In the Healthcare Leadership Excellence podcast, Karl Pister and I talked through ideas from my Best Conflict Conversation Cards, which he uses in his consulting work: the stories we tell ourselves, the anger iceberg, impact versus intent, and the power of a generous assumption. These skills matter in healthcare, at work, and at home, and every one of them can be learned. Here are nine ideas from our two conversations.

I don’t use ground rules in mediation, and I never have. In my mediation coaching and skills training, I watch what happens when someone is reminded of the rules: they shut down and start saying the right thing instead of the true thing. Here’s what I do instead, from an opening that asks people to listen to understand, to stopping and summarizing when it gets heated, plus the research on what suppressing emotion costs people at the table.

Children fall out with each other constantly, and the next morning they are back on the same blacktop. Somewhere between second grade and adulthood, we started treating a broken conversation as permanent. Our family conflicts and our geopolitical conflicts are the same conflicts scaled up. Only the weapons get greater. What two little girls told me about friendship is where repair starts.

If your family is struggling with decisions about an aging parent's care, medical treatment, or end-of-life wishes, I want to start with the thing I say to families in my mediation practice all the time: you are not alone, and neither is your family. This is not an easy season, and there is a lot to navigate at once. And while this is not the conversation any of us wants to be having, it is one of the most important conversations you can have.

People in conflict tend to argue about what happened or didn’t happen. Who said what, who did what, who started it, who was right and who was wrong. That is almost never what the conflict is about. Underneath the argument, four things are running at once. Emotions that are hard to see and harder to name. Values that feel non-negotiable. Interests buried under stated positions. Needs that go unspoken because they are the hardest thing to say out loud.

Mediation is a confidential, voluntary process where a neutral third party (the mediator) helps people in conflict have the conversation they have been avoiding and reach an agreement they both choose. The mediator does not decide anything. The mediator does not take sides. The mediator does not give legal advice or tell anyone what to do. What the mediator does is create the conditions where people can hear each other, understand what is actually at stake, and find a path fo

Labels have always terrified me. Not the words themselves, but what comes with them: the fear of being mis-seen. Of having someone look at me and see the label instead of me. Of being reduced to a word I never fully agreed to.

U.S. companies spend more than $160 billion a year on leadership development. The global number exceeds $366 billion. That buys a lot of workshops, executive retreats, and 360-degree assessments. And yet, Development Dimensions International's (DDI) 2024 assessment of more than 70,000 manager candidates found that 49 percent cannot demonstrate effective conflict management skills. Only 12 percent showed high proficiency. That's not a "people problem." That's a skills gap on a

Research shows email tone is misread nearly half the time. Kimberly Best of Best Conflict Solutions, based in St. Louis and working nationwide, explores 20 years of studies on how text, email, phone, and face-to-face communication affect workplace conflict and relationships.

Workplace Dispute Resolution for Teams and Managers