Four Steps to Help De-Escalate a Conflict
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Conflict De-Escalation is a slowing down (or stopping) of the escalation of conflict. In the mediation world, de-escalation techniques are used to reduce tension, hostility and emotional intensity during the mediation process.
We de-escalate conflict so we can check in with everyone’s needs and take action that will satisfy enough interests to end the conflict or at least restart the negotiation.
If you are in any type of management for your organization, it’s very likely that at some point you’ll encounter negative conflict that needs to be de-escalated. These same mediation techniques can help you diffuse a situation before it gets out of hand.
The best solution is for an organization to do their best to head off negative conflict in the first place, but that’s another story you can read about here. In the meantime…
What are the Steps to De-Escalating Conflict?
Check-in with Yourself and Your Surroundings
Listen / Empathize
Call for or Take Action
Repeat
1. Know Yourself and the Situation. Whether you are going to help others bring their conflict down a notch, or are going to try to get a conflict you are embroiled in to calm down, you must understand yourself enough to know when you can and cannot intervene.
What triggers you?
What are your natural ways of dealing with conflict?
Will you be able to make productive decisions in the heat of this moment?
You will need to evaluate whether or not it is safe for you and others, and whether or not you will make things better by intervening. If you can’t do that, you will need to remove yourself and not intervene. I have found this Hooks exercise to be useful for most people. The TKI Conflict Styles tool is also a great way to explore your own “stuff.” If you can intervene, take just a single tool with you into that conversation.
2. Active Listening. Once we have cleared ourselves for intervening, we must be prepared to listen to both sides. Or, in the case of our own conflicts, the other side. Active listening means the other side knows you are listening.
You are repeating back to them what they said.
You are not judging.
You are empathizing with them and reflecting back your understanding of what they are going through.
You’re not just nodding your head. You’re in there with them, “all-in” to get to the core of what’s going on.
Each time they tell you something, you are there with a question that will help you understand more.
You are reframing their words in a way that keeps the big content, and allows a nuancing that could be productive. You are deeply curious. If you are there as the in-between, you act as the conduit of listening so everyone can hear.
3. Call for Action. No conflict was ever resolved by doing the same thing over and over again. At some point in this de-escalation process, someone must ask a question or make an ask, or a suggestion, or a demand, that will send the conflict in a direction that de-escalates it.
When things are super hot, amygdalae have been hijacked, and anger is at the surface, a demand for a break may be the call for action. If the listening has had a calming effect, the call to action might be for more conversation, or a suggestion about what to agree on now, or later.
4. Repeat. The three steps above rarely work on the first round or in sequence. Be prepared to check-in with yourself again, listen and try to understand again, and call/ask for some kind of action that will make change.
Next steps? Practice!
The only way to get better at de-escalating conflict is to practice doing it – when you are not in the midst of a conflict. Practice at least the first two steps separately.
(1) Check in with yourself when someone else is describing a conflict or maybe you are reading an article about a conflict (too many to link to here).
What’s going on for you?
Would you have been okay to intervene? Why? Why not?
(2) Actively listen to everyone you meet for the next two weeks. Push that practice until it comes naturally and is fun.
(3) Try putting it all together in situations that you can see are moving toward conflict. Maybe start with some low level conflicts like where to go to dinner Friday, and move your way up to the bigger stuff.
Here is another helpful source for you to understand and handle negative conflict: When to Get Help for Workplace Disputes or Conflict.
When we join a company, partnership or team, our expectation is that everyone involved will exhibit professional behavior toward us and each other. Instead, it’s highly possible that we may become one of the more than 60 million adults in the United States who are affected in some way by bullying behavior at work.
What kind of behaviors are we talking about? Our definition is any interpersonal behavior that causes emotional distress in others sufficient enough to impede their productivity or disrupt organizational functioning. It isn’t just a personality conflict — it’s a chronic pattern of disrespectful behavior.