<ul><li>Handle conflict through openness and communication, not escalation. </li><li>Actively listen for common ground and higher purpose. </li><li>Diffuse heightened emotions and keep communicating. </li><li>Rebuild eroded trust after tensions through reciprocated vulnerability and demonstrating reliability over time.</li></ul>

Addressing Conflict Productively

Seek first to deeply understand by putting yourself in the other person's shoes, feelings and situational constraints. Relate to their motivations, struggles and pressures. Suspend your own biases and mental models. Imagine if roles were reversed. Hear them before replying.

Developing Greater Empathy

Share your own viewpoint honestly but always respectfully. Be descriptive and specific about your actual experience using "I" language rather than generalizing. Take ownership of your perspective rather than externalizing blame onto others. Stick to the substantive issues at hand. Speak your truth with care.

Expressing Yourself Honestly and Respectfully

When giving constructive feedback, be specific, kind and solution-oriented. Focus comments on observable behaviors rather than character judgments. Explain the impact of the behaviors both on others and organizational goals. Then partner on improvement goals and next steps. Follow up.

Providing Constructive Feedback Thoughtfully

<ul><li>Approach every difficult conversation as a learning opportunity, not a battle to be won. </li><li>Remain humble and open, with a curiosity about different perspectives. </li><li>Appreciate that you grow in wisdom by genuinely listening. </li><li>Be grateful for insight gained.</li></ul>

Adopting a Learning Mindset

<ul><li>Have the courage to initiate necessary but difficult conversations rather than avoiding them, even when uncomfortable. </li><li>Avoidance only breeds anxiety, harms relationships and deepens divides. </li><li>Be assertive but also lead with compassion. </li><li>Focus on achieving mutual understanding. </li><li>Find common ground to begin building rapport.</li></ul>

Cultivating the Courage to Communicate 

Listen fully without immediate judgment, defensiveness or interruption in order to understand the other person’s perspective. Reflect back what you hear to confirm understanding. Ask curious questions to learn more, not interrogate. Provide space for people to share thoughts and feelings freely and feel heard. Manage your reactions.

Listening Deeply and Openly

Strengthen mutual relationships and trust by sharing more of your own experiences, challenges and humanity. Be authentic. When you confide, others feel safer to be vulnerable and open up too. Then follow through consistently on what you say you will do.

Building Rapport and Trust

The goal is to walk away feeling enriched by the exchange, even if the conversation was difficult.

The book Can We Talk? by Roberta Chinsky Matuson offers strategies for having meaningful and constructive conversations at work to strengthen relationships and build trust. It provides guidance on communication skills.

WINNER: Independent Press Award 2022 - Career Are you avoiding an uncomfortable conversation at work? If you're an executive or a team leader, strengthening your organization's ability to have difficult conversations is necessary and worth the discomfort. The key to successful dialogue starts and ends with changing the conversation. Recognizing that it takes two people to engage in meaningful outcomes, Can We Talk? outlines what each contributor needs to do to achieve the best possible result. Using examples from everyday work situations, this book offers guidance on how to create the right conditions for a meaningful discussion. The author identifies the seven key principles that enable both parties to gain a deeper understanding of what the other person may be thinking and will help establish their point of view more clearly: confidence, clarity, compassion, curiosity, compromise, credibility, courage. Can We Talk? includes examples and advice from those who have been there and thrived, as well as lessons learned from conversation failures and example scripts of productive conversations. Readers will learn how to prepare, start and manage the potentially challenging exchange of words that typically occur at work, and come away with an understanding that for any conversation to take place, both parties must be engaged.

ROBERTA CHINSKY MATUSON

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