Cooling the Flames: Practical Strategies for Managing Conflict Styles

Come learn your conflict style and some techniques to manage this when it matters most!

Description: Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional. When a conversation heats up—when voices raise, defensiveness spikes, and safety goes out the window—what do you do? Do you freeze? Do you fight back? Or do you have the skills to lower the temperature?

For our fifth gathering of the Conscious Communication Circle, we are diving deep into the art of Conflict Management and De-escalation.

We will explore our own conflict styles, how to recognize when a conversation has turned "unsafe", and practice specific tools from Crucial Conversations and Nonviolent Communication to step out of the argument and back into dialogue.

What We’ll Do:

• Hour 1 (Intros & Strategy): We’ll understand our own conflict styles then dissect the mechanics of conflict. We'll discuss some conflict management strategies espoused by Crucial Conversations as well as those highlighted by Jefferson Fisher in his book The Next Conversation.
• Hour 2 (The Lab): We move from theory to embodiment. We will use mindfulness to regulate our own nervous systems under pressure and use group activities to practice the actual words that de-escalate a heated moment.

Come ready to learn how to be the "thermostat" in the room, setting the temperature rather than just reacting to it.