4 ms·

How did you improve your conflict management skills and do you have any particular lessons to share?

theGnuMe 4y ago
Practice empathy and active listening. Really listen to what someone is saying, repeat back to them what they are saying and then ask clarifying questions (as appropriate). This will deescalate conflicts and allow them to resolve.
ChuckMcM 4y ago
I suspect it is different for different people. In our case it really helped to sit down with a third party (a counselor) while we "conflicted." That gave the counselor an opportunity to stop us in the middle of a sentence and explore where our head was and what we were thinking. It took doing this once a week for a bit more than a year to both unravel the core knot and to develop and practice the skills of listening and reflecting and not assuming. Again, in our case it seems like it wasn't "one" conflict, but dozens that colored everything we said to or heard from, each other. In hindsight it is easy to recognize this is where you get to after years of "go along to get along" kind of thinking. And resolving one doesn't resolve the others. So we had to practice getting to the bottom of things and that takes trust and understanding. Bottom line was we needed someone to teach us the tools for dealing with conflict so that we could teach them to our kids. Neither of our parents had taught them to us so no help there. We also recognized that the third party really helped us because there is a level of sharing and exposure during our sessions that we didn't want to share with our friends. And no, I don't have a magic bullet for finding a good counselor. You'll know it when they are good, and with some honest evaluation will also know when they are not working out for you. We went through the family health center at Stanford, but there seems to be resources like this in the US at least and possibly elsewhere.
- leonhard 4y ago
  Thank you!

Practice empathy and active listening. Really listen to what someone is saying, repeat back to them what they are saying and then ask clarifying questions (as appropriate). This will deescalate conflicts and allow them to resolve.

ChuckMcM 4y ago

I suspect it is different for different people. In our case it really helped to sit down with a third party (a counselor) while we "conflicted." That gave the counselor an opportunity to stop us in the middle of a sentence and explore where our head was and what we were thinking. It took doing this once a week for a bit more than a year to both unravel the core knot and to develop and practice the skills of listening and reflecting and not assuming. Again, in our case it seems like it wasn't "one" conflict, but dozens that colored everything we said to or heard from, each other. In hindsight it is easy to recognize this is where you get to after years of "go along to get along" kind of thinking. And resolving one doesn't resolve the others. So we had to practice getting to the bottom of things and that takes trust and understanding. Bottom line was we needed someone to teach us the tools for dealing with conflict so that we could teach them to our kids. Neither of our parents had taught them to us so no help there. We also recognized that the third party really helped us because there is a level of sharing and exposure during our sessions that we didn't want to share with our friends. And no, I don't have a magic bullet for finding a good counselor. You'll know it when they are good, and with some honest evaluation will also know when they are not working out for you. We went through the family health center at Stanford, but there seems to be resources like this in the US at least and possibly elsewhere.

leonhard 4y ago
Thank you!