Conflict Resolution Articles

All of us seem to have a craving for power. We call are driven to get control over the situations we find ourselves in, and mostly, of our partner. If she would only do what we want her to do, if he would only do what I need him to do, then life would be better. While in some ways, these ...

“Oh no, here we go again” thought Joe as his Quality Assurance Analyst Heidi approached him with his memo, complete with typos circled in red ink. He was not really annoyed by Heidi, she was just doing what she does; he mainly felt embarrassed. After all as the leader shouldn’t all of his work be perfect? He tried, he really did, but editing his own writing was just boring to him and not one of his strengths.

We seem to prepare for everything in our life – jobs, exams, etc. Why then don’t we prepare for a successful marriage? According to divorce statistics, it is estimated that between 40 and 50 percent of first marriages end in divorce in the United States. Without realizing it, most couples have unrealistic ideas about marriage perpetuated by fairy tales, movies, and fantasy novels. These misconceptions about love can render a couple helpless to resolve conflict, creating trouble and havoc when it suddenly appears in the marriage.

I Slapped My Husband In The Face: I Punched My Husband In The Face - I Hit My Husband When I Was Drunk Imagine that we run an experiment. First, I inject you with a mix of all the chemicals your body naturally produces when you are under stress, whether it's a near miss on the highway or a fight with a store clerk. We wait for the chemicals to take effect, which happens rapidly. Now you're feeling this chemical cascade-your pulse is rapid, your breathing shallow. Also, your b

That’s it YOU have had it. You are tired of dealing with that person. THEY are always doing things on purpose to make you look bad. THEY are always doing things on purpose to get on YOUR nerves. Well it is time to do something, so YOU are going on the attack. Going on the attack can mean different things to different people or different things in different environments. For the purposes of our conversation you are not planning a physical attack. This is the workplace and let’s assume an office environment. Your form of attack looks something like this:

My husband turned to me and said, "Everyone here is so nice and so relaxed and so happy". I thought about it for a minute and replied, "Well if you can't be happy here, where can YOU be happy?" The HERE in "Well if you can't be happy here..." was one of the most beautiful tropical islands in the world. My thought was how could a person be unhappy when they are in the middle of paradise?

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” - Leo Buscaglia

Sometimes you find yourself working with someone and no matter how kind and compassionate you try to be, you still think they are a jerk. Maybe they yell all the time or they are condescending or a back stabber. It might be tempting to yell at them more loudly than they yelled at you or to answer them with sarcasm or to plot your revenge.

We’re a cult of list makers. We make to-do lists, grocery lists, packing lists, and now a list of must-have qualities for our potential partner. She needs to be independent, yet be devoted; he needs to earn a good living, yet have enough time for her. He needs to have follow-through on his promises; she needs to not be demanding. And on it goes. If some of these qualities don’t appear right away, do you end the relationship? Or how long should you stay if all the items on your list aren’t there?

Be skeptical but learn to listen. This seems like an interesting agreement to use in navigating today’s world. By agreement I mean a treaty or contract that you have made with yourself. I can’t take credit for this idea; it comes from ‘The Fifth Agreement’ by Don Miguel Ruiz and his son Don Jose Ruiz. Whether you acknowledge it or not you use agreements in each aspect of your life – personal and professional. You believe that you cannot write or that you cannot handle stress. These are agreements and based on them you make decisions.

Are you tired of feeling stressed and angry during the holidays? Do you want this special time of the year to be filled with peace and joy? Do you wish for a fight-free holiday season with your loved ones? Make your Christmas wish come true by following these simple guidelines that will turn your holidays from tense and stressful to peaceful and loving: 1. Write down your recurrent, usual, and predictable fights about the holidays. For example, “Mom always wants me to come to her house first and gets mad if we go to my in-laws’ house before hers.”

He says no…she says yes. She wants to go to her best friend’s for Thanksgiving dinner, he’s firm about going to his parents’. She wants a change…he wants the same. Suddenly you’re not feeling thankful for anything at all. Sound familiar? So, how do you put the thankful back into Thanksgiving? How do you come to a middle ground with your partner, your family, and yourself?

