Disagree better: Recent Episodes
Tammy Lenski
Conflict resolution insights for ongoing personal and business relationships from professional mediator and conflict resolution teacher Dr. Tammy Lenski. Podcast formerly called The Space Between.
In honor of his remarkable legacy, I’m replaying my 2020 story about Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter.
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Conflict can be detrimental to relationships, but it doesn’t have to be. What makes the difference?
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These phrases will help you introduce disagreement in a non-confrontational way.
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Help yourself think clearly, make better decisions, and keep impulses in check with these 11 mental tricks.
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How I form “provisional theories” that can influence the trajectory of a conflict.
Find episode transcript and links here, the QueryCards here, and conflict resolution quotes here. Subscribe to my monthly newsletter here.
Do you seem like a bad listener when you disagree? Yes, you do, even when you’re an ace listener. Here's why.
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Good problem-solving process is like a reliable GPS, helping us navigate a difficult conversation coherently.
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Venting anger doesn’t help you calm down and increases aggression. So why is the venting myth still embraced? And what’s better?
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Here's an exercise to help you identify your conflict hooks and increase emotional agility during difficult interactions.
Find episode transcript here.
Find part 1 here.
How knowing your conflict hooks helps reduce conflict in your life.
More about my book here and the free worksheet here.
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One of the best ways to increase emotional agility in conflict is to recognize and manage your conflict hooks.
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What we do immediately after we express empathy helps or hinders the connection and alignment we’re trying to build.
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How to skip the drama and the rumination and raise a concern so they’ll actually listen.
Find Tammy's episode transcript and links here and the printable cheat sheet here.Subscribe to my monthly Subtack newsletter here.
It’s tempting to tell people what they should do. It feels efficient, and it makes us feel helpful and wise. When we replace telling with asking, we can do something more powerful and, ultimately, more satisfying: Help people illuminate what’s important and generate effective solutions to problems.
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My newsletter, Disagree Better, turns 25 this month. I’m marking the milestone with 25 ways to disagree better from a wide array of thinkers.
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One reason agreements and solutions fail is that they don’t sufficiently identify and address the root causes of the problem. Another is that they address behavioral elements of the conflict without also addressing systemic elements that drive the behavior. The Relationship Diagram is an excellent tool for overcoming both of these problem-solving hurdles.
- Relationship diagram demo (video)
- Episode transcript
- Frame a solvable problem
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Should our conflict partners have to earn or deserve our good graces for us to show them generosity of spirit when they’re acting badly? Here’s a way to disagree better even when we think we’re handling the encounter well and they’re not.
- Episode transcript
- Seeing the equal human in front of us
- Susan Cain's website
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Like a movie trailer, your Stuck Story is a montage of the most interesting moments in a conflict, with certain scenes magnified and others omitted. It’s not the story of the conflict; it’s your story of the conflict. It’s not helpful to keep repeating your Stuck Story, either to yourself or to others. Here’s why and how to stop the unintended rehearsals.
- Episode transcript
- About neural pathways
- My book, The Conflict Pivot
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Stonewalling makes conflict conversations more difficult and can damage vital relationships. So what can you do if you want to talk out a problem, but the other person is stonewalling? Start by understanding how the present circumstances may be driving the behavior.
- Episode transcript
- When they're not ready to talk
- How to navigate the "not my problem" problem
- A question to help make sure you're solving the same problem
- The "real issue" black hole
- Instead of labeling, describe the behavior
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Stonewalling makes conflict conversations more difficult and can damage vital relationships. So what can you do if you want to talk out a problem, but the other person is stonewalling? Start by understanding how the present circumstances may be driving the behavior.
- Episode transcript
- When they're not ready to talk
- How to navigate the "not my problem" problem
- A question to help make sure you're solving the same problem
- The "real issue" black hole
- Instead of labeling, describe the behavior
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I'm on summer break and will be back with a new episode next month. In the meantime, enjoy this replay from the archives.
- Episode transcript
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When someone is steadfastly committed to their position in an argument, the best we can do sometimes is create just a tiny bit of wiggle room in their thinking, enough to soften their position and give the conversation somewhere to go. Here’s one way to do it.
- Episode transcript
- The Knowledge Illusion by Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach
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It’s hard to stand in someone else’s shoes when we’re in the middle of a conflict with them, even when we know that understanding their perspective is important. Here’s a trick of the mind that makes perspective-taking easier.
- Episode transcript
- The Zen of Listening by Rebecca Shafir
- The negative effects of trying to stand in their shoes
- More on practicing in low-stakes situations
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Conflict and suffering are bedfellows. When we’re trying to help others in conflict, whether as mediators, leaders, or family members, we can help them better if we can turn toward their suffering instead of withdrawing from it.
