, "Gee, I didn't know it was that important."

What's negotiable and nonnegotiable must be clearly stated and clearly defined. This means that you need to take a stand. Changing how someone has treated you in the past might be nonnegotiable, and you might need to state that clearly—for example, "It's not acceptable to expect me to work late on Fridays."

Once you are satisfied with your lists of both negotiable and nonnegotiable issues, you are ready to move on to the next question.

It really resonates with clients when I refer to Question 3 as the "What hill am I willing to die on?" question. Then I point out that it is in the South where the sun shines the brightest!

Using your past experiences as lessons to learn from, so that you can make better decisions in the present and future is, alas, something I rarely see happen in organizations. The mistakes of the past are usually bemoaned as experiences not to be repeated, yet there is rarely any discussion about how to ensure that those involved in these negative experiences have learned from their mistakes. Punishment may occur, but rarely conscious, organization-wide learning.

As Kim continued through The Working Circle, it was important that she keep in mind that it is counterproductive to be negative when problem solving. This is because:

Question 4 reminds us that if we have been through similar situations relevant to the current impasse, sharing what we gained from those experiences can help others in their decision-making process.

Kim sat quietly for awhile as she contemplated Question 4. She remembered that when she was 16 years old, three girls in her gym class enjoyed harassing her in the locker room. Consequently, she began to dread attending gym class, and spent long hours fretting over what to do about it.

One day, as she was going into the locker room, she noticed that one of the bullies was standing alone. The other two girls were somewhere else, and the one remaining was bending down, apparently searching for something.

"Did you lose something?" Kim asked helpfully. Surprised, her nemesis looked up and said, "I lost my bracelet."

Kim sank down onto the floor and helped the girl search for her lost bracelet. "Here it is," she said a few minutes later, holding it up. She handed it to the other girl, who was clearly relieved and grateful.

"Thanks," she said very quietly to Kim. After that incident, the three girls didn't bother Kim again. At times they made mild jokes, but the harassment never had the same intensity as it had previously.

Now, sitting at her desk at work, Kim realized that she had learned a valuable lesson: to treat bullies as equals, rather than avoid them and give them the upper hand. She also learned the importance of behaving as a considerate human being, rather than emulating the bad behavior of the bullies.

Considering her past experience, Kim felt more confident about how she needed to behave with Tony, and so moved on to Question 5.

Very often, you'll find that your response to Question 4 reminds you of difficult situations you've been through before, that you came out of them whole, and may even have learned a thing or two that is helpful to you today. We also often tend to treat the current situation as absolutely the worst we have ever been through. Working through Question 4 reminds us we have faced multiple challenges, which empower us to deal with today's.

Question 5 allows us to stop for a moment and ask ourselves how we feel. How we answer will revolve around the following issues:

Think about it: When you need to make important decisions, aren't emotions present? When there is conflict, aren't emotions involved? And yet, how often will someone at a meeting ask, "Okay, but how do we really feel about moving forward?"

There are a couple of reasons why feelings aren't exposed during decision-making meetings:

When was the last time you heard a rumor making the rounds in your organization? What feelings were evoked by these rumors? What impact did those fears, worries, and anxieties have on productivity? I'm willing to bet that those emotions slowed down the organization considerably. People were spending more time talking about impending doom than they did on their work. If we paid a bit more attention to how people were feeling, we could significantly improve productivity and morale.

Women generally have an easier time relating to emotions. However, at work, usually they can't appear to be soft or too touchy-feely. Working with emotions has to be part of the process, not an end to the process. A manager who tells his or her team not to worry only arouses more worry. Acknowledging worry goes a long way toward minimizing it. Facing the emotions inherent to any situation enables us to deal with them and move on.

Back to our friend, Kim, who had been intimidated by Tony, but now wants to tell him how she has felt in the past: consistently mistreated by him. However, she has no idea how to approach the situation. By using The Working Circle, she realized that she was no longer afraid to approach Tony, because she had tapped into her past experiences with bullies and, in doing so, now feels strong enough to devise a game plan for herself. Kim is confident that she has been thorough in answering Questions 1 through 5; in other words, she does not feel incomplete. Feeling incomplete can be a signal to go back to previous questions and consider them one more time.