“Go ahead and tell me the steps you will take to complete this assignment.” This is the question that none of my early supervisors ever asked me on the job. And boy was I relieved that they never asked this question. Why? Because I had no clue! When I was new on the job I was afraid to ask questions or to admit what I did not know. I would run back to my cubicle and frantically search for the information I needed to complete my new assignment.

As a professional mediator I have seen the power of the apology first hand. Practicing the 12-Step directive to "make a list of all persons we have harmed, become willing to make amends to them all, and make direct amends wherever possible" may be one of the best life practices you can incorporate. In fact, adopting this philosophy can drastically improve your relationships. Here is what you need to know about apologies:

Likeability – That which makes someone likeable or easy to like, easy to be with, considered pleasant to be around.

Most of you are your own worst critic. So when you make a mistake you are much harder on yourself than you would be on anyone else. It is completely normal to be disappointed with yourself, but the longer you beat yourself up the longer it takes for you to regain your confidence. If you were mad with a friend or a family member, that anger may not go away in five minutes. You might be angry for a little while. The same thing is going to be true with YOU. And again, if you are your own worst critic, you’re going to be harder on yourself than you would be with someone else.

Perhaps the most important commonality clients of trained personal coaches have in common is that they achieve their clearly defined life goals sooner by moving through challenges more quickly. Many coaching clients enjoy new levels of happiness, improved communication skills, renewed mental and physical vitality, enhanced creativity, more effective time management and personal productivity, heightened emotional stability, improved income, and deeper intimacy in relationships.

It sure is easy when everyone agrees with you and tells you what you want to hear. But sometimes what we want to hear is not what we NEED to hear. This is when you need a dose of conflict or opposition or a contrarian. Unless you and all of your ideas are absolutely perfect 100% of the time, it is unusual for everyone to agree with you. If they do, is it because they are afraid to tell you what they really think? Are they apathetic? Or have you surrounded yourself with ‘Yes People’ who are too much like you?

Much like the lighthouse that provides guidance and direction for sea-bearing vessels, leaders must become the beacon of light in their own lives before they can effectively lead others. As we have come to learn, true leadership is not about a title or a position in an organization. Nor is it ...

“To observe people in conflict is a necessary part of a child's education. It helps him to understand and accept his own occasional hostilities and to realize that differing opinions need not imply an absence of love.” … Milton R Sapirstein When children can see others disagree and disagree with respect and they see that nothing bad happens, what a terrific example! Disagreement is part of life. Becoming upset is part of life.

Last year there was an unfortunate incident at a military base in the United States. I am talking about Fort Hood. An individual started shooting people. Within hearing range of the shooting a graduation ceremony was taking place. Attending the graduation were medics and other trained personnel. In the midst of this sad crisis, something interesting happened. Many of the participants in the graduation ceremony heard the gunfire and dropped everything and ran towards it.

Generally speaking we choose to go into therapy when we can’t figure out how to make our lives work by ourselves. Maybe we’ve been aware of underlying sadness that doesn’t seem to go away no matter what we do. Or perhaps we have started having panic attacks for no noticeable ...

We have so many different ways to communicate with one another. We can pick up the phone and call using either a land line or a cell phone; we can send an email or a text using our computers or our various handheld devices and we can ‘tweet’ and ‘friend’ and make all kinds of connections AND we can still send a written note on an actual piece of paper. Does having all of these options make communications easier? Not necessarily. Sometimes we still experience communication chaos.

Over lunch, Jacob and Marilyn discussed some of the frustrations they were experiencing on one of their current projects. Jacob was a business analyst on the project and Marilyn was the subject matter expert. Jacob turned to Marilyn and said to her, “If you could say just one thing to Tom our project manager, what would it be?” Without hesitation Marilyn replied, “Please, make a decision.”

The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises and if that person is in dire need, then empathic conce can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I'd say that compassion begins with attention. - Daniel Goleman

“Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”rn- John Kenneth Galbraith Have you ever watched someone put enormous time and energy into proving why they were right? I am talking about the kind of person who just cannot let it go. You or someone else disagrees with them about something and then the next thing you know you get a half hour lecture on why they are right, then a follow-up phone call and several emails. Phew, that is so much energy!