Episode transcript
An article about Epstein's and Black's work
Small caring actions to ease suffering
Every conflict contains a bid to be seen
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Most of us sit down together to sort out tension and conflict. We meet over coffee, or gather at the conference table, or sit down for a family meeting. We might well benefit more from walking conflict resolution than sitting, and here’s the science to explain why.
- Episode transcript
- 2014 Stanford University research
- 2022 Max Planck Institute research
- A long walk with two mediation clients
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My conflict work used to center squarely on helping people have the conversations that resolve conflict. As my work has shifted over the last decade to being more about helping people approach conflict in ways that don’t require my presence to be successful, some of what I do is about shifting conflict-related habits. Here’s one approach that can be very powerful.
- Episode transcript
- The "as if" technique
- Ruth Chang's method for making hard choices
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- More on recurring small wins
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When faced with a problem, we often ask ourselves or others, “What should we do?” It’s not a bad question at all, but research suggests a better question for prompting more creative solutions.
- Episode transcript
- The 2018 research
- Source of the restaurant story
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Sure, it’s good to pick your fights. Life is short, after all. But that doesn’t mean you should avoid the small fights as a matter of course. The small fights are the places you get better managing your own or others’ conflicts, preparing you for more difficult conversations.
- Episode transcript
- The problem with totalizing
- The sample list of things to practice, along with information about each
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When conflict kindles unwelcome emotions, we want relief. There’s a well-researched emotion regulation technique that reliably dampens the effect of unwelcome emotions, and all we need to remember is one simple question.
- Episode transcript
- The 2007 research
- The 2018 research
- The 2021 research
- Using writing to boost performance in pressure-filled situations
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When we try to talk out a problem with someone, and conversation hasn’t yielded the results we hoped, we may find ourselves withdrawing from them. But as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai reminds us, there’s often a better choice.
- Episode transcript
- The conversation between Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai and Dr. Laurie Santos
- More on my grad students' assignment to have a difficult conversation
- Shared everyday experiences for re-establishing the connection that conflict has splintered
- Buy Tammy a coffee
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When we try to talk out a problem with someone, and conversation hasn’t yielded the results we hoped, we may find ourselves withdrawing from them. But as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai reminds us, there’s often a better choice.
- Episode transcript
- The conversation between Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai and Dr. Laurie Santos
- More on my grad students' assignment to have a difficult conversation
- Shared everyday experiences for re-establishing the connection that conflict has splintered
- Buy Tammy a coffee
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When we try to talk out a problem with someone, and conversation hasn’t yielded the results we hoped, we may find ourselves withdrawing from them. But as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai reminds us, there’s often a better choice.
- Episode transcript
- The conversation between Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai and Dr. Laurie Santos
- More on my grad students' assignment to have a difficult conversation
- Shared everyday experiences for re-establishing the connection that conflict has splintered
- Buy Tammy a coffee
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Confronting is an essential conflict resolution and supervisory skill, yet it can feel risky and uncomfortable. We don’t want to seem confrontational or aggressive, and we do want to feel confident that confronting might make a difference. Here’s a mediator’s tip for how to confront someone and raise an issue without seeming antagonistic or argumentative.
- Episode transcript
- Evaluating whether we should raise an issue or let it go
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Highly effective listening is a conflict resolution superpower — it reduces defensiveness, diminishes extreme reaction, and increases open-mindedness. And it’s learnable. To be a highly effective listener, pay particular attention to these three essential components of great listening.
- Episode transcript
- The journal article
- Every conflict contains a bid to be seen
- Multitasking is bad for good listening
- The downside of copious note-taking
- Practicing transparency when overwhelmed by a long-winded talker
- Seeing the equal human in front of us
- Leading with our curiosity
- The downsides of setting ground rules at the beginning of a mediation
- Buy Tammy a coffee
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Recurring conflict doesn’t automatically signal that a personal or professional relationship is in trouble. Teams, couples, and families that experience conflict can develop a figurative “stress wood” that makes for resilient relationships.
- Episode transcript
- About Biosphere 2
- About trees and stress wood
- How conflict avoidance can cause bigger conflict later
- When parents avoid disagreeing in front of child or routinely break up sibling arguments
- When parents prevent their child from expressing emotions
- How healthy relationships benefit from conflict
- Buy Tammy a coffee
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When you're tempted to dismiss someone's concern as trivial or roll your eyes at the things people find to fight over, it's time to sit up straight and pay attention. You're missing something, and it could be important.
