Safeguarding the space between

There’s no time like the holidays for good cheer and jolly times with family. And the stress that leads to conflict. Since life is short and the holiday season comes around just once a year, here are a professional mediator’s tips for disarming holiday conflict so you can focus on the joy and fun instead.

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Hungry or not

Like a mediator in your living room.

A writer for Coca-Cola asked me for some stress-free holiday tips. Here’s my first tip and a link to the rest of the article:

1. Stay Well Fed

Lenski’s top tip for keeping calm is fairly simple to achieve in a time of year when food is often abundant. “Don’t let yourself get ‘hangry,’” she says.

“The self-control needed to deal with anger and aggression takes energy and our brains get that energy partly from glucose,” Lenski explains. “If we haven’t eaten properly, low blood sugar makes it harder to deal with confrontations and can cause us to lash out.”

If you find yourself saying something you might regret…

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Mari Frank, host of the Prescriptions for Healing Conflict radio show on KUCI 88.9 FM, interviewed me for the show. If you weren’t able to listen live, here’s the recording:

If you’re a leader or manager, then part of your job is to help your people handle conflict optimally and resolve team conflict effectively. In some research I conducted a while back, leaders and managers said that they spent up to 40% of their time resolving conflict in workplace teams or helping specific team members […]

The Conflict Pivot isn’t only for people who want to resolve their own conflicts. It’s for mediators and other conflict resolution professionals like you and me, too–people who help people resolve their conflicts. I’ve been using the book’s principles and approaches in my mediations and consulting for years now and it’s changed the way I […]

This blog post has been ten years in the making. That’s how long I’ve been developing and fine-tuning conflict pivots, then writing the book.

I’m here to tell you The Conflict Pivot went live on Amazon yesterday and will be available on many other online and bricks-and-mortar bookstores soon. My virtual book tour begins today, complete with gifts and prizes…read on for details and a link to buy the book.

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The Conflict Pivot will be out soon and when I know the exact date I’ll let everyone know. So the time seemed right to share the official book trailer, which has been in the works for a couple of months. I hope you’ll take a look and share it far and wide.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3Sf9eaQFHM?rel=0&w=560&h=315%5D

[Can’t see the video in your email program? Click the link below to view it online.]

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Jen, a mediation graduate student in my Interpersonal Conflict course, pointed to an excellent conflict resolution book we’d just read and said, “I love this book. And I hate it, too. It’s got so much to teach me, but I won’t remember it all. I just can’t keep track of that much advice.” She’d just […]

Thanks to everyone who suggested conflict resolution songs, I’ve put together not one but two conflict resolution playlists.

You can stream the playlists with an Rdio account (it’s free) or scroll down to see the list of songs on each playlist. Just in time for a little Friday afternoon listening…

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Siblings who have inherited a family business approach me for help. Each makes a case for why the other siblings shouldn’t have power, shouldn’t be trusted, and are damaging the business. They are, of course, playing out a lifetime of wounds not forgotten.

Their coalitions change and morph, several against one, then several others against a different one. They are playing out decades of frustration with each other and while they maneuver and fight, their business is in ever deeper trouble.

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How do you decide how much of a relationship conflict’s flotsam is worth pursuing? How do you focus on the important matters in a relationship conflict and not get sidetracked by trivial ones? Janet, a reader, contacted me about my recent post, Starting a Difficult Conversation. She asked,

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What are the best things you can do every day to become a better negotiator? I’m asked this question so often, and teach this so frequently in workshops, that I’ve now made a poster for you. Maybe you want to negotiate better for yourself at work. Maybe you want to negotiate better with your loved […]

I tell my clients and grad students that compromise, or settlement by concession, is a dirty word in relationship negotiations. A quick story to illustrate: The scene: A home decorating show on television. The characters: Wife, husband, interior decorator. The setting: Couple’s living room with a big, blank, newly painted wall behind the beautiful new […]

I’ve written a short guide is intended to give you a concise overview of interpersonal conflict resolution at work or home. If you’re intrepid and willing to experiment, the ideas presented here will point you in a direction. Conflict is complicated and most of us cannot possibly remember a long recipe of things to do […]

In early 2006, I mediated a dispute between two siblings in conflict over their mother’s estate. The total value of the estate was nearly $1 million and the financial stakes were high.