Part I of Oprah and Iyanla Vanzant’s televised confrontation over why Vanzant left Oprah’s HARPO studios 11 years ago aired yesterday and I loved every minute. The rundown: Oprah chose proteges to develop and Vanzant was one of them–along with folks like Dr. Phil and Suze Orman. During the height of Vanzant’s popularity, journalist and media mogul Barbara Walters approached Vanzant about doing her own show. She turned the offer down and subsequently met with Oprah to float the fact that someone “big” in TV had offered her a deal to leave HARPO.

The meeting between Oprah, Vanzant and Oprah’s executive producer that took place so many years ago was a perfect example of a breakdown in communication. Vanzant wanted a certain thing to come out of the meeting, but rather than asking for that thing, she attempted to manipulate the conversation so that Oprah would give it to her voluntarily.

But “that thing” wasn’t the show offer that prompted the conversation. The thing Vanzant wanted so badly was to be validated by Oprah verbally. In other words, she wanted to be told that Oprah respected her and her work and was committed to their business partnership.

Vanzant’s story reminded me of when I was a very young child. I used to always long for my parents to say they were proud of me, or to read something I’d written or attend a show where I was performing. But validation just isn’t my parents’ thing and to this day they’ve never read anything I’ve written or expressed that they were proud unless it was a result of me asking them directly.

I learned very quickly that asking my parents directly to say they were proud really isn’t all that satisfying, I stopped that a long time ago. But in business, directly asking a supervisor or business partner or client to provide feedback is often the best way to leave an uncertain conversation feeling better equipped to make a decision.

It occurred to me the other day that I hadn’t taught a Crucial Conversations class in a really long time (at least a year). That’s unfortunate because it’s one of my favorite skills to teach. I would have advised Vanzant to ask Oprah if she believed in her and if she genuinely intended to invest in her future at HARPO. I would have also told her to explicitly express the concern she had about turning down an immediate and specific business deal in order to wait for Oprah’s promising but uncertain one.

From there, Vanzant could have looked at she and Oprah’s shared history and made an informed determination as to whether her past experiences were consistent with the answer Oprah provided. This approach probably could have also helped her make a better decision about what Walters had offered her or, at the very least, help her structure the deal more favorably. [In part II of the interview which will air next week Vanzant talks about the subpar treatment she received under the Walters show deal]

For every single human being, validation and value come into play routinely. How you handle those moments of insecurity or simple uncertainty can have long lasting consequences because often those situations present themselves at critical times. Whether in business or personal dealings, I think most of us could become better at two things:  Being cognizant of when a moment of self-doubt has arisen, and planning ahead of time to successfully deal with those moments.