WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: Between Us by Batja Mesquita
I am not exaggerating when I say that this book blew my mind! I will never look at emotions, and the impact of culture, the same way again. If you work in any cross-cultural setting, this book is essential reading. This book opened my eyes to how much of my understanding about emotions is influenced
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: The Upside of Uncertainty by Nathan Furr and Susannah Harmon Furr
In my book Conflict Coaching Fundamentals: Working with conflict stories, I explain how one of the important shifts that people need to make in order to develop a constructive mindset towards conflict is the shift from certainty to uncertainty. The challenge is that uncertainty is an uncomfortable place to be, and certainty is comfortable, even
Reflecting back emotions – questioning some assumptions
One of the core techniques we are taught as mediators and coaches is that when a person expresses their emotions (either directly or indirectly) we should “reflect them back”. Reflecting back a person’s emotions is supposedly helpful for showing that you understand how the person is feeling, validating the person’s emotional response, building rapport, demonstrating
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: The Power of Regret by Daniel H. Pink
Regret. We’ve all experienced it. It’s not what you’d call a pleasant emotion. It also tends to promote rumination and going over and over what we wished we had done differently. This is a similar process of counterfactual thinking that is common with other emotions such as guilt and shame. For people who work in
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING: Emotional Success by David DeSteno
As I was researching for our new Working With Emotions in Conflict online course, DeSteno’s name kept coming up in relation to the importance of emotions, and especially social emotions, for success. David DeSteno writes a lot on the concept of intertemporal choice (I wrote about this concept in conflict in one of my LinkedIn
Promoting hope in conflict
Many people think about hope as an emotion that is akin to faith or wishful thinking. However, hope theorists such as Snyder describe hope as a way of thinking. The best thing about approaching hope in this way, is that it becomes something that we can learn (and support others to develop). For our purposes,