Conflict Situations - How To Handle The Situation

When in conflict situations you may sometimes lose your cool and say too much.
Or you might be one of those people who cannot handle conflict so you keep quiet for too long. Either way, you are allowing your emotional brain to rule where your Rational brain should.

If you are too emotional in a conflict situation, it can all get very messy.
You should learn to control your passions, and handle the conflict rationally.

Learn the laws of rational conflict management. This will enable you to defuse difficult and emotionally charged situations with the minimum fuss and with the very best possible results.
Look at the corporate coach group web site for the next course on conflict management and learn the proper way to handle conflict.

Here are the fundamental basic principles:
1 Get the timing right.
2 Stick to the facts.
3 Don't make it personal.

When facing a conflict situation, you sometimes wait for too long before saying anything.
You do this because you know that there are many people that react emotionally when they are in a conflict situation, and you don't want to risk having things turn out badly.... so you say nothing.
You hope that things will sort themselves out with no action on your part.
This is an error.
They will not get better on their own. And people will misread your saying nothing as compliance.

Development opportunity
Learn to handle conflict situations early and calmly, before it has time to get worse.
Tell people what they are doing wrong. Tell them what you expect in its place and ask for them to agree to a new course of action.

Learn the proper art of conflict management. If you are unsure on technique, sign up for one of the courses available on conflict. Most of all develop the confidence to speak up early.

When in a conflict situation you often tell people how they "make you feel".
This is a dangerous policy because your negative emotions, added into the negative situation, can create an explosive mixture.

Development opportunity
When in conflict situations, eliminate the highly charged emotional, evaluative and opinionated language
Instead try hard to use only fact based, verifiable, non-emotive, language.

Reason v excuse
Are you able to name the difference between a reason and an excuse for not doing something?
A reason for not doing something indicates the explanation is true, valid, takes into account ALL the facts and is a logical interpretation.

An excuse is an explanation that is emotional, untrue, does not take into account all the facts and is an illogical interpretation.

Development opportunity
Are you able to differentiate between a reason and an excuse for not doing something?

Your development relies on developing your ability to gain the reputation to respond positively ONLY to reasons, but not to excuses.
Do not respond positively and give concessions to people who offer you only excuses.
If you give concessions to people who give excuses, what will happen?

Protect their self-concept.
The self-concept is the sum total of the thoughts, feelings and beliefs that a person holds about him / herself, their ability, character and potential.

It is the single most important aspect of a person because it defines the limits of what they believe they can, and cannot / will, and will not do.

Development opportunity

Learn always to protect the person's self-concept when you are in a conflict situation. The self-concept is the sum total of the thoughts, feelings and beliefs that a person holds about him / herself, their ability, character and potential
Learn to protect their ego and you will find conflict management much easier.

You can protect their self-concept by using "objective language" not subjective language.

You should learn the difference between objective language and subjective language because the careless use of subjective language can cost you everything you have worked for!

Objective language is fact based, verifiable by observation, provable directly by the senses, non-evaluative, non-emotional language.

Subjective language is the opposite of objective language:
Subjective language is emotionally charged, opinionated, evaluative and not directly provable by the senses.

Example of objective language : "You parked in the disabled parking space. Please go and move your car."

Example of subjective language :" I am angry with you for being so unprofessional so as to park in the disabled parking space. You are so selfish!"."

You may not always think about the other persons need to save face.

You may even delight in beating people in arguments and proving them wrong. An examination of thousands of instances proves that this way represents a serious error:
In beating the other person in a way that damages their credibility, status or self-esteem, you may create bad feelings, which may manifest themselves later in ways that are against your self-interest.

I.e. you create an enemy.