A conciliatory next step in his conflict communication could have been to address the need to evaluate housing, unemployment and infrastructure in impoverished suburban neighborhoods throughout the country.

The first and most important step in any conflict situation is to consider and understand where the other side is coming from. That consideration has to be stated as clearly and sincerely as possible. Your opponents, particularly in a potentially explosive situation, have to understand that you are genuinely interested in considering the issues from their perspective. This will aid you tremendously in calming emotions and focusing on resolving conflicting goals when communicating during a crisis.

Our Communication Options in Conflict Situations

Whenever we are faced with a crisis, it is important that we remember that we have options in the way we respond to the situation. Here are some of the more productive strategies you can use in place of the ones that tend to escalate a conflict rather than contribute to resolving it:

• Instead of resorting to personal attacks and insults, focus on making the issues the center of discussion. • Instead of trying to make your point with emotionally laden rhetoric in an already emotionally heated climate, argue with reason and rational thought, sticking to facts and telling the truth. • Instead of focusing on winning your argument at any cost, offer ideas on how both sides can collaborate to find solutions to contentious issues. • Instead of pressuring your opposition, work to persuade them with logic and simple language. • Instead of pushing the other side into a corner with no way out, give them an opportunity to change their position without losing face. • Instead of “digging in your heels” when you argue your point of view, leave open the possibility of genuinely considering an alternative, mutually acceptable, solution. • Instead of thinking and speaking in limitations, adopt an attitude of possibility and collaborative creativity. • Instead of refusing to listen to your opposition’s arguments, show sincere interest and appreciation for their point of view by active listening and asking clarifying questions.

Mind Your Language

Leaders are always on record. Interior Minister Sarcozy may become painfully aware of this fact, as his counterproductive rhetoric during the riots may come back to haunt him during his effort to replace Jacques Chirac as President of France.

As arrogant leadership rhetoric is an unfortunate but pervasive trait suffered by employees and citizens the world over, it is a universal liability leaders of organizations and countries everywhere must guard against.

Particularly in a conflict situation, people look to leaders for answers. They look for direction, optimism, hope and comfort in the leader’s words. Thus, when a leader contributes to escalating a conflict with careless rhetoric rather than resolve it, his credibility suffers and people’s faith in his leadership may be irreversibly damaged.

To avoid such a fate in my own communication with others, I always think of my dear Mother’s words from childhood:

“Watch your language, young man.”

And I do.

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