- Episode transcript
- Buy Tammy a coffee
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This episode is a little different than my usual episodes -- I'm sharing Lu Hanessian's interview of me for The Foreseeable Now podcast. I hope you'll use the link below to listen to our wide-ranging conversation about good conflict resolution.
- Find the interview here
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You’ll be a better listener when you disagree with someone if you can first master better listening in your everyday conversations. Here’s a good place to start: Trade shift responses for support responses.
- Episode transcript
- Celeste Headlee
- Charles Derber
- Stealing someone's story
- Holding the space
- Buy Tammy a coffee
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When frustration or anger hijacks us, we may say or do things we regret. Here’s an uncomplicated mindfulness technique for managing the urge to lash out — and for managing other troublesome impulses too.
- Episode transcript
- Why it's hard to reason someone back into reasonableness
- Why it's good to interrupt rumination
- Buy Tammy a coffee
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Once we’ve sorted out our differences, is the conflict over? Or does it leave a residual experience that can drag us down again?
- Episode transcript
- Pema Chödrön's Getting Unstuck
- More about the power of perceived understanding in relationships
- Kintsugi and the art of mending relationship conflict
- When conflict is real but not true
- Tammy's book, The Conflict Pivot
- Tammy on twitter
- Buy Tammy a coffee
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We all have our own preferred conversational rules of engagement. When things are going well, it’s easy to overlook someone violating what we consider to be conversational norms. But when conflict enters the picture, our Ghost Rules can contribute to tension and escalation.
- Episode transcript
- Two ghost rules my husband and I had when we met
- The conflict resolution toolbox
- Buy Tammy a coffee
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When solving a problem seems well and truly hopeless, a certain kind of question can clear roadblocks and boost creative problem-solving. These ultimate questions deserve a permanent place in our conflict resolution and problem-solving toolkits.
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When we’re on the verge of being swamped by anger, having a pre-chosen anger reset can save the day. Here are a few anger resets I suggest to clients I’m coaching or in anticipation of mediation, including ones I use myself.
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The fact that we disagree — even strongly — isn’t what damages personal or professional relationships. It’s how well we make use of practices that buffer our vital relationships from the detrimental effects of conflict. In other words, it’s how well we safeguard “the space between” through the way we disagree.
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When a disagreement in front of others gets difficult, there’s a simple remedy for avoiding two common pitfalls such conversations bring with them.
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Deflecting blame, denying responsibility, and minimizing negative impact are defensive behaviors that make problem-solving conversations frustrating. To reduce defensiveness and increase their willingness to take responsibility, use this research-supported approach when you confront.
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Better conflict resolution habits don’t start with learning a new approach and then trying it in your next difficult conversation. Just as you wouldn’t start running and try a marathon the following week, better conflict resolution habits begin with a slow, steady build. Here are some ways to start strong and build from there.
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When we argue, and particularly when we argue with loved ones and colleagues — those with whom we are in ongoing relationship — the argument has three threads at its core. It doesn’t matter what we’re arguing about; those three threads are there. When we attend to those three threads, we set the stage for a much better conversation.
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Sometimes the best comeback after an insult -- the comeback that actually does something for us instead of to them -- is no comeback at all, as the following Zen koan so beautifully illustrates.
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When we want to reduce animosity and increase empathy toward a group or individual, we may try perspective-taking, the act of trying to stand in their shoes and view the situation from their perspective. But what if there’s something even more powerful for the job?
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A subscriber emailed me with the question, “How do I know when I’ve figured out the real problem or issue?” It’s a question worth unpacking and I have an alternative question to propose.
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Five ways to stop "less-than"-ing during conflict and conflict resolution.
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Conflict spirals are patterns of friction or tension that worsen over time. Distancing spirals are a particularly insidious form of conflict spiral because they cause relationship damage while we think we’re doing nothing wrong at all.
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Self-coaching questions for conflict resolution.
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Practicing scales is an elegantly simple way to get a read on where someone stands along a continuum. It’s useful for illuminating the nuances in disagreements that sound polarized.
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Ruminating — dwelling on troubled thoughts and feelings — impairs good decision-making and can make us more aggressive. It’s a seductive habit and I really want everyone to develop alternatives that serve us better. Maybe one of these three alternatives to rumination will be a good replacement habit for you.
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When someone is upset, one familiar response is to ignore it and forge ahead. Another is to try to make them feel better with kind reassurance. Both of these approaches are a version of “make it go away.” There’s a third, more fruitful approach: Turn toward it.
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They say that if we see a pothole on the road in front of us and we focus on it, we will inadvertently steer right toward it. To avoid the pothole, the trick is to broaden our view and focus on where we actually want to go. This kind of deliberate focusing of our attention on the kind of future we want is essential in conflict resolution too, as this negotiation story from U.S. President Jimmy Carter reminds us.
