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]

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]

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]

Conflict Resolution Tips: Task Oriented People with People Oriented Individuals

I often use the DISC Model of Human Behavior as a tool in my training sessions. One of the key ideas to draw from the model is that about 35% of people are more task oriented and about 65% of people are more people oriented. Task oriented people tend to focus on the task at hand even in the presence of other people. They often view everything as a task. Sometimes, they even view relationships as a task or a project. People oriented individuals tend to focus on relationships and people ahead of... [Read more]