With the Motley Fool Money Extra, I'm Chris Hill.

These days, more and more work conversations are happening through video conferencing,

which means it's more difficult to pick up another person's cues, because you're not

in the same room with them.

Which is why having productive outcomes in these situations is more important than ever

before.

Last summer, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner talked with Emily Hoffman, the communications

expert behind crucial conversations about the keys to more effectively communicating

at work.

If you want a conversation to go differently than it has before, to go better than it

has before, you have one option.

Which is to change the way you enter that conversation, to change the you that you bring

to that conversation.

I can't change the other person.

I can change me.

So we really talk about how do I work on myself first.

And there's a couple of great skills.

I'll talk briefly about two of them that I love.

The first one is to say, I need to focus on what I really want here.

What is my intent when I come into that conversation?

Because ultimately it's our intent, our motive, or what we call our heart that drives our

behavior.

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