Managing Emotions in Conflict

How to Listen when someone is Offloading on you Mary Rafferty Consensus Mediation

How Do You Listen If Someone Is Upset, Annoyed And Off-Loading On You?

Listening is a much-lauded but greatly under-used skill – and not because we don’t know how to listen well.  Instead, it’s that so easily fall into the trap of trying to ‘fix’ the situation rather than taking the time to let a person talk (and think it) through and in doing that, find their own way …

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Bring your Oxygen Mask in Difficult Conversations Mary Rafferty Consensus Mediation

Difficult Conversation? Don’t Forget Your Oxygen Mask!

You’re sitting in an aeroplane with your three year old son. Suddenly, the plane starts to jolt and rock. You feel dizzy, it’s hard to breathe. The little boy starts wheezing and crying with pain. You can feel panic rising. From above oxygen masks drop down. Grabbing one you rush to ease the small boy’s …

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How to say No and minimise conflict Mary Rafferty Consensus Mediation

How to Say ‘No’ the Right Way

When invited to outline their key challenges in ‘Difficult Conversations’ / ‘Managing Conflict’ courses, being able to say ‘no’ effectively to a request or a demand is high on most participants wish lists. Delving a little deeper, concerns that emerge around turning someone down or setting a boundary on an aspect of their behaviour or …

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Bringing out the best in People Mary Rafferty Consensus Mediation

Bringing Out The Best In People: A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective (Part 2)

Did you ever play team sports as a child? If you were anything like me (two left feet!), you were the last one picked for the basketball team. Not only that, but you spent most of the game desperately hoping someone would take pity on you and you’d get thrown the ball just once in …

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How High is your EQ Mary Rafferty Consensus Mediation

How High Is Your Emotional Intelligence (EQ)?

Internationally renowned neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, tells the story of one patient known as Elliot. He was a successful manager in a large corporation, married with a family. He was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor which was successfully removed with surgery. However, afterwards he was a completely changed man. His ability to make decisions was …

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Jumping to Conclusions- Look before you Leap Mary Rafferty Consensus Mediation

Jumping To Conclusions – Look Before You Leap

Imagine this situation: you are walking down the corridor at work and a colleague is coming the other way. You say ‘hi’ in a bright and friendly tone and this person barely looks at you, has a cross look on their face and hardly greets you. What assumptions would you make about why the person …

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Which Wolf will i Feed Interpersonal Conflict Mary Rafferty Consensus Mediation

Which Wolf Will You Feed? Interpersonal Conflicts

A few weeks ago, I became embroiled in an interpersonal conflict situation. The details of who said what and when, are incidental. The key point is that I was annoyed, angry, upset et cetera by actions of the other person. Equally, they had similar reactions to actions that I took. What’s been interesting since then …

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How Conflict Competent are Staff in Your Organisation Mary Rafferty Consensus Mediation

How Conflict Competent Are Staff In Your Organisation?

When I ask people in training courses and workshops to cite some images or associations they have with the concept of ‘conflict’, I usually get a whole list of negatives (angry, war, hate, stress…) and very few positives. ‘I don’t like conflict’ is a common refrain, so I do my best to avoid it’. Yet …

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Lessons From Mandela Mary Rafferty Consensus Mediation

Leadership, Forgiveness And Reconciliation Lessons From Nelson Mandela

As this week of mourning for Nelson Mandela draws to a close and he is being laid to rest tomorrow, here are a a few vignettes from his life. These capture some examples of his greatness, particularly in the areas of leadership, forgiveness and reconciliation. Archbishop Desmond Tutu when asked by author John Carlin for …

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Constructive Conflict Mary Rafferty Consensus Mediation

Constructive Conflict: Are You An ‘I’ Statement Or A ‘You’ Statement Person?

To what extent do you engage in constructive conflict? Think about the last time you got annoyed or frustrated with someone… What are the odds that silently or perhaps even aloud, your response was to along the lines of ‘You are unreliable’ or ‘You shouldn’t do x’ . So often when we are annoyed or …

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