Fine-tuning communication skills and habits

Jean Gogolin is a wordwright. And it turns out she knows a thing or two about apologizing effectively, too. A wordwright, in Jean’s words, is an “artisan with words. Someone who builds with language like a shipwright builds ships…and teaches others how to do it.” I first met Jean out a meeting of our local […]

My husband and I had a tiff the other day. We got a little snarky with one another over…well, I can’t recall what it was over. That says something, doesn’t it? Hopefully not about premature senior moments. R marched down to his office. I sat on the couch and stared out at the remnants of […]

Several years ago, I was teaching one of my most beloved courses, Interpersonal Conflict, which I wrote about in a series of posts earlier this summer. In the course, my mediation grad students are asked to confront and improve their own “conflict stuff” as part of learning to be better mediators. One day that particular […]

Have you ever been in a meeting where the chair asked something like, "Does that plan sound ok to everyone?" Perhaps there was a brief pause, an assenting remark or two, a couple of nods and silence from the rest. "All right, then it’s a go," the chair may have said. Silence does not mean […]

Refrain from using the terms “always” and “never” when you’re in a disagreement with someone. Making statements like, “You never listen to me” invites defensiveness because of the obvious hyperbole. Truly never ever? The real conversation gets side-tracked as the other person understandably defends against the all or nothing complaint. Phrases like this are called […]

Instead of using the phrase “yes, but” next time you’re in a disagreement with someone, try “yes, and” instead. The former sends a mixed message: “yes, that is true…but, no, it’s not.” The latter suggests that you agree with some or all of what the other person said and that you have some additional information […]

“I hear you” has gotten to be a tired phrase. And why is it that it seems to come out of the mouth of the person whom we believe, at that very moment, isn’t hearing us at all? Instead of saying “I hear you” to let someone know you understand, actually say back the essence […]

In a long-ago article, Face-to-Face Negotiation Better than Email, I wrote about a Harvard B-school study on negotiation, conflict and email. Professor Kathleen Valley found that about 50% of negotiations conducted by email end in impasse, while only about 19% of face-to-face negotiations do so. She also concluded that we behave differently by email than […]

My courteous, salt-of-the-earth, Midwestern husband, Rod, does not like that I interrupt him when we’re talking. Take, for example, this exchange: Rod: "When you get home from your trip on Saturday, let’s plan on a quiet evening." Tammy: "That sounds good. I’ll be tired anyway." Rod: [spoken with a note of vexation] "I wasn’t finished. […]

What do you do if you want to have a difficult conversation about a matter that’s important to you but the other person doesn’t? I recently conducted a workshop for women business owners and this question came up for a number of the participants.

Some time ago I wrote a post on having difficult conversations by email. In it I cautioned about use of the “tweaking CC and I want to repeat that caution for newer readers of this blog. The tweaking CC is the copying of an email message to someone the sender believes has power over or […]

Last month, I wrote about the price of silence during organizational or interpersonal problems at work. Avoidance of important conflicts or failure to confront a problem can be extremely costly for both the employee and the organization, potentially leading to underground resentment or anxiety, increased insecurity, damaged relationships, and the decline of creativity, motivation and […]

I recently mediated an e-commerce dispute between two parties whose geographic locations made it unrealistic to be in the same room. The online mediation took several weeks of message exchanges and the parties jointly crafted a complex and effective resolution to their real estate dispute. Then one of them wrote, "Ok, now I want an […]

I once worked for someone who would periodically stroll into my office and say, "Can I give you some feedback?" Obviously, I wasn’t likely to say no to my boss, so I’d nod and swallow, knowing what was really coming. It was always–and I mean always–a criticism about a project, one of my staff, or […]

In research reported in 2000, Harvard Business School professor Kathleen Valley found that about 50% of negotiations conducted by email end in impasse, while only about 19% of face-to-face negotiations do so. She also concluded that we behave differently by email than we do in person. As a mediator providing online dispute resolution services to […]

“The more I think someone isn’t listening to me, the angrier I get. The louder I get.” She said this, well, quite loudly. I was chatting recently with a woman exec named K. She’d called about some conflict management coaching and I had asked her what most trips her up in difficult conversations at home […]