Conflict Owner's Manual

Are there times when trying dialogue is wasted time? A listener mentions our polarized political climate, and asks if dialogue is always the way to approach emotionally charged differences in opinion. If it's time to stop trying, how would you know? How would you quit trying? Here are some examples of conflict competent responses when dialogue isn't helpful.

show notes:
Episode 38. What's more effective than calling out someone you disagree with? I discuss Dr. Loretta Ross's book, Calling In: how to start making change with those you'd rather cancel.

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

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It's an accepted truth of the creative community that conflict is story. No conflict, no story. No conflict is boring, not drama. Or no dramatic story that anyone wants to read or watch. What are the conflict competencies we can learn from rewriting the script of the conflicts in stories so the characters talk to each other before the conflict becomes the story? We rewrite Romeo and Juliet so that it ends in a wedding rather than funerals.

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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.

A good question is the right question for the conflict you’re having. You’ve heard the expression: there’s no such thing as a silly question. But, in conflict, some questions keep a conflict going, escalate the conflict and/or inflame hard feelings. Here are examples of good and not-so -good questions.

show notes:

Episodes 58, 60, and 72 discuss how to ask, use and follow up good questions. After listening to episode 74, browse to the others. 

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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 remember stories better than we remember lectures. Stories entertain, comfort, explain, build bonds, persuade, and teach, among other connections. How you tell the story of your conflict reveals your point of view. We discuss how differing points of view are integrated to make a more complete story of the conflict. We suggest you find a role model who inspires your conflict competence.

show notes:
Watch John Paul Lederach @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiP_mQamUoc.  Read his 28 books, including The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005), The Journey Toward Reconciliation (Herald Press, 1999), Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (USIP, 1997), and Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures (Syracuse University Press, 1995).

Kathy Bickmore is author of numerous books, chapters, and articles, most recently as editor: Constructive Conflict Pedagogies for Building Democratic Peace, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), available free at https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781350519749

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.

A good question increases your chance to get good answers. How you think about a good question and its answer is different in the heat of conflict than how you think about questions and answers in calm conversation. What are those differences and how can you navigate from calm convo to questions that don't provoke more conflict? Here are some examples.

show notes:
AI offers this list of components of a good question, edited for brevity:

 A good question is
 • clear 
 • open ended. 
 • fit for the intended purpose. 
 • thought-provoking:
 • fair 
 • unbiased
 • fostering trust 
 • building rapport. 
 • relevant to explore information

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.

Having a mediator's mindset is a valuable skill in any job, not only in the job officially known as mediation. Conflict management is hard and a soft skills to add to your resume. We discuss the ways you can grow your conflict competence with your approaches to relationships, to conflict, and to life.

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 already have conflict competencies like good listening. But do you use your best listening skill in the heat of conflict? Here are three steps to help you bridge the gap between knowing how to listen, and using the listening skills you have.

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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.

Perhaps you've taken the course on how to have have difficult conversations. You know how to do it. But now, in real life, do you trust yourself to actually have those difficult conversations? We discuss self-trust building, the role of power imbalances that make it hard to communicate, and the risk of communicating your needs when the stakes are high. Self-trust will help you find the courage to raise issues important to you in relationships you care about. 

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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 at least one conflict mental map; a picture in your mind about how you believe conflict should be conducted, and what you expect of those in conflict with you. But where did you form this conflict mental map?

show notes

Shoalts, Adam, A History of Canada in Ten Maps: Epic Stories of Charting a Mysterious Land. Allen Lane, 2017, ISBN-10: 0670069469

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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.

"Trust exists in relationships in different types and amounts. Maybe your friendships have a comfortable, lasting trust between intimates. Or, maybe you don't trust a person at all but have to deal with them. Trust is nice to have, has to be rebuilt when it's broken, and can't be bought. We discuss trust building measures that you can apply to improve the quality of your relationships and to manage your conflicts.

show notes:
"Whatever matters to human beings, trust is the atmosphere in which it thrives." Dr. Sissela Bok.
Fundamental attribution error/rule. Dr. Lee Ross
"Move at the speed of trust." adrienne maree brown

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.