Most conflicts have two aspects to them that need to be attended to. There is the person you are dealing with, their relationship with you and the feelings and emotions that are influenced by the relationship. This is where we often get hooked by falling into the heat of an argument, losing our cool and succumbing [...]
A respectful workplace is one where we treat each other with respect and dignity and protect each other from unwelcome behaviour like bullying and harassment. We know through studies that demonstrating compassionate behaviour on its own accounts for improvements of productivity up to 30%. Why is this? We seem to know intuitively that if someone [...]
Dan Siegal talks about the neuropsycholgy of empathy. Mirror neurons simulate internal states. Your brain takes in another's emotional state through your "mirror neurons" that influences your brainstem and then the body. You resonate with what you see. You start feeling thirsty as you imagine I am feeling thirsty. You start feeling angry if you [...]
William Ury, author of "Getting to Yes," offers an elegant, simple (but not easy) way to create agreement in even the most difficult situations -- from family conflict to, perhaps, the Middle East. Using examples of the South African Bushmen...whenever tempers rise, they hide the poison arrows in the bush and they sit and talk [...]
Tweet Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. — Marie Curie Fear.... I'm afraid to even talk about it. What is it about fear that makes us so afraid of it? Some say that Fear is [...]
Tweet How is it that a 12th century mystic can still be so alive and relevant today? In Rumi's poem, "The Guest House", he tells us to accept our emotions without getting entangled in the feelings that they produce. Being aware of how we feel in a difficult conversation, without letting our judgements about the [...]
From the Stanford Lecture Series...The Dalai Lama Talks About Compassion, Respect
Tweet Last week I facilitated a conversation with people who were 2 hours away by airplane. These two courageous individuals wanted to better understand what they both needed from one another and reach an agreement that enhanced their interpersonal communications. This request flew in the face of everything that I had ever learned about communication. [...]