Along with the people involved in conflict, the practitioners supporting them also experience emotions before, during and after any interactions. The practitioners’ emotions may have an impact (positive or negative) on the clients, and the reverse is also true – the clients’ emotions may have an impact (positive or negative) on the practitioner. Why is it […]
The practitioner’s emotions in conflict Read More »
I’ve recently been exploring different ways that mediators can work with emotions in conflict. It’s surprising how many different things mediators do! Here’s a compilation of strategies I found that mediators reported using. Which ones they used seems to depend very much on the model of mediation, the personal style and preferences of the mediator,
Strategies for working with emotions in mediation Read More »
Emotional crying (as opposed to tears that form when we have a foreign object in our eye) is a uniquely human phenomenon. Babies and young children cry a lot, but as we get older we tend to cry less frequently. This is partly because we have learned different ways to communicate to get our needs met (for
Crying in conflict Read More »
Emotions affect what we perceive, and they also help our brain determine what is most useful to pay attention to. Emotions draw our attention to certain things and away from others. Emotions can keep our attention focused or distract us from information that’s available to us. Emotions also affect how we interpret what we perceive
How emotions affect perception and attention in conflict Read More »
Managing conflict is always a nuanced and complex issue. However, in today’s post-pandemic world, many practitioners are finding their work especially challenging. From adapting to working online to supporting people in conflict directly over covid-related issues (such as vaccination), to encountering clients experiencing additional stressors relating to covid that impact their capacity to manage other
Conflict Management in Turbulent Times Read More »
Whether at work, at home, or in a community setting, conflict is practically inevitable, and conflict, by its very nature, is complex. The recent global pandemic has added new layers of complexity to managing conflict, due to much of our work and community settings moving to online platforms. Managing conflict in an online environment presents
Working with conflict in an online environment Read More »
When we are in conflict, we often feel stuck, perhaps between a rock and a hard place! It’s important to remember, though, that we always have many choices about whether and how we respond in a conflict situation. Our first two obvious choices are: (1) do something, or (2) do nothing. Assuming that we would
It is generally accepted that, to successfully manage and resolve conflict, it is important to try to see things from perspectives other than our own. We are advised to “try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes” and to “look at the situation objectively”. In theory, this is good advice, because our own point
The challenge of perspective-taking in conflict Read More »
When we are in conflict, we tend to only see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. We filter out information that is inconsistent with our interpretation of events and we can ignore information that is glaringly obvious to other people around us. When we are emotional, this problem is
Are your emotions messing with your memory? Read More »
Managing conflict well is not about suppressing emotions; rather it is about providing a constructive way to communicate about and through them. What does this mean in practice? Firstly, we need to accept that emotions are an integral part of conflict. They are always there, whether or not they are expressed, and whether or not
Managing emotions in conflict Read More »
