Effective Conflict Resolution Language

Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today, we're going to talk about how we can effectively use our language in conflict resolution. I'm going to start off by asking you this question.

Have you ever said something that he didn't mean to say, or you said it the wrong way, or you put your foot in your mouth basically? Well, I know I have. And so you really know how you say something really matters on how your message is delivered and how the listener is taking what you're saying.

And so this is really important in conflict and conflict resolution as well-- using our language effectively. So, we can use our language to escalate the conflict further, which we want to avoid. So escalating language includes using those you and blaming statements.

So something like this, you are completely unreliable. Hey, I would feel really offended or have my feelings hurt if somebody said that to me. So we need to step away from using those you and blaming statements when we are in conflict.

It can be really hard because you're in the heat of the moment. But we need to pause for a moment and think before we speak. So we don't use language such as this to escalate the situation further.

We can, however, use our language to de-escalate the conflict. So when we are escalating or using de-escalating language, rather, we are using I statements, active listening, and asking those clarifying questions.

So how would this look like? An I statement would be, when I didn't receive your report on time, it made me feel upset that I missed my deadline. So we're putting in the person's actions and not their personal credibility, and how that made us feel. So how the actions made us feel-- I statements.

Or we could say something like, I can see why you were upset that my report was late, but I disagree that makes me unreliable. So we are, again, using I statements. But we are not necessarily allowing or saying that we agree with them. We are acknowledging that we are hearing what they have to say. But we are not agreeing with them.

And that's OK, because we don't have to agree with what everybody is saying. But we want to phrase it in a way where we are acknowledging the other person's point of view, but then also inserting our own.

We also, again, want to utilize those clarifying questions. So both of these people in the situation were talking about reliability. So me as a conflict resolution intervener, I may ask a clarifying question such as this-- how would you define a reliable person? And then we can really talk about what that means to each of the parties and how we can uncover-- maybe we have different perceptions on what reliability is, so let's talk about that, those types of things.

And all the while, we are going to be engaging in our active listening skills here. We are going to look at the parties in the eye. We are going to give them our non-verbal cues. And we are going to use a tone of voice that is appropriate.

So now that we've gone over effective conflict resolution language, let's look at the key points here. How you say something really matters. And you know this. You know this from personal experience. You know that sometimes you can say something the wrong way, but really in conflict we have to be mindful that.

We also need to know that our language can escalate or de-escalate a conflict or situation. And so escalating would be using those you or blaming statements. But we really want to move towards that de-escalating language where we are engaging in our active listening skills, where we're asking clarifying questions, giving those non-verbal cues, and utilizing I statements.

Well, that's all I have for you today. Here's a look at your key terms. Feel free to pause and look them over.

Thank you so much for taking the time out to view this tutorial. I hope you learned something. And I can't wait to catch you again next time.