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It’s possible to turn criticism into a positive conversation, whether you’re the recipient of someone’s criticism or you’ve gotten feedback about being too critical. The key is to find the hidden message the criticism is trying to convey. Here’s how to do that.
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Conflict is very good at creating listening barriers. When they’re talking we’re only half listening while we wait to talk, formulate our comeback, struggle to keep calm, and fall into other habits that get in the way of good listening. If you’re in a position to help someone come back into good listening, try these four questions to prompt the return (you can use them with yourself, too).
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When negative experiences leave someone with strong emotional memories, discussing those experiences during conflict resolution can be tricky territory. The solution isn’t to suppress discussion of negative events or ask people to set aside their strong emotions. Recent research offers insight into a simple way to navigate emotional memories in a way that reduces the negative side effects.
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There’s a new book out, Living Together, Separating, Divorcing: Surviving During a Pandemic, released yesterday on Amazon. The brainchild of Michael Lang and Peter Nicholson, the book features conflict resolution advice for couples and families from over 70 mediators and related professionals from 10 countries. Here’s my contribution and more details about the collective wisdom in the book.
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When someone won’t change their behavior, we may try to persuade them by fiat or information. Both approaches can work, but too often, they fail. Here are three reasons force and facts fail to persuade and what to try instead.
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Life looks different for most of us than it did a few weeks ago. The dramatic changes in the rhythm of our lives, the economic uncertainty, and the anxiety about health and safety are breeding grounds for stress and conflict. Here are a few things you can do to get ahead of conflict while working from home during the coronavirus pandemic.
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By the time we decide to get help with a conflict, or by the time we’re called in to help others, the conflict has often become chronic or acute. Chronic conflict and acute conflict are harder to resolve and more likely to damage personal and workplace relationships. Resolution of chronic or acute conflict is reactive. Upstream conflict resolution is proactive and mitigates acute and chronic conflict’s side effects.
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Rumination, or dwelling on anger or hurt after a conflict, isn’t a helpful habit. To stop ruminating at night or any other time you find yourself dwelling on your distress, here’s a thought exercise to help you stop the endless and potentially harmful loop.
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In the midst of conflict it’s hard to get a fresh perspective about the situation or the other person. This simple question is excellent for tempering our certainty, engaging our curiosity, and sparking a shift in perspective when we need it most.
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Sound decisions, healthy team dynamics, and resilient personal and professional relationships don’t require or even particularly benefit from an absence of conflict. When there’s conflict and tension, the goal isn’t to abolish it, but to navigate it in ways that prevent damage and inspire deeper consideration of solutions. The goal is to disagree better.
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We use tools to do something more effectively and efficiently. But just like physical tools, ill-chosen conflict resolution tools will not yield the results we need. Here are three questions to help choose and use the right conflict resolution tools for the moment.
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One reason disagreements turn into conflict and ongoing tension is our failure to see — or acknowledge that we see — the other person in the way they most deeply wish to be seen in the world. One way to disagree better is to respond to their bid to be seen, not with miserly reticence, but with generosity of spirit.
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If you believe someone is aggressive, could they behave more aggressively with you than with others? If someone believes you are a hostile person, are you likely to act more hostile when you interact with them? It’s called behavioral confirmation and if you’re interested in your own or others’ conflict behavior, it’s worth understanding.
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Only people we love and care deeply about can make us so angry we want to blow a gasket, says famed Star Trek actor George Takei. When someone or something we care deeply about sparks big anger, here’s a way to turn anger into curiosity and use it positively.
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The outset of a difficult conversation often feels like a back-and-forth trading of position and perspective with little common ground. Here’s how to use the psychology of agreement to begin shifting that kind of positional debate to collaborative problem solving.
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It feels productive to toss out ideas for a solution and demonstrate how much we want to help. But it’s usually unproductive if we haven’t done something essential first: Make sure we understand the problem from their frame of reference.
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When we’re overwhelmed by a difficult conversation, one reason can be that we’re too focused on the horizon and not focused enough on the very next step. A very helpful mindset in moments like this is to “do the next right thing.”
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When we listen well, sometimes others hog air time and just keep talking. It’s an inadvertent, and often unwelcome, side effect of good listening. Here’s a way I like to handle long-winded talkers that’s both effective and kind.
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When confronting difficult behavior, we typically focus on what we want the other person to stop doing. Sometimes this works. But too often, we create a “behavior vacuum” with this approach, making it harder for them to stop the difficult behavior. Here’s how to avoid this common misstep.
