From the course: Fred Kofman on Managing Conflict

Explaining your reasoning

From the course: Fred Kofman on Managing Conflict

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Explaining your reasoning

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- Once you state your view taking responsibility for it saying this is what I think in the non-toxic way, you can explain to the other person why you think that way. What leads you to think that way, what's your reason to feel the way you do? That gives the other person a window onto your perspective. The difficulty here is that most of us explain in an argumentative manner. Like we want to convince the other person that we're right and they're wrong. So the explanation comes across as pushy, comes across as an argument to prove the point. Instead of saying no, I'd like to understand where I'm coming from. So that's the switch, instead of explaining your view as though you know you're right and you're trying to convince the other person they need to change their mind, you explain your view as this is what I think so far, and I like to explain it to you so if I'm wrong you can correct me, and if I'm not wrong then you can take it into account to modify your view. And that's the second step in explaining. So I state my view in an individual way, like this is my personal perspective, this is why I hold this personal perspective, and the third part is here's what I'd like to do with it or here's what I propose we could do about this. So in a sense, you're starting the present, this is what I think, you go to the past, this is why I what I think, and then you move into the future, this is what I propose to do about what I think. And those are the three steps of speaking openly. The fourth and last step is to turn it back to the other person and say, what do you think? And then you give them a chance to reflect over what you said. That creates the transition to the next point of the conversation which is a dialogue.

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