Conflict Resolution Mistakes: Stating Opinions As Facts

I must confess, this is a bit of a pet-peeve of mine. I am okay with people having an opinion. I am okay with people whose opinion differs from mine. I just get a little frustrated when they state and defend their opinion as if it were a fact. I can accept it is a fact that they have an opinion. I just struggle with accepting their opinion as a fact when all they have to support it is their assertion that it is true. As I said in Why You Shouldn’t Take Conflict Resolution Advice From Politicians,... [Read more]

The Positive Runs Out

This afternoon, I recorded a webinar on employee motivation techniques. During the webinar, I discussed a model of human behavior that helps to explain why people do what they do. The main learning point from this model is that people generally do what they do because of what they expect to happen after they do it. After the webinar, I was speaking with my friend and colleague Kevin Eikenberry. We discussed the webinar, and, as we spoke, I remembered an event from a training class I lead on this... [Read more]

Conflict Resolution Lessons From A Lifeguard: A Drowning Man Doesn’t Care About You

Communication, conflict resolution, leadership, and parenting can, at times, resemble working as a lifeguard. In all of these situations, you can, like a lifeguard, be in the position of a person approaching someone else when they are under distress because their needs are not being met. Picture a drowning man. He is flailing in the water. He is grasping at everything and everyone within reach. He has little or no visible concern for others. He may, at other times, be a kind, loving, considerate... [Read more]

How To Get People To Do What You Want

This week, I have lead two-days of Bud To Boss training and participated on two expert panel discussions at a major trade show. All week, I have been sharing my thoughts and insights on communication skills, motivation theory, leadership, team-building, and persuasion. The thought behind much (not all) of what I was asked in my role as seminar leader and expert panelist basically reduced to this: How do I get people to do what I want them to do. My short answer: you don’t. People do what they... [Read more]

Using Detours To Get Where You Want to Go

There are times in both personal and professional situations where apparent road blocks get in the way of achieving your desired goals. Earlier in my life, these road blocks discouraged me. Now, I just see them as detours, and I have learned to learn from the detours. I learned to use them to get where I want to go. In the picture above, the desired goal is somewhere on 9th Street. At the moment, the normal or shortest path down 9th Street is closed. That does not mean that we should change our... [Read more]

Why You Shouldn’t Take Conflict Resolution Lessons From Politicians

As I watch the political process, I wonder if very many politicians really understand how to build consensus and to reach joint decisions that protect the interests (as much as possible) of everyone involved. I see leaders from all sides of the political process investing great energy in staking out positions and then defending those positions. I don’t honestly know what goes on behind closed doors. I can only comment on the results I see and what they say in public. I don’t really want... [Read more]

Communicating About Change – Connect With Emotions

Today, we had our monthly Group Coaching call for Silver Remarkable Leadership Learning System members. Using the handout from this month’s Remarkable Leadership teleseminar as a discussion guide, we talked about some really powerful concepts related to communicating change. This is one of the many ideas we discussed: Change can be driven by facts, but people are driven by emotions. As we discussed this observation, we spoke about the importance of connecting with the emotional response that... [Read more]

Snow Drifts, Driving Lessons, and Conflict Resolution

Last week, we got a snow fall that closed school for a day. During the day, road crews cleared the roads. Even though we live in a pretty rural area, most of the roads were safely passable by the afternoon. As is often the case here in central Indiana, the temperature stayed below freezing for several days and the winds blew pretty steadily. For those of you that don’t live in snow country, this means that many roads, especially the back roads, began to get drifts in spots. As I took my daughter... [Read more]

Why I Don’t Want to Be a Tolerant Person

Last week, I attended Shadow Day at my daughter’s school. On Shadow Day, parents attend classes with their children. As I sat in her American Literature class listening to a discussion of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic The Scarlet Letter, her teacher questioned the virtue of tolerance. In his brief comment on the topic, he referenced a talk he once heard by Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel survived the concentration camps and Jewish persecution of World War II. On the day that my daughter’s... [Read more]

Conflict Resolution Tips: People Oriented Individuals with Task Oriented People

  In my last blog post, I gave three tips to help task oriented people resolve conflict with people oriented individuals. In this post, I’ll change the perspective by suggesting three tips that go the other direction. 1) Express what you “think” rather than how you “feel.” If you have a stronger people orientation than task orientation, you likely process interactions with others based on how you feel about them and the situation. This perspective may even apply... [Read more]

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