Have you made a comment that you intended as helpful and been criticized rather than thanked? Depending on how you respond in the situation, the cycle of defensive reaction either escalates or is diffused. You can decide if a conflict happens or not. We discuss two useful conflict competencies and how to use them.

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Dr. Deborah Sword is a conflict specialist with decades of experience and training to share.

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You have choices about how and when you let the person you're in conflict with know that you're feeling vulnerable. Since your sense of your vulnerability influences the decisions you make in conflict, it's a conflict competence to be mindful of how vulnerable you feel, and how you choose to express or hide that vulnerability.

Send us a text. We love hearing from you.

Dr. Deborah Sword is a conflict specialist with decades of experience and training to share.

Please subscribe to our podcast, like it, share it, leave comments (we love comments), ask questions and suggest topics you'd like to hear. Thank you for listening.

Everyone has a mental map of what conflict does or should look like, how it unfolds, and your ideal ending. Not everything on your conflict mental map is conflict competent. What may be on your conflict mental map as one of your strategies may not optimally belong there. Deborah discusses 'deflection' as one strategy that you might want to delete from your conflict mental map.

Send us a text. We love hearing from you.

Dr. Deborah Sword is a conflict specialist with decades of experience and training to share.

Please subscribe to our podcast, like it, share it, leave comments (we love comments), ask questions and suggest topics you'd like to hear. Thank you for listening.