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When we want to control emotions better in the midst of a difficult conversation, we may try to ignore the unwelcome emotion or try the opposite, indulge it. These approaches don’t work very well in the face of incapacitating emotions. But something else does: Give the emotion a name.
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Blame vs contribution — the differences are straightforward to grasp intellectually, yet sometimes tricky to employ effectively in conflict situations. Here are a few ways to shift a conversation from blame to contribution without appearing to blame the victim.
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When we say we want to understand someone, but then view them through our own judgmentalism, we’re not being honest with ourselves. Compassion and understanding go hand in hand — when we let them.
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The way we approach problem solving influences the solutions we can see — and are willing to see. When problem solving gets stuck, sometimes the best way to get unstuck isn’t to keep searching for better options or downgrade our expectations, but to flip the problem we’re trying to solve.
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When you can’t agree even with your best effort, having fallback criteria can break the agreement logjam and allow you get on with other things.
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The Einstellung effect is a cognitive trap that prevents us from seeing better or simpler solutions to problems we’re trying to solve. Here’s how to recognize it and reduce its effect.
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Conflict has a way of magnifying our bad listening habits. I frequently see the following listening habits get in the way of constructive and collaborative problem-solving during conflict and thought I’d flag them for attention.
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When we get into a conflict with someone, it’s natural to replay our experience of the conflict, both in our minds and as we tell others about it. Over time, this replay can begin to feel like The Truth About What Happened. But it isn’t.
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Gravity problems make conflict resolution more difficult because they sidetrack us from actionable problems. Here’s how to recognize gravity problems when you see them, why they’re troublesome, and how to prevent them from hijacking resolution.
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There are some problems and squabbles that aren’t worth our effort to pursue. Maybe we’re never going to see that person again, or it’s a small enough problem that we know we won’t care about it in a few days, weeks, or months. If your mind keeps chewing on little problems like these, try this brief visualization for letting them go.
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Most people don’t want to be wrangled into doing something you want but they don’t. Here are three ways to turn them into your problem-solving partners and overcome resistance.
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When I ask clients why they let a problem go on for so long before addressing it, a common reply is, “I was afraid I’d create more conflict by raising it.” It’s an understandable fear. Here are some tried-and-true ways to raise an issue for discussion without making matters worse.
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When a difficult conversation rattles you, using a centering question can help you get your balance back. Here are favorite centering questions I share with my clients, along with guidelines for developing your own.
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What we believe about anger has an impact on what happens during emotionally charged conflict. Relief from the suffering of conflict can come from them changing how they act on their anger, of course. And it can also come from us changing how we think about anger.
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We like to think of ourselves as rational beings, and yet we act irrationally in all sorts of ways. One way we act irrationally is with a type of faulty reasoning we use for decisions both large and small, influencing not just the agreements we reach, but also the process we use to reach those agreements.
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Most difficult conversations ebb and flow between good progress and difficult moments, those times it’s a challenge to access our best selves and skills. Here are five common difficult moments and five powerful questions to help you through them.
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The overconfidence effect is a natural bias toward believing that we’re better at something than we actually are. The overconfidence effect can distort belief in the accuracy of a strong memory, estimations of how long it will take to get things done, judgment about our intelligence compared to others, and even the reliability of eyewitness accounts. It can sabotage communication during conflict, too.
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Being able to accurately discern someone’s emotional state is an essential conflict resolution skill. But even with both good will and skill, we have a fair chance of guessing wrong. Recent research suggests that when it comes to accurately figuring out what someone else is feeling, there’s one thing we can do that boosts our ability to get it right.
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When words come out of your mouth that you instantly regret, here are some ways to recover from your faux pas and minimize the impact of ill-chosen words.
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Couples can have big fights, frequent conflict, and even bicker all the time and still have healthy, fulfilling, and lasting relationships. How so? Recent research suggests that one factor in particular plays an important role in protecting a couple from the negative effects of relationship conflict: How well you think your partner “gets” you.
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For almost two decades I’ve advised clients to avoid email and texting when tension grows in their important personal or business relationships. Is my advice still credible in an era so permeated by technology? A new study offers updated insight.
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When we become too wedded to our own solutions, conflict resolution conversations can get pretty stuck. Here’s a trick of the mind to help us stay flexible (even when we’re sure our solution is brilliant), courtesy of Pablo Picasso.
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When you’re tempted to dismiss someone’s concerns as trivial, or roll your eyes at the things people find to fight over, it’s time to sit up straight and pay attention. Because you’re missing something…and it’s worth your while to figure out what.
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This classic piece of research offers insight into the way context may influence blame and anger.
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When we feel overwhelmed by a difficult conversation, we can get emotionally swamped and lose access to our good conflict resolution, communication, and problem-solving skills. Here are four quick techniques you can use when conflict muddles your thinking and you want your good skills back.
