Conflict Owner's Manual

Perhaps you ask: "What's a conflict communication audit and why do one?" It isn't like a corporate communication audit of executive memos and such. Do you understand how you show up in a conflict? Your conflict communication audit includes your words, actions, and impressions you give during conflicts. Your conflict communication audit takes all your conduct and context into account, from the perspective of the person you're in conflict with. 
What you say and do might not be what they hear and observe. Check in with them even during emotional moments, elicit their feedback, and listen to their opinion with humility. They have information that will help you improve your conflict competency. Each conflict communication audit builds your skills.

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

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Here's what's unique about this podcast: 
Our belief is that you already have skills to manage conflict. We help you practice your skills, so you improve your conflict competencies. Rather than focusing on resolving any particular conflict, in each episode we point out one or two of your skills that are useful with most people in many contexts. We show how resolution can emerge as a result of you owning your conflict. 
In this episode, Tyson and Deborah record in the same room for the first time, and Deborah shares the secret of her wearing the dandelion logo shirt. You can watch this episode, and see the shirt @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGlj7QiQJO4 

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.

The movie, Superman, is a fun practice tool for analyzing how intentions matter in conflicts. As you intend, your actions follow. As Superman fights Lex Luthor's metahumans on the battlefield, they also wage a media war of words to win public belief over who is to be believed. Which one of them has true intention for good and which one has secret intention for evil? Luthor undermines trust in Superman's intentions, but Superman has allies uncovering the secrets of Luthor's intentions. In the end, the fight over intentions holds as much power among us humans as the beatings does among the metahumans.

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.

It's achieved international newsworthiness that people are offending and being offended, cancelling and being cancelled, silent and being silenced. The headlines exist because someone insists that they have the only correct opinion. And, it might be the correct opinion, but is it the only allowable opinion? We discuss some conflict competent approaches when you're feeling offended or have been accused of being offensive.

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.

Would you like to have the secret to resolving your conflict? The secret is: improve your conflict competency so you have skills to handle almost any conflict. No model or script is needed for the skills we encourage you to practice and use. They are: (1) conflict analysis, (2) self-awareness, and (3) appropriate conflict styles. The details are in the episode, just as two small cute dogs come to check what's happening in the office. To see the dogs, go to YouTube.com@conflict-owners-manual.

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.

Elite athletes heal faster and manage pain better than most people. We can apply their techniques to improve our conflict competence and manage conflicts better than most people. So, what are those techniques, and how can we apply them to conflicts?


Show notes:
Research paper:
Carole A. Paley, and Mark I. Johnson. 25 June 2025. Human Resilience and Pain Coping Strategies: A Review of the Literature Giving Insights from Elite Ultra‐Endurance Athletes for Sports Science, Medicine and Society. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-025-02277-4

Conflict Owner's Manual episodes about these coping strategies include:

Episode 64: How is self awareness a conflict competency?
Episode 78: How do you use and practice conflict analysis?
Episode 81: 81 How conflict competence impacts loneliness for the better.
Episode 85: How to stay non-defensive when verbally attacked, respond rather than react.

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.

When someone posts about a conflict on social media, they can expect comments and judgment to pile on. Did the person who posted talk to the other parties in the conflict before asking everyone in cyberspace to judge? In this conflict analysis of a social media post, we discuss assumptions, boundaries, expectations, public grievances, and who might be taking advantage of whom. This episode is part of our series of conflict analysis using popular culture for practice.

show notes:
These episodes of Conflict Owner's Manual discuss topics covered in this episode:

Binary choices
Episode 37 What if you are given an "either this or that" forced choice?

Assumptions
Episode 42 What connects assumptions, beliefs and intentions in conflicts?

Boundaries
Episode 29 When conflicts outgrow their original boundaries

Expectations 
Episode 17 Are disappointed expectations causing your conflicts?

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.

Why would you want to own your conflict? When you don’t manage yourself in conflict, do you make the situation worse? Here are three steps to take towards owning your conflict, so that you can be the conflict competent person you want to be.

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.

We recorded this episode before this week's political assassination, but as I listen to the recording before posting it, that's what I think about. If we reduce a human being to just their politics, or to a single trait, or to one note of their personality, we lose more than we can possibly 'win' (whatever winning might even mean). So, can you disagree, or have a conflict with someone and not have it degenerate into a fight? We discuss how.

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.

You can practice conflict competence almost anywhere, using every interaction, even characters' dialogue in cartoons. Using two cartoons as examples, we analyze the scripts for the opportunities to understand each other that the characters missed. (Please accept that we changed the character names).

show notes:
Cartoon #1, Between Friends, by Sandra Bell-Lundy 
Parent: Wear your boots. It’s snowing.
Child: I’m not wearing boots. It’s spring.
Parent: But it’s snowing.
Child: But it’s spring.
Parent: But it’s snowing.
Child: But it’s spring.
Parent: What do I have to do to make them understand?
Child: What do I have to do to make them understand?



Cartoon #2, For Better or Worse, by Lynn Johnson

Deborah: I see your sister is going away to university
Tyson: She’s not too excited about it though. She doesn’t want to leave her friends.
Deborah: Yeah, long distance relationships don’t work out too well.
Tyson: Deborah, you know I’d go to school here if I could, but I can’t.
Deborah: What makes you think I was talking about us? You didn’t hear what I said.
Tyson: I heard what you didn’t say.

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.