Fine-tuning communication skills and habits

Being able to say no is essential for good day-to-day negotiating. Yet it can evoke anxiety about appearing obstructive, unkind, or unhelpful. If you want a way to keep yourself from saying yes when you really do need to say no, pack this research-supported technique in your toolkit.

Make it behavioral.

Some people do conflict loudly, whether due to familial or cultural roots, habit, or a low boiling point. When you want to interrupt someone’s habitual yelling during conflict, try to make the request without contributing to the fight. Someone screamed and yelled at me in public recently. Her anger had flared and yelling is her […]

Questions are your stock-in-trade.

Feeling dissed? Here’s how to raise concerns about disrespect in a way that increases dialogue and decreases pushback. Twenty-seven years ago this past summer, I met my husband. Sometime in those first months of dating, he casually dropped a conversational bomb one day: Tammy, he said, you don’t treat me with respect when we disagree. […]

Want to break the advice-giving habit but aren’t sure what to do instead? Want someone else to stop giving you unsolicited advice all the time? Here’s a good question to ask in those moments and a simple alternative to giving advice when what they really want is someone to listen. When someone tells you about […]

Support, don’t shift, even when you disagree.

Come out of hiding, you pesky things.

Don’t like their defensiveness dance? Change **your** dance steps.

The rockstar duo: Good listening and good questions.

Like having a mediator in the living room with you.

A good one for your favorite questions list.

Beliefs can and do create social reality.

“At what point do I get to be the one to talk?”