Ten years of blogging is a long time. And selecting a few from over a thousand posts has been a harder task than I thought it would be, though a fun one.
A few of my chosen posts didn’t really fit into any particular category so they’re ending up in this last installment of the 10-year blogiversary retrospective. If you haven’t entered the celebratory prize drawing yet, there’s still time, you know.
Thanks for going on this trip down memory lane with me. And here’s to the next 10 years!
The best time to resolve conflict
A conflict’s greatest opportunity for collaborative resolution is usually near the time it first occurred (if such a time can be known) or at least nearer the time it first entered your awareness.
Sometimes, the triggering event is clear and memorable. Sometimes it’s elusive, building under the radar over time, brick by brick, small frustration by small frustration.
Either way, the sooner you address it after the raw initial pain and anger have passed, the better. You want the rawness to have subsided enough that people can bring their better selves to the conversation, but not so much time to have passed that… read on
Shut up and listen: Multi-tasking and conflict don’t mix
A disagreement isn’t the place for multi-tasking because doing conflict better means really paying attention. Here are the three top multi-tasking mistakes you can make during a dispute:
- Doing anything else while the other person’s talking. When you do something else when someone’s talking to you, you send the message that the conversation with them isn’t worth your focus. This may not be a faux pas during ordinary conversation. But during conflict, when people are hyper-alert for slights, they may assume you don’t really care and it’ll escalate the conflict. So put that paper down. Take your hands away from the keyboard. Close the file cabinet. Give the other person your full attention for a few minutes. What a difference it’ll make!
- …. read on
The art of untangling conflict: A lesson from peacemaker Jimmy Carter
In 1978, Egypt President Anwar Sadat, and Israel Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords, a treaty brokered by U.S. President Jimmy Carter and for which Sadat and Begin later received the Nobel Peace Prize.
A teenager at the time, I still recall the powerful emotion I felt as I watched the signing on television. Many years later, by then doing my own work helping people navigate complex conflicts and negotiations, I read Carter’s Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President because I could still viscerally feel in my heart that moment in 1978.
I’ve never forgotten the following story from Carter’s memoir because it moved me to tears. And it taught me something powerful about the real art of helping people untangle conflict… read on
How to let go of unresolved conflict
A workshop participant recently asked me, “When I can’t get the other person to talk, and the conflict can’t be resolved, how do I let go of it?”
I’ve had the privilege of bearing witness others’ decisions to let go of an unresolved conflict and move on with their lives. And it really is a conscious decision not to let too much of the past eat up too much of the future. Those decisions, which I’ve witnessed as an executive coach, as a mediator and as a college professor of conflict studies, usually became possible when one or more of these had occurred… read on
The Isaac Asimov secret to elegant conflict resolution
One of the most important conflict resolution and negotiation lessons I ever learned came from scientist and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. He taught me that real shifts come not from reaching conclusions, but from pursuing curiosity.
The summer before I left for college, I had the very good fortune to spend a week with Isaac, Isadore Adler, and other luminaries at The Rensselaerville Institute, then known as the Institute on Man and Science.
That summer’s institute invited the group of us to answer one question with our best thinking… read on
