I haven't read much of LACTNET for the past several days.  Among other things, I was preparing a presentation on dealing with conflict the title of which is "The Conflict Coward's Guide to Defusing Hot Issues Without Getting Burned; Safety tools to deal with anger and fear and to get a dialogue rolling."  So when I open a digest and read that there has been talk of shutting LACTNET down and that someone whose contribution I greatly value is thinking of leaving this list, I greatly hope that I can make a saving contribution.

We tend to think in terms of right and wrong.  We want to be right.  More than want--we need to be right because to be right is to be competent, to be able to take care of ourselves.  However for us to be right, someone else has to be wrong.  But others are no more willing to labeled as wrong than we are and so we have conflict, stress and anger.

If, however, we reframe our perspective and think, not in terms of right and wrong, but rather in terms of needs met and unmet much of the source of contention melts away.  We each have certain needs and attempt to meet them as best we can.  Our needs give rise to our wants.  Sometimes we discover that what we wanted at first is not the best way to meet the need.  I think that many of the discussion threads on LACTNET have very successfully explored how best to meet a particular need.  That someone else's need is different than ours is not necessarily a threat to us.

In preparing my presentation on techniques for dealing with anger so that dialogue is possible, I relied on several books.  Chief among them are
"Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion"
by Marshall B Rosenberg
and
"Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High"
by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler.

Available on the Nonviolent Communication web site is an article entitled "Ten Steps that Transform Anger into Compassionate Connection".  There is also much free material available at
www.crucialconversations.com.

Please, if you have been hurt or distressed by anything that has appeared on LACTNET, consider visiting one or both of these sites to see if they don't offer insights that will allow us to continue dialoguing.

Alice Martino Roddy
Communication Skills Instructor

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"I did the best I knew at the time and if I'd known better, I'd have done better." -Ruth Tait

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