Imagine you have a long-standing conflict with a friend, family-member or co-worker.

This person seems extremely angry at you, and you're pretty sure they have a long list of complaints and accusations to make against you.

Just the idea of having to face them keeps you up at night.

What if I told you there was a technique you could use that allowed you to take all of the stored-up negatives and use them to your advantage in a way that defused most of the explosive potential of the interaction?

There is.

Conflict and confrontation are frightening. What techniques work for conflict resolution? How can we handle confrontations, especially those kinds of confrontations when we expect to be accused of having done a bunch of bad things?

I'm going to teach you a simple technique for handling conflict resolution and confrontations, especially when you expect to be accused of having done bad things.

Empathic Approach to Conflict Resolution

More and more as I read books and watch videos to prepare material for this channel, I'm convinced of one thing, and that is it's all empathy. It's empathy all the way down. The deeper you dig, the more it's just empathy.

I was thinking about how to teach scientists how to communicate with non-scientists. I was reading a book by Alan Alda, and what does the book turn out to be? It's just about empathy. It's also about improvisation, but it's mostly about using improvisation to learn how to be more empathic.

Then I wanted to learn about negotiation, so I read a book by Chris Voss called Never Split the