Does your attachment to your point of view make your good questions sound like judgments? Here are four steps to showing that your curiosity comes from your good intentions.

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Dr. Deborah Sword is a conflict specialist with decades of experience and training to share.

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It's election 2025 tomorrow in Canada, and we discuss conflict competence as a skill in every interaction, as well as necessary for democracy, electioneering, voting, and governing.

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Dr. Deborah Sword is a conflict specialist with decades of experience and training to share.

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Defaulting to curiosity rather than judgement is conflict competent. But, what if that curious question still sounds judgemental? We show you how to ask conflict competent questions, so you can diffuse conflict.

The article the explains better questions than starting with the word "why" at this link: https://deborahsword.com/a-conflict-analysis-of-why/

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Dr. Deborah Sword is a conflict specialist with decades of experience and training to share.

Please subscribe to our podcast, like it, share it, leave comments (we love comments), ask questions and suggest topics you'd like to hear. Thank you for listening.

A bias can make decisions easier. You don't have to think hard if you already know your bias for herbal tea and against caffeinated tea. But when biases cause conflict, or stop you from enjoying the company of friends who hold perspectives you don't share, you'll want some conflict competent hacks to overcome biased thinking. We discuss four of the most common.

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Dr. Deborah Sword is a conflict specialist with decades of experience and training to share.

Please subscribe to our podcast, like it, share it, leave comments (we love comments), ask questions and suggest topics you'd like to hear. Thank you for listening.

Have you made a comment that you intended as helpful and been criticized rather than thanked? Depending on how you respond in the situation, the cycle of defensive reaction either escalates or is diffused. You can decide if a conflict happens or not. We discuss two useful conflict competencies and how to use them.

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Dr. Deborah Sword is a conflict specialist with decades of experience and training to share.

Please subscribe to our podcast, like it, share it, leave comments (we love comments), ask questions and suggest topics you'd like to hear. Thank you for listening.

You have choices about how and when you let the person you're in conflict with know that you're feeling vulnerable. Since your sense of your vulnerability influences the decisions you make in conflict, it's a conflict competence to be mindful of how vulnerable you feel, and how you choose to express or hide that vulnerability.

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Dr. Deborah Sword is a conflict specialist with decades of experience and training to share.

Please subscribe to our podcast, like it, share it, leave comments (we love comments), ask questions and suggest topics you'd like to hear. Thank you for listening.

Everyone has a mental map of what conflict does or should look like, how it unfolds, and your ideal ending. Not everything on your conflict mental map is conflict competent. What may be on your conflict mental map as one of your strategies may not optimally belong there. Deborah discusses 'deflection' as one strategy that you might want to delete from your conflict mental map.

Send us a text. We love hearing from you.

Dr. Deborah Sword is a conflict specialist with decades of experience and training to share.

Please subscribe to our podcast, like it, share it, leave comments (we love comments), ask questions and suggest topics you'd like to hear. Thank you for listening.

Feeling shame doesn't leave you much room for dealing with conflict. Shame fills a lot of space, crowding out empathy and perspective taking. How can you be conflict competent when you're beating up on yourself in shame? We give a few tips.

Show notes:

Brené Brown, in Rising Strong, writes that vulnerability is “the birthplace of many of the fulfilling experiences we long for—love, belonging, joy, creativity, and trust” (p. xviii) and that “Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage” (p. 4).

“The key to moving forward is what we do with our discomfort. We can use it as a door out—blame the messenger and disregard the message. Or we can use it as a door in by asking, Why does this unsettle me? What would it mean for me if this were true?” - Robin Diangelo

“Discomfort is a part of slowing down and becoming more present. If we acknowledge and pay attention to it, it means that we’re allowing energy to do what it does naturally which is conflict” - Amelia Meman

Send us a text. We love hearing from you.

Dr. Deborah Sword is a conflict specialist with decades of experience and training to share.

Please subscribe to our podcast, like it, share it, leave comments (we love comments), ask questions and suggest topics you'd like to hear. Thank you for listening.