The Conflict Corner

What Makes Mediation Actually Work
Mediation works when both people come into the room genuinely willing to hear something they might not want to hear. That's hard. It means sitting with things that sting, staying in the conversation when it would be far easier to shut down or walk out, and being willing to speak honestly instead of defensively. Read more...
A Safe Space For That Conversation
If there's one thing I'd tell anyone in that position, it's this: stop trying to win the argument. Start thinking about the relationship you actually want going forward. That one change alters everything else that follows — what you ask, how you say it, the whole way you show up to the conversation. It moves you away from re-litigating the past and toward something far more useful: figuring out what's actually possible from here. Read more...
Why You fight Like This
You didn't choose how you handle conflict. You learned it — long before you were old enough to know you were learning it. Most of us respond to conflict in one of four ways, and the pattern usually formed in childhood, long before we had the words for it. Read more...
When Two Employees Don't Get Along: The Real Cost to Your Workplace
Two people on your team who don't get along. It sounds like a personality clash. It's actually a cost. It doesn't stay contained to the two of them, either. The rest of the team feels it. It shows up in missed deadlines, in good people quietly job-hunting, and in a team that's stopped bringing you problems early, because raising anything feels like more hassle than it's worth. Read more...
Why Small Things At Work Sometimes Trigger a Bigger Reaction
Have you ever watched a colleague go quiet after a meeting, or push back hard on something that seemed minor? It's tempting to read that as an overreaction, or to out it down to personality. But often something else is going on — and understanding it can change how we respond to conflict at work. Read more...
Every Christmas, Many Families
You know that argument you have with a family member every Christmas? The one about nothing — and everything? Ten years of small hurts can sit quietly under the surface of a family for a long time. Then one Christmas dinner, one wedding, one family event, has to carry the weight of all of it at once — and it looks, from the outside, wildly disproportionate to whatever the actual trigger was that day. Read more...