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Ever had one of those memorable meetings where everyone pulls together and tackles a contentious issue. You’re amazed at what you were all able to achieve together and the outcome seems like a testament to collaborative engagement and decision making. What a relief as tensions were high at times, but you all got to the […]

We were speaking recently with a manager and a staff member who had been “at war with each other.” It’s why we were brought in to help. The manager was always on edge, wondering how the staff member would evade directives next. The staff person believed he was eternally in trouble with a manager who

What we know for sure as long-time mediators is that how you frame your conversation, the topic you say you want to talk about, can have a large impact on how collaborative and constructive the conversation is. In our field, we have a well-worn saying: Be Soft on the Person, Hard on the Problem. That

Many of us in Canada start a conversation fairly innocuously. We say something like: “How are you?” Then the other replies: “Good,” or “I’m fine.” This is a common exchange, no matter how the person responding is really doing. The ritual doesn’t really reveal much about how anyone is doing, unless we ask or offer

As a leader you want to model the way, to set an example for people who report to you. In conflict, this means responding to challenging interactions, with both strength and compassion. This means you need an emotional foundation to stand on. We’ve found the following perspective from a leader in the field of conflict,

Power is one of those words that carries a lot of baggage. Some of us think we have no power in a situation and others might think we have all the power. It’s been our experience as mediators, with the opportunity to talk with multiple parties in a dispute, that often times each party thinks

As a leader, you are often faced with difficult decisions. You may be thinking about it all the time or not know what to do at all. It could be a stressful conversation you’ve been avoiding or an operational decision that’s been keeping you up at night. Here is a powerful exercise to help you

We’d like to continue to offer a few key tips from our How to Have Difficult Conversations Course. Now, we’d like to shine a light on a sand trap you want to avoid falling into, once you find the mojo to start the conversation. One leader we know fell into this sand trap. He was

As we stated in the first blog, we are now going to share a few tips from our How to Have Difficult Conversations self-directed online course.   These tips are foundational concepts underlying our step by step How to Have Difficult Conversations model. The first tip has to do with when you find yourself getting