Core Insight Skills
5 Steps to help you face conflict with confidence
(and why it's worth it)
Listen
Communicating opens dialogue that goes both ways. And in order for dialogue to get us anywhere, we have to listen.
Listening is all about paying attention to the other person and doing your best to understand them on their terms. Given the fast paced nature of our lives, we often forget to listen and, instead, act on our own conclusions. But when we listen, we put our automatic reactions aside for a moment to hear the other person out.
What’s incredible about listening is that when we listen, we synchronize with the other person (also referred to as brain coupling). We invite dialogue. We learn. We allow ourselves to be surprised. We make connections and strengthen our relationships. ​
Active listening is a critical skill and includes:
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Physically engaging - leaning in, maintaining eye contact, showing interest.
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Following the speaker - not interrupting, finishing sentences or jumping ahead
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Showing that you’re understanding by verifying, and
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Staying curious and open.
About the Core Insight Skills
Conflict is part of life. It’s part of sharing space with others. And it grips us when our perceptions and experiences not only don’t match, but feel threatening in some way.
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While conflict is difficult and causes us to charge into battle or disappear and hide, when we face it with confidence, it can also help us expand. It can be a clue that there are important things to address, and that by addressing them, new perspectives and possibilities emerge that are essential for growth.
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Facing conflict with confidence is not easy. When we feel angry, disappointed, frustrated, or wronged, we’re vulnerable. We want to protect ourselves and what we care about. But in order to effectively do that - to protect and strengthen what matters to us in the most sustainable way possible, to harness the good that can come from conflict and turn what might otherwise be destructive into something constructive - it is important to cultivate skills for engaging rather than escalating conflict.
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The Insight approach – the theory behind Insight Policing and Engaging Conflict through Curiosity – invites us to work through five steps to more effectively communicate through conflict to find new, more sustainable paths forward.
These steps require us to: Notice, Verify, Ask, Communicate, and Listen.