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Some debates, arguments, and bickering go on and on, without leading anywhere (except to more frustration). If you find yourself in this kind of debate, or are trying to stop others caught in one, here’s a single question that’s almost magical in its power to help.
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When we’ve put in effort to solve a problem, we want our solution, decision, or agreement to have every chance at long-run success. Here’s a powerful way to improve our plan’s ability to stand the test of time: Go back to the future and test it with a premortem.
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Pressure-filled situations like difficult conversations tax our working memory. That’s bad news, since working memory is crucial for reasoning, concentration, and understanding. But here’s the good news: There’s a specific type of brief writing activity that can both reduce anxiety about and boost performance under pressure.
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There’s a space that changes form and scale as we navigate our personal and business relationships. It’s the space between us, narrowing and softening when things are going well, widening and hardening in times of tension. The quality of our relationships, the degree of our happiness, and the success of our solutions are all influenced by The Space Between.
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Our solutions are only as good as our understanding of the problem. There’s a good question we can use to help discover a problem’s roots. And we can turn it into an even better question by employing it liberally — more liberally than most of us naturally do.
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When we notice resistance, a typical response is to try persuading them out of their resistance. But that approach often causes more resistance, as they defend against our pushing. When we want to overcome resistance, there’s a better way.
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One reason apologies feel hard to offer is that they’re colored by fear — fear of feeling shame, fear of feeling judged, fear of offering an olive branch that is not returned. To apologize, we must find ways to anticipate not only what will go wrong, but also what could go right.
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Sometimes the best fix for behavior problems isn’t to address the behavior itself. Sometimes the most effective solution is to change the situation. Situation problems can cause behavior problems, and unless you know how to tell the difference, you can waste a whole lot of energy trying to get someone to change.
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It’s not news that understanding the other person’s key interests is a crucial skill for your negotiation skills toolbox. I knew that when I went into the contract negotiation in the following story…and I almost blew it anyway. It took a question born out of desperation to teach me that some interests can be elusive, surprising, and even downright unbelievable.
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Are you in a career where the ability to show empathy is important? New research suggests that how you arrive at empathy is as important as being empathetic. And that old adage about developing empathy by walking a mile in their shoes may actually increase your burnout potential.
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The way you deliver feedback can make the difference between instant defensiveness and thoughtful consideration. One way to reduce immediate push-back is to “make it behavioral.” Here’s how to give feedback that’s behavioral and examples to translate the idea into words.
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Conflict resolution skills alone will only get you so far. How well you use those skills depends on your mindset and the habits you cultivate in yourself. Here are five game-changing conflict resolution habits that will help you use your skills optimally.
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We put people, places, things, and ideas into categories. Categories help us navigate the world and it’s natural to categorize. We categorize in conflict, too. But the tension of conflict increases the chances we’ll make category errors — and category errors can really get in the way of conflict resolution.
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One reason conflict can undermine self-control is that stress compromises our brains’ emotion-regulation circuitry. But all is not lost when we’ve been emotionally hijacked. Recent research offers a new tool for regaining self-control soon after the stress of an argument: Briefly reminiscing about a happy memory.
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A win-win solution is optimal in so many negotiation and conflict situations at work and home. But what do you do if that win-win solution isn’t obvious?
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Sweeping important conflict under the rug doesn’t make it go away. We know this, even as we continue to do it. Hidden so we don’t have to look it in the eye, the conflict still draws our attention and increases our frustration.
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If 21 minutes of your time could make the difference between a marriage that’s crumbling and a marriage that grows stronger, would you do it? Hell, yeah. The following research-based writing activity can have a remarkably powerful impact on marital conflict. It’s free. It’s simple. And you don’t need anyone’s help to do it.
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We seek out allies when we’re in conflict because allies make us feel strong and right and reasonable. But in trying to be helpful, our allies may actually help perpetuate the conflict by boosting our certainty. When we’re being tested by a conflict, what we want isn’t an ally, it’s a loving provocateur.
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When someone is emotionally swamped by anger, it can be helpful to redirect them temporarily away from their feelings and engage their cognitive capacities. The following invitation helps de-escalate anger particularly well and deserves a permanent home in your conflict resolution toolbox.
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The next time someone declines to take responsibility for words or actions that had a bad impact, don’t immediately assume it’s a flaw in their character. Maybe it’s just their protective brain doing its job.
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Being able to say no is essential for good day-to-day negotiating. Yet it can evoke anxiety about appearing obstructive, unkind, or unhelpful. If you want a way to keep yourself from saying yes when you really do need to say no, pack this research-supported technique in your toolkit.
