Conflict Communications:
In a nutshell

Conflict Communications teaches you how to prevent most conflicts -- and manage the few that still occur -- by teaching you how not to fall into primitive conflict scripts. Behaviors that both cause conflict to occur and to escalate.

How do we do this?

Here's the short version. Humans are social primates. For millions of years our species has survived by banding together in groups. Long term survival of the group is what allowed the individual to survive, thrive and reproduce.  We are wired to function within the group dynamic.

Anytime you have people living and working together there will be conflict.

Unchecked, conflict can destroy the group. That is why nature has also given us scripted behavioral patterns that allow for conflict to occur without destroying the group. In fact, these default 'scripts' are more about strengthening the group dynamic than for the benefit of the individual.

While it might seem like we're fighting for ourselves, when you look deeper you'll see how these scripts play into the group dynamic. Most of what we're fighting for is our social status in the group and how others are to treat us. That's social dynamics.

Introducing a new factor. When we are stressed, emotional and in conflict, other parts of our brains become active. With the emotional parts of the brain firing and chemical baths occurring, not only do we think and perceive differently, but we act differently too. We refer to the collective as the 'Monkey Brain.' When we get sucked into our monkey brain, our default behavior is to follow those primitive conflict scripts. We call this the Monkey Trap.

And it all happens faster than conscious thought.

When we're emotionally triggered, we tend to fall into the monkey brain and start fighting for monkey goals (e.g. social status, emotional protection, defending our territory). These become more important than fixing the problem that created the conflict. We fight for these new goals by following scripts.

Worse, emotions are contagious. That means, the more emotional someone else is the more likely we are to be triggered ourselves. It's a two way street. Our monkey brain non-verbal signals and behaviors trigger the other person's monkey brain. Their monkey dance behavior triggers ours.

And so it escalates.

Conflict Communications teaches you about these conflict scripts and how to recognize when someone is caught up in the emotional monkey brain. We teach you what triggers them and how you can minimize conflict by not unwittingly triggering a conflict script. You can manage conflict by preventing the escalation of these scripts.

More than that, we teach you how to keep yourself from getting sucked into the monkey trap -- especially when someone is angry, in your face and within arm's reach. Conditions that will set your monkey brain screaming up a tree.

Instead of it being about 'winning,' you can focus on fixing the problem. By knowing the process you can avoid doing the monkey dance and escalating the situation. But the first person you need to de-escalate is yourself.

Does this training work? The Conflict Communication program was originally developed for police and correctional officers  to deal with emotionally disturbed and potentially dangerous people. But since conflict is universal, people in other fields can use it too. Both at work and at home. 

This training isn't just put in such a way so the average person can understand it, it's designed so you can go out and start using it the next day. As the head of psychology department for the Rhineland Police Academy told one of the creators of this system, "This is wonderful, it's based on psychology and science, but it's phrased so everyone can understand it!"

This is why we say Conflict Communication training will help you prevent, manage, de-escalate and resolve conflict. You and your staff can take this information and start effectively applying it immediately.