In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear writes about importance of small, incremental changes yielding significant and long-lasting effects for the person. Make small changes everyday and you will get compelling changes over time.
Borrowing from Clear, in this post I want to highlight the incremental changes that you can make to your approach to difficult conversations about conflict so you can get better results with your co-worker, boss, spouse, or child.

In our last post, I wrote about the reasons why people escalate and the importance of concrete de-escalation techniques. In this post, I will expand on those techniques in more detail and will highlight the times that not following these steps will in fact heighten the conflict and further escalate the situation. So you have assessed that it is safe to intervene. What do you do and say?

I have been reading about the increase in the level of violence on the TTC and have been aware of the increase in tension levels in everyday interactions. I was recently in a Tim Horton’s and was faced with a potentially escalating situation, which I will tell you more about. These situations are by nature unpredictable (and the ones on the TTC are outright dangerous, which I will also address) and yet using the following tools provide the best chance for a better outcome in such situations. In this post I will tell you about de-escalation methods and the do’s and the don’ts of such volatile situations.

These are constructive and collaborative problem solving tools that we use in our mediation work in order to help people in the workplace to see the problem together and work collaboratively to resolve their dispute.

After the Itaewon Halloween tragedy, where over 150 people died in a deadly crush, the Mayor of Seoul during a press conference offered a heartfelt apology as he paused several times to wipe tears from his eyes and collect himself: “I apologize for not apologizing sooner”. 
Although the simple utterance of “I am sorry” is often a powerful path towards reparation and restoration, people crave a deeper understanding and articulation of the harm that has taken place. In this post read about the components of a sincere apology.

Harvard Business School Professor, Teresa Amabile and her team examined what affects workers' performances at their jobs. They found that workers’ intrinsic motivation is one of the most important factors driving creativity, enhancing performance, strengthening connection and productivity. But what affects this intrinsic motivation of workers?

From research and data from our own work, multitasking in team meetings often leads to tensions and conflict among individuals in the long term. In this blog post, we talk about how to have a productive meeting for your employees’ wellbeing since numbers of meetings has increased by 250%.

The hybrid work model, although not flawless, allows possibilities that otherwise could not be even imagined. However, this brave new work model has its own struggles and those must be addressed as workplaces that employ these models evolve. Read more on how to deal with these struggles.

I was at a talk recently where one of the participants presented a brief story of her workplace around her relationship with her supervisor. The middle-manager caught a significant process oversight and notified her supervisor. She was told to wait for the next steps, but…

Advisors of our lives have an enormous influence on shaping and at times contributing to, or transforming the conflict. The third party can remind the two parties in conflict what is ultimately at stake in the situation, what really matters, and what do the parties ultimately want. When we are deep in any conflict, we begin to lose sight of what’s really important. The third party can see with a bit more clarity, with a more meta-view of the situation.