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As unpleasant though they may be, interpersonal conflicts of all sorts and sizes happen and will happen to all of us. Invariably someone will end up pushing your buttons, end you are faced with the consequences of it. No matter how unpleasant this feeling may be, there are certain things you can do to manage conflict while still feeling well.

The natural response that we tend to default to when faced with conflict is the so-called outward approach. We will blame the other person for the fact that we feel bad. Using this mindset, the logical next step would be to seek to change the situation, first and foremost by trying to get the other person to change their behaviour. Though this approach can work in certain rare cases, putting the onus completely on the other makes for a tiresome and exasperating approach. Instead, it might be worthwhile to realise that when someone manages to push your buttons, the problem lies with you having these buttons in the first place.

That brings us to a different way of tackling this situation: the inward approach. Instead of shoving the blame of an unpleasant situation onto someone else, we instead take a break and truly listen to ourselves. Instead of initially focusing on the mental side of this problem, we focus on the physical. Truly listening and experiencing your own heartbeat, breath and general physical sensation can help you acknowledge what you are feeling and give it a place. You might start to notice patterns when you do this: do you often feel the same way or have the same thoughts over and over. Becoming aware of this is a good first step in regaining control of yourself and to stop seeing yourself as a passive victim.

Using the inward approach rather than the outward approach can help you to master yourself and develop a greater self-awareness. It also prevents you from getting stuck in a dynamic of blaming others or fruitlessly trying to master external circumstances. This should help you to manage conflict, while still feeling well.

How skilled are you to adopt an inward approach to conflicts?

Who is Séverine?

Séverine Buyse is an AIM Trainer & Coach, facilitating resilience and wellbeing training for the EU Institutions for the past 10 years. She delivers the Create your own Wellbeing in Times of Crisis at the European School of Administration, as well as Compassionate Communication for the European Institutions, agencies and bodies.

We have all faced this situation at some point: you need to prepare for a negotiation, and you do not rightly know how. Luckily, there are many things you can do to prepare yourself in this situation. One of the tools you can use is making a strategic analysis of all the people and parties involved in a negotiation (including yourself). Having the right information after all, is key for being adequately prepared.

The first part of the analysis is pinning down is the likely objective of the parties involved in a negotiation. What do you think the goals are they are trying to achieve? An example of this could be being confronted with a status quo-oriented party that wants things to remain exactly as they are.

Having determined the goal of the negotiation a logical follow-up step is to then start looking at the assets that a given party can bring to the table. What is it that they have to offer, and what might help them in pushing for their goals? If we continue our example from the previous paragraph, our status quo-oriented negotiator might have an almost dazzling command of the facts and can positively drown you and everyone else in them to try to stall the negotiations.

Of course, no-one only has assets. There can also be limiting factors that can prevent you from achieving your goals: constraints. It is well imaginable that our status quo partner might have poor relations with the other parties in a negotiation and is not particularly well-liked.

No analysis of a negotiation can be complete without figuring out what the stakes for the parties involved are. What can a party gain from a negotiation, or conversely, what do they stand to lose if things fall apart. Drawing upon our example again, the status quo negotiation might be confronted with a substantially increased workload should the negotiation not go their way.

Now that we have made an analysis of all the elements involved in the strategic analysis, we should be able to extrapolate an effective strategy from these elements. If we do a similar analysis for ourselves and all the other parties involved in a negotiation we should be able to have a both a solid idea of the strategy we will be using, and have a good idea of what to expect from our fellow negotiators. Good luck!

Who is Neil?

Neil Urquhart is a veteran communication skills trainer, coach and facilitator with 20+ years international experience on four continents in Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Brazil, Belgium, Egypt, Sweden, Spain and the UK. He delivers the Day-to-day Negotiation at the European School of Administration, as well as Analysing and Solving Problems in Times of Crisis for the European Institutions, agencies and bodies.