Is this you? You start working for somebody new and you want to make a good impression. Maybe you start carrying your BlackBerry with you everywhere and you answer them all night and all weekend. Every time they send you something, you answer them whether or not you are on call. As time goes by you find that you are becoming annoyed by the people you work with. What is up with them? They call you or text you all hours of the day and night. When you do not answer right away they keep sending you message after message. You find yourself become ever more irritable.

Are you a disciple of some faith? What is the Truth that you bear witness to through your faith? By definition, a disciple of Christ is always stepping up spiritually by bearing witness to Jesus the Christ. Being a disciple need not mean that you throw off all your earthly occupations or do away with all other endeavors in life.

Archetype is a symbol, pattern and experience we engage our energy in based upon our culture and values assigned to it. Archetypes are very much universal in their raw form and our everyday language uses archetypal information. When we are ready to look at our life from the symbolic perspective of archetypes, we have to first deal with the conflict of whether or not we are ready to embark on a journey to ask questions which will challenge our ego field of energy and our intui

Sally looked at Mary Carol and said, "Wow how did you do that? How did you just brush it off, I mean Jim just got in your face and told you that he hates working with you. And you are just as calm and collected as ever." Mary Carol looked at Sally and said, "Well I am really not taking it personally." Sally was flabbergasted. "How can you NOT take that personally?" she asked. Mary Carol shared her beliefs about taking things personally: "What other people say and do, is really a reflection of them. The decisions people make about their own behavior is really about themselves.

It was 4:45pm and the requirements review meeting had already gone fifteen minutes beyond the scheduled end time. Joe was becoming agitated. He needed to get out the door at 5:00 pm exactly in order to pick up his daughter from soccer practice. The meeting was not showing any signs of wrapping up. He let out a big sigh. He pointedly looked at his watch. Finally Joe blurted out “Who cares if the report displays in landscape or portrait format, just list the fields you need on the report and move on.”

I remember it like it was yesterday. I still remember this supervisor looking at me and yelling, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WOULD NOT CHOOSE THE MINISTER?” Ok, Ok – this is a pretty old memory (from the late 1980’s), so it could be that I don’t have the details quite right. Maybe she did not really yell and maybe everyone in the room did not turn and stare at me and maybe I did not turn beet red. Or maybe some of this is how it really happened.

“Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. “ Jonathan Kozol: On Being a Teacher, 1981 Truthfully I do not know if I completely agree with the above quote, I bring it to you anyway because part of me thinks, ‘well this makes sense, I want to pick battles I can win’; but part of me wonders, ‘is this discouraging me from thinking big?’ I have spent so much time learning that so many of us really under estimate ourselves, that I would never want the above to be an excuse for playing it too safe or not fully utilizing our potential.

Wishing bone voyage to the hip of and to my hip 86-year-old Mom with slight dementia and 24/7 care created the immediate need for bringing to bear the weight of my coaching skills. These skills and coaching models are my immediate go-to place when facing tough situations and of course when working with business coaching and personal coaching clients. With Mom, I use the following skills most frequently:rn• Deep listeningrn• Meeting her where she isrn• Supporting her in

By preparing appropriately and confronting honestly, you take more control over your professional destiny and demonstrate a rare leadership quality. Art was 58 years old when he realized that his company may have passed him by. He had been with the same employer for 35 years. Art still loved the business, enjoyed the young up-and-comers and genuinely respected his boss. But he didn't feel like the valuable contributor to his company as he was in years past and it bothered hi

“I disliked working with those people so much that I don’t even know if I hate doing this for a living or it was just those people at THAT place.” - Anonymous Unfortunately this quote or versions of this quote are not unique to any specific individual. Isn’t that sad? I have heard it on more than on occasion.

“Margaret, you share with us these great tips for treating people with compassion. You make sense when you remind us that other people’s behavior is about them. But how are we supposed to really do this in the real world? Especially when someone is right in my face and I just want to yell at them?” Not only is that a fair and honest question, it is one I hear frequently. If treating others with compassion was easy to do all of the time, almost everyone would do it all of the time.

