Category: Self-Mastery
4 Aspects of Managing Your Fight-or-Flight Response
The body’s fight-or-flight reactions are a good guide to our true perceptions of a confrontation’s level of safety or danger. Learning to check and manage our physical reactions is essential to both our effectiveness and... Continue reading
4 Steps to Clarify Your Assumptions in a Conflict
We may talk about the importance of not making assumptions, but we all make them, automatically, all the time. We tend to believe that other people are more like us than not, which explains some... Continue reading
How to Avoid the Mortal Combat of Personal Criticism
It’s normal to be “conflict-averse.” Most of us tend to try to avoid creating bad feelings among people. We shy away from anything that seems like a secret, can’t be helped, or isn’t worth getting... Continue reading
Can You Handle the Truth of a Compassionate Confrontation?
In some organizations, the fear of overt, explicit conflict -- and the pain and disruption that it can engender -- is even stronger than the fear of leaving existentially damaging problems unaddressed. You may have... Continue reading
To Make Change Successful, Focus on Talk and Trust
Change is often seen as creative and necessary. It can be invigorating, in the sense of a fresh start. But change is also almost irrepressibly hard. When we first try to give up a personal... Continue reading
Re-Minding Ourselves for (Workplace) Effectiveness
At the third annual Wisdom 2.0 Conference in Silicon Valley last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to hear Dr. Dan Siegel, executive director of the Mindsight Institute and clinical professor of psychiatry at the... Continue reading
When, Where, and How to Give Your Boss Feedback
How do you get someone to hear you when it’s not their tendency to listen? If you want to speak candidly with management, give yourself the best chance of having an impact by choosing timing... Continue reading