Safety required

If you are in dialog, mediating, in a disagreement, facilitating, giving a training, or negotiating, the Prime Directive is keep everyone safe or get everyone safe. No learning happens when folks are outside their safe zone. No sustainable agreements are reached when done under conditions that felt unsafe to one or more of the parties. 

Grenny, et al., (2023) relate safety to two primary categories.

One, Mutual Purpose. So if you are convinced that I don't care, don't understand, or don't care to understand your purpose in our interaction, you will feel less than safe and any progress is unlikely, even if it appears to be happening on the surface. Failing to see your purpose or even actively undermining it means that any agreement is done under duress and will not likely hold. Unsafety breeds low or no commitment to actual results.

The second category required for safety is respect. If I feel disrespected, I will dig in, resist, undermine, and never commit to anything, even if I'm overwhelmed by the potential punishment for not reaching agreement. Agreeing to simply end a process in which I feel disregarded, dismissed, diminished, and disrespected does not mean any authentic agreement. To gain commitment, the first basic requirement is safety--Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect.

Of course, there are many more steps in many processes, but none will produce genuine agreement without these basic safety foundational factors. 

References

Grenny, Joseph; Patterson, Kerry; McMillan, Ron; Switzler, Al; Gregory, Emily (2023). Crucial conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high. 3rd ed. VitalSmarts.