Is it time for a slow conflict movement?

29 November 2008 1 Comment

untangling disagreementsWhat’s one of the most frequent questions audience and Conflict Zen retreat members ask me about navigating conflict at work and home?

How to do conflict resolution right … more quickly?

Now, I’m no fan of hanging out in a difficult conversation because I like a slow pace. But I don’t buy the premise that, even in a multi-tasking, fast-paced American life, hurrying through important conversations is the right goal.

The question was on my mind again while reading Robyn McMaster’s recent post, Prodding your patience?.

“We are addicted to speed,” according to Carl Honore, “to cramming more and more into every minute. Every moment of the day feels like a race against the clock, a dash to a finish line that we never seem to reach.”

What Robyn terms “roadrunner days” can lead to increased cortisol levels in our bodies. And why should we care about cortisol? Because cortisol shuts down learning, contributes to anxiety attacks, and is associated with depression.

I think it’s time for a conflict resolution version of the slow food movement. We’ll call it the slow conflict movement. The slow conflict movement will have these tenets:

  • No hurrying through important conflict to get it over with. The most important conversations in our lives deserve our attention.
  • Slowing down conflict means not missing the gems we don’t hear when we’re hurrying.
  • Slowing down doesn’t mean dawdling. It means doing it right, at the right pace.

How and when do you slow conflict down?
Tammy
Conflict Zen by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConflictZen.com.

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My peace for Thanksgiving

26 November 2008 2 Comments

Thanksgiving and Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant are forever associated in my mind, and it’s a Thanksgiving tradition in my house to play it – and sing along – while cooking Thanksgiving dinner. This goes back to college days when my roommate and I memorized every word of the 19-minute song and played it repeatedly before heading home for Thanksgiving break.

I saw Arlo in concert last year and he sang a new song I’ve been humming ever since. It’s not new in the sense of newly created, but in the sense of newly put to music. The lyrics are by Arlo’s father, folk singer, political and social activist Woody Guthrie, and were found in papers after Woody’s death.

It seems to me that a little Arlo is in order for Thanksgiving here at Conflict Zen. Here then, singing My Peace, is Arlo Guthrie. The video starts with a few minutes of background about the song and his father.

[Can't see the embedded video in your email or RSS reader? Just click on the post title and you'll be taken automatically to the page with the video.]

Happy Thanksgiving,
Tammy
Conflict Zen by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConflictZen.com.

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Filed Under Untangling disagreements Tagged With alice's restaurant, arlo guthrie, my peace, woody guthrie

Responding to constant criticism in 6 powerful steps

15 November 2008 | Leave a Comment

healthy relationshipsFrequent and poorly delivered criticism is a breeder of conflict in relationships. Well intended or not, criticism can press your buttons and create a call-and-response pattern that’s none too pleasant.

There is a way to change that relationship pattern by responding differently to criticism.

A participant at one of my recent conflict resolution workshops – I’ll call her Bev – approached me afterward to ask my advice about responding to criticism. Bev and her husband are in a conflict dance that will feel familiar to some of you. The individual dance steps go like this: [Read more...]

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Difficult conversation coming up? Serve warm beverages

11 November 2008 3 Comments

keeping your balanceRecent research out of the University of Colorado at Boulder suggests that the degree of physical warmth you feel influences the degree of psychological warmth you experience. Warming up hands and body may just help promote interpersonal warmth.

And while there’s much more to the success of a difficult conversation than the temperature of your hands and body, it’s intriguing to consider again the connection between our physical and emotional selves.

In Warm Your Hands, Warm Your Outlook? National Geographic reports,

In a new experiment, people who held steaming cups of coffee for a few seconds judged another person as more generous, caring, and happy than people who held a cup of iced coffee did.
 
In a second experiment, people who briefly handled a therapeutic hot pad instead of an ice pack were more likely to later select a gift for a friend rather than themselves.
 
The findings indicate that physical warmth unconsciously stimulates friendly behavior toward other people, according to marketing professor Lawrence Williams of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The study’s author recommends, “You may want to err on the side of introducing [physical] warmth to situations … to create sensations of interpersonal warmth more than cold.”

And mediators who read this blog, take note: Perhaps your clients would be better served by hot tea than that can of Coke!

You can read about the original research in Science magazine’s Experiencing Physical Warms Promotes Interpersonal Warmth.
Tammy
Conflict Zen by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConflictZen.com.

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