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A meta-conversation is a conversation about a conversation — how it unfolded or how you’d like to approach it. Meta-conversations are useful for deciding how we want to handle everyday disagreements with loved ones or colleagues.
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New research is challenging the notion that thinking, problem solving, and decision making take place strictly in the head. And finally giving me some credibility after years of placing interactive toys in the middle of my mediation table.
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Want to break the advice-giving habit but aren’t sure what to do instead? Want someone else to stop giving you unsolicited advice all the time? Here’s a good question to ask in those moments and a simple alternative to giving advice when what they really want is someone to listen.
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Conflict takes root in the space between our narrative about what happened and theirs. One way to understand conflict resolution is as the act of weaving a new joint narrative, one that includes the most valuable threads in each story.
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I’ve written that anger is a messenger that won’t shut up until its message is heard and understood. But if the anger is so big or so loud you can’t hear straight, there are things you can do to help someone calm down. And a few things you shouldn’t do…like these five missteps.
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Watch a good mediator at work and you’ll likely notice that good questions are her stock-in-trade. Watch a masterful negotiator and you’ll see the same. If you want better conflict resolution results, learn how to ask questions that shift thinking and prompt fresh ideas.
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Conflict can rob you of two precious mental faculties useful for sorting things out: The ability to view the situation from the other person’s perspective and the ability to check your impulses. New research suggests that your future self can help you recapture those abilities.
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When we deliver or receive information in a totalizing way, we make a difficult conversation needlessly more difficult. Here’s how to resist this type of all-or-nothing thinking and take some of the pain out of disagreements and negative feedback.
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Conflict in personal, professional and business relationships leaves permanent cracks and breaks behind. What if, instead of trying to ignore or hide the damage, we revered it, understanding that “better than new” is more valuable than “good as new”?
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Some people do conflict loudly, whether due to familial or cultural roots, habit, or a low boiling point. When you want to interrupt someone’s habitual yelling during conflict, try to make the request without contributing to the fight.
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Chronic tension and conflict can provoke reactions that are more about what happened in the past than what’s happening at this very moment. In such instances, the conflict may be quite real but not entirely true.
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When friction enters a working relationship, sometimes the best path through isn’t to talk it out. Sometimes the best path through is an indirect one — ask for a favor. Here’s how the Ben Franklin Effect works.
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Feeling dissed? Here’s how to raise concerns about disrespect in a way that increases dialogue and decreases pushback.
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Thinking about the future helps couples overcome relationship conflict and view the situation in a more reasoned and positive light, according to new research. Here’s how to use the researchers’ simple mental exercise to create psychological distance from a conflict and dial down the heat of an argument.
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During conflict, focusing mostly on anger’s behavior instead of on anger’s real message is like burying the lede in a news story.
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It’s hard to get better at listening during conflict by practicing during conflict. If you want to be a better listener, practice outside of a difficult conversation. The stakes will be lower and it’ll be easier to be on top of your game. Here are three simple ways to practice being a good listener in everyday life.
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Note: An updated version of this episode is available here.
Better conflict resolution habits don’t start with learning a new approach and then trying it in your next difficult conversation. Just as you wouldn’t start running and try a marathon the following week, better conflict resolution habits begin with a slow, steady build. Here are some ways to start strong and build from there.
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Sometimes the best comeback after an insult — the comeback that actually does something for us instead of to them — is no comeback at all, as the following Zen koan so beautifully illustrates.
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“That’s not my problem” are four of the most frustrating words to hear when you’re trying to talk through a conflict. They’re dismissive and may leave you feeling powerless to resolve the problem. Here are three tried-and-true ways to get problem-solving moving forward again.
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Bickering, an argument about trivial matters, is one of those everyday bad habits that feeds the growth of destructive conflict in a relationship. When you teach yourself how to stop getting sucked into bickering, you give yourself and your relationship some fresh air. Here’s a short phrase that can help.
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When you’re stuck on a problem or feeling angry, briefly distancing yourself psychologically from the current circumstances can give you emotional relief and actually help you solve the problem. Here are five simple and potent ways to gain psychological distance (and help others do the same) when you’re spinning your wheels in a conflict conversation.
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Starting a difficult conversation (or negotiation or mediation) can feel like opening Fibber McGee’s closet — chaotic, overwhelming, and hope-sucking. But don’t run.
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Confronting is an essential negotiation, conflict resolution, and problem-solving skill. Being confrontational, though, will usually do you more harm then help. Here’s a mediator’s tip for how to confront someone and raise an issue for discussion without being aggressive or argumentative.
