Do this to resolve conflict faster

This past week, I was short on sleep, which led to rising tension at home, and my husband and I found ourselves butting heads. After delivering two workshops on handling conflict and difficult conversations, I decided to practice what I preach when addressing the situation with him.

Good news: the methodology works!

In this video, I share one key strategy that changed the course of our disagreement—and how it can help you resolve conflicts faster too.

• Read the video transcript

  We've been walking through a kind of a tough season lately.

  My youngest daughter had a fever for eight days and I kept bringing her in. She kept testing negative for everything, could not figure out what was going on, but she felt so crummy. Finally, after eight days, brought her in again and she was finally diagnosed with pneumonia and a double ear infection and is kind of on the mend, being on antibiotics now. But it's definitely a, it's a slow comeback.

  So during this time, we have not gotten a single full night's sleep. Right? You know how that is. I'm sure many of you. And when we don't get full sleep, we tend to not operate at our best. At least that's me.

  And, and so my husband and I were kind of butting heads a little bit on some things, and I, in the process had delivered two workshops that week on kind of handling difficult feedback, resolving conflict, as well as getting buy-in. And I decided to practice what I preach when I sat down to chat with him about the, the kinda disagreement we were having. And, and the biggest piece that I applied from what I was preaching to my clients was, in these situations to first let the other person share their perspective.

  So often when there's conflict or tension, we come in ready to share our full perspective, ready to back up our case and try to win them over. And that doesn't work very well. Instead, if we briefly share what it is we want to talk about and then invite them to fully share what's going on for you in this, what's your experience like? I want to understand before we share ours, that typically goes much better.

  And so I swallowed my pride and did it, and guess what went so much better. And not that my husband wouldn't have listened well otherwise, because we do have a really healthy relationship, but we just both felt much more valued through the conversation. It went much smoother. We were able to gain some better alignment through it.

  And so just one piece of the puzzle in, in that model for addressing conflict, for delivering difficult feedback, for getting back on the same page with somebody, why not first start with inviting them to share their experience, their perspective, their thoughts, their feelings, before we start to pour out our own thoughts and experience on them.