If you've ever been in a serious, committed relationship, you know that there will be stressful moments. Whether it's "Honey, you never do the dishes!" or "Why do I always have to walk the dog?" - there's bound to be a time when the two of you don't click perfectly. Don't worry - it's natural to get a little cranky every once in awhile. However, you've got to find a positive, constructive way to deal with your frustrations if you want to build a strong and healthy relationshi

Hi Everyone, The item below is not a new post, but it has become an ‘old favorite’ and it is appropriate for this time of year. Once again I bring you ‘Seasoning Our Behavior’. This week marks the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. There are many traditions that surround this holiday and I am not just talking about overeating and hitting the mall for shopping the next day. Thanksgiving designates the beginning of the holiday season for many residents of the United States. And the workplace during this time of year can be very interesting indeed.

There I was, brand new on the project, replacing a project manager who had vanished into thin air. I was beginning to envy him his vanishing act. I could see that the project had been ridiculously under estimated. I was not just new to the project, I was also new to the consulting firm I was representing. Oh and I had been told I would not be assigned to run any client projects until after three to four months of home office training and assisting other project managers.

“Never compare your insides with someone else’s outside.” – Hugh Macleod It is not often that the quotes I share with you come from someone who is still breathing. Today’s quote does and this makes me a bit nervous. See I am not certain if I am using the quote the way that Hugh Macleod intends it to be used. (See http://gapingvoid.com/about/ to learn about Hugh). However, as he is all about being creative and has also written a book called Ignore Everybody I am going to proceed.

Boundaries can definitely be a tough thing to master, they also can have a profound impact on how we interact with others. For a lot of us, we weren’t taught how to have boundaries so it can be tough to figure these suckers out. Maybe the people that raised us didn’t have boundaries and modeled that for us. Maybe their boundaries were waaay out of whack and they taught us that it was actually bad or disrespectful to have boundaries… ladies and individuals that identify

Where Did All Our Happy Feet Go? Do you remember the feeling you used to get when you were little and saw a movie about the underdog overcoming the odds, a jou ey of believing in one’s self, or a movie that involved some magic and wonder? Don’t you still love the feeling you have ...

“Whenever you find yourself on the verge of losing your temper or falling into a bad mood, ask yourself, ‘Is this how I want to spend my day? Is it worth it to let this___________ (Fill-in-the-blank; person, situation etc.) take control of my day? Really?” – Margaret Meloni You are probably not surprised that the above comes from me. Yes, this is one of those points that I just will not give up. Perhaps you have sayings that you like to use or expressions that your family, friends and co-workers expect to hear from you. I guess this is one of mine.

Question, what is the resource that you cannot acquire more of? Do you think it is money? Do you think it is a specific type of skilled labor or a certain type of raw material? NO! Although you or your company might be feeling financially challenged you can find ways to earn money, you can find labor and other resources. The answer is T-I-M-E, TIME!

Why is it that our human race has such a difficult time telling the truth? The politician scandals mount each day as our own leaders think the best way to get through something is to lie about it. Almost always, especially with today’s technology and media resources the ones who lie get caught one way or another. Videos on YouTube, cell phone records, internet emails and texting have found ways to expose all the little and big lies that are told. Those in government office

One of the more common definitions of conflict is that it is a clash between two (or more) opposing groups or that it is a power struggle or a battle between opposing forces. When you think of conflict, you may think of it as a negative (think power struggle or battle) or you may think that it must always be about other people. Some of you may go as far as to believe that if it were not for other people you would never have to deal with conflict. Today, I ask you to consider a few questions.

The biggest obstacle to effective conflict management may just be your own history! You and the others in your relationships all have a past when it comes to communicating, building relationships and managing conflicts. Your patterns of behavior are built on your perceptions of what is happening to you and how others are relating to you. And most of us have our own best interests in mind when we are negotiating our way through expectations that are not being met.

Have you ever tried reaching out for your workmates or colleagues and close friends to tell them regarding your situation or experience with being bullied at the workplace, but they were not there for you? And Why Does This Takes Place? There are top 3 reasons why sympathy and support might not be present for you when you are dealing with a situation regarding adult bullying: 1. They never realized that empathizing or the mere act of listening could greatly help, even if they

Economic times are bad! Finances are tight! I can’t afford to carry these people! Sound familiar? If you add your energy to this choir of voices in conflict, you are actually creating a reality that you don’t want! How DO you deal with conflict and financial realities without adding your “energy” to a downward spiral? When change happens – like tight money – loss – unexpected events – don’t you tend to contract, restrict, reserve, withdraw and withhold resources? Wait a minute! Take a deep breath and look around you.