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When responding to someone else’s difficult behavior during conflict, a good rule of thumb is, “Use the lowest level of intervention first.” Here’s why this convention is useful for managing difficult behavior and a concrete example to illustrate.
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How to deal with difficult people? It’s one of the most frequent questions I’m asked in my workshops and by readers, friends, and grad students. Here’s my strategy for dealing with difficult people and why it so consistently works.
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Take it from a mediator: When someone is angry and loud, trying to control them is not only an exercise in futility, but can also have an unintended consequence — it can escalate them. Here’s one powerful alternative.
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I’ve had repeated requests for the language I use to describe and define common conflict resolution terms like dispute, conflict, mediation, and facilitation. Here’s the language I use and a PDF download suitable for printing.
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The brain’s working memory appears to be very limited and conflict places a lot of demand on that already-restricted capacity. But there are ways to reduce cognitive load during conflict resolution and free up the working memory needed for concentration, reasoning and good decision making.
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What does it mean to hold the space for someone who’s trying to get somewhere different in a conflict? And how do we hold that space, whether we’re a friend trying to help, a manager trying to intervene, or a mediator trying to find a path to resolution?
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Whakawhanaungatanga is a Māori process for establishing relationships. In the following interview I explore the tradition, identity, trust-building, and conflict resolution with New Zealanders Hilary Unwin and Pereri Hathaway.
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“Get me outta here!” That’s the thought a lot of people have during workplace conflict. It’s the thought you have if you’re uncomfortable with conflict: I don’t like this. It’s messy. Maybe even painful. Get me outta here!
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New research has identified six elements to an apology, and the more of those elements you include, the more effective your apology. But not all six elements are equally valuable. Two are particularly crucial to having your apology accepted.
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My friend, there are some things I want to say about mediation with me, things I hope you’ll ponder before we gather, things I hope will guide you as we talk. I may mention them a time or two during our time together.
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Even after a dispute has been resolved, distrust and tension can linger. Even when you’ve made every effort to resolve a conflict, the other person may seem stuck in it still. Is there anything you can do when someone you live, work with, or serve doesn’t seem to be moving on after conflict? There is, but first, you need to understand why.
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How do you reduce resistance? What are the best ways to handle difficult people? What tactics overcome impasse? How can you get someone to ___? These questions all have something in common: They position you to work on someone, instead of with them.
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Positive affirmations may be popular, but if you want to influence behavior, questions trump statements. But not just any old questions. One type of question in particular can create powerful psychological leverage for changing your own and others’ behavior.
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The stress of conflict has ramifications we’re only just beginning to understand: We can apparently “catch” someone else’s stress physiologically. Acute stress can desensitize us to another’s pain. And stress from the presence of a stranger may reduce the ability to empathize. But 15 minutes of shared experience might just help.
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Conflict and suffering are confederates working in painful alliance, each feeding the other as if to ensure its own continued existence. If I turn away from the suffering in conflict, I deny a part of my clients’ experience. If I try to fix suffering, I assume a task that is not really mine to shoulder. Here’s one way I’ve found it helpful to think about, respond to, and help ease suffering.
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Design thinking is helping designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs solve problems more successfully and develop better products. Here’s how conflict resolvers can use one of design thinking’s most powerful steps to achieve better outcomes.
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It’s tempting to feel triumphant when we successfully back our nemesis into a figurative corner. But it’s ill-advised triumph. Cornering triggers our evolutionary baggage, leads to outcomes unlikely to stand the test of time, and leaves all sorts of debris in the personal or working relationship. Here are ways to address and prevent cornering in your own and others’ conflicts.
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Memory doesn’t exist to help us perfectly recall things in our lives. It’s there to help us survive. And to do its job properly, memory must evolve. Here’s a quick recap of the ways memory is flawed and why arguing about the accuracy of memories is like running on a gerbil wheel and expecting to get somewhere new.
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When an action has bad impact, how you think about that impact can play a significant role in triggering and escalating blame and conflict. And despite how rational you believe you are, there’s a thinking error that can lead you down a very irrational path. It’s called the Knobe Effect.
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What’s the best way to re-establish communication with someone after a falling out? Here’s how to write an email that will help you reconnect after no contact and set the stage for talking in person or by phone.
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When we need to get out of our own way, there’s a simple yet powerful exercise we can use to help. It doesn’t take much practice — just commitment for a few minutes. Here’s one of my favorite conflict resolution activities for changing emotional state and tricking my mind into being more helpful in the heat of the conflict moment.
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Failing to ask effectively for what we want is the stuff of low-grade irritation that, over time, can become a source of chronic conflict and tension. Here’s a ridiculously simple way to ask more effectively, be more persuasive without manipulating, and increase the odds a small favor will be granted.
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