In our increasingly diverse world, with different views, personalities, communication styles and expectations, conflicts are more likely. Conflict coaching is a confidential way to increase your self-awareness, gain insight into the experience of others and develop your skills in resolving arguments.
Are unnecessary rudeness and uncivil behaviours tolerated in your workplace? Incivility can be defined as mistreatment and behaviours with an ambiguous intent to harm the target that is characteristically rude, discourteous and which violates norms for mutual respect.
How do you engage in conversations in your professional or personal life that make you uncomfortable and vulnerable? When you’re hesitant to talk about conflict, it can be tempting to avoid the issue altogether, but that can have disastrous results. There’s a sign that catches my eye every time I leave my gym that reads: ‘It Never Gets Easier, You Just get Better’. The same could be said of leading difficult conflict conversations, such as giving sensitive feedback to an employee, raising a performance concern, or even a sensitive personal matter between friends.
In the ongoing wake of COVID pandemic’s testing times, many people are publicly voicing their anxieties and frustrations at maximum volume, escalating work stress for many frontline workers. Some people have irrational beliefs that amplify their reactive emotions. This leads to difficult behaviours, angry outbursts and verbal abuse. They believe they’re entitled to make demands – a state-of-mind you can recognise if they repeatedly use words such as: ‘must’, ‘should’, ‘have to’ and ‘can’t’.
We humans sometimes learn wisdom through a fair bit of stupidity. We all have irrational assumptions about how we see conflicts play out, based on the stories we tell ourselves. We often learnt these assumptions and created these stories during our childhood, which means there is also likely to be immature emotions and needs underlying these stories.
You can create more peace in every conversation you have.
Too often fault and blame about the past gets in the way of successfully resolving conflicts, especially when there is a lot of emotion involved.
Here are five tips to reduce the risk of failing in difficult discussions when you could achieve an outcome that potentially works for everybody.
