Does confrontation always have to be a bad thing?

When most people thing of confrontation, they think of negativity.

That’s because most confrontations are personal attacks.

Most of the population doesn’t know how to interact with each other when conflict arises.

They take things personally, get defensive and resort to insults.

No wonder so many people are divorced.

The biggest key to positive confrontation, the kind where you solve problems and move forward, is keeping it about the situation - NOT the other person.

Because after all, it IS about the situation. The situation is what needs to be cleared up.

When you start a sentence with “you” or “you are”, be very careful about the next thing that comes out of your mouth, because it will be taken personally.

If a particular situation isn’t going your way, rather than get angry and blame everything on the other person, take a step back, detach emotionally, and look at it logically.

I find it helps to completely remove yourself and the other person from the whole thing.

Take a third person view. Pretend these are 2 people you don’t even know.

As difficult as it may be, put yourself in each person’s shoes and analyze it from their view.

Ask yourself “Why might “Fred” be acting this way?”

“What reason might he have for thinking this is the right thing to do?”

And more importantly, “How might Fred react if Lola reacts by saying _____?”

Conflict can be difficult to deal with when you’re an emotional, right brained person.

Step outside yourself, and try thinking like a left-brain person would. Picture the whole thing like an equation that needs to be figured out.

What do you really want to see happen?

All pride and emotions aside, what are the best steps to take to get the desired outcome?

If the other person has reacted in a defensive way, what might you have said to provoke that? How can you resolve that so you can tackle the real issue at hand?

Take all emotion and personal feelings out, and you’ll begin to see a big difference.

Confrontation will stop being such a scary, negative thing, and any problems that arise will actually be solved.