Because Kim no longer fears a confrontation, she can now move on to Question 6, which will help her create the all- important game plan.

This is probably the question you are most familiar with: What are you going to do? Answering it is the linear part of the process, when we make project plans, assign timelines, draw Gantt charts, and so on.

Point: The more complex a dilemma, the more complex the plans. So much has been written about project planning that I will not take up space in this book to deal with it. Suffice to say, we have arrived at the place of actual project planning.

Kim has decided that on her next business trip with Tony to a client site, she will discuss what has been concerning her. She now reviews the main points of her plan. She:

Question 6 allows you, like Kim, to use all the information you have accumulated from the first five questions to help draw up your game plan.

With that plan completed, you're probably thinking you're finished with The Working Circle, right?

Well, not quite...

When I'm guiding a client through The Working Circle and we finish with Question 6, the client often cheers, "Hooray, I'm finished!" When this happens, I smile and pretend to bar the door, then explain to the client about Question 7 and why it is so important.

Your planning process will be much richer and more likely to succeed if you project the consequences of your plan. That's the purpose of Question 7. It encourages you to begin living your plan. What are the positive benefits your plan might bring you? How would you like to be transformed as a result? Does this plan assure you of a positive transformation?

Question 7 is at the core of what is called Transformational Conflict Resolution. Not only do you want to resolve the issue, you want to learn from it as well, and implement change. This is critical if you don't want to keep repeating negative situations over and over again.

The different ways of approaching Question 7 are:

Let's see how Kim handled this step. After she completed her game plan, she sat back and reflected. If she was clear, assertive, and professional in her discussion with Tony, she could accomplish her goal of working with him as an equal. This would give her new self-confidence, enable her to be more relaxed with their clients, and bring her more respect from Tony, her other teammates, and her manager. Was that something she wanted? Absolutely!

But first, she has one final question to tackle.

Question 8 provides you with that all-important final check before you actually initiate your plan. If you have been diligent in answering the first seven questions, you should be able to move rather briskly through this question. Let's see how Kim handles it.

She looks at the notes she has written while answering the first seven questions comprising The Working Circle. Would this new assertiveness be good for her future? Without doubt! She can see herself leaving meetings without feeling bad because she had not stood up for herself. She also imagines how much more comfortable she will become with her superiors at work. This increased comfort level could, she knows, leads to greater recognition for her achievements.

I learned long ago that if you put your intention where you want to go, your attention will follow. If you focus on the changes you would like to see take place as a result of your efforts, they're far more likely to occur. One of my clients was able to win the job she had been wanting by spending 10 minutes a day observing herself going through the motions of a typical day on the new job. She saw herself smoothly handling any issues that arose. She even saw the outfit she'd be wearing when the job was offered to her! Sure enough, to everyone else's surprise, she won the job, and the other top candidate was unexpectedly given a lateral transfer.

Question 8 will motivate you to look at the future. Of course, none of us can predict the future, but we certainly can be better prepared for it by focusing on potential results and consequences, both positive and negative.

If more corporations would look at Question 8 in greater depth, they would produce stronger long-term results. The future extends further than the next quarter—it goes well beyond that! Had more organizations done that in the recent past, the devastating credit bomb that exploded in 2008 would not have been nearly so damaging.

Making decisions is not easy. They typically involve complex issues, emotions, and long-standing situations that are difficult to resolve. No one teaches us how to make decisions; from childhood, we are told what decisions to make. Using The Working Circle process, a both flexible and comprehensive process, you can learn the skills you need to face your career challenges and conflicts with ease and thoughtfulness. The more you use The Working Circle process, the more comfortable and confident you will become, making it easier to select the appropriate questions to ask to address each new situation.

Now we're ready to explore how The Working Circle can take you to the Winner's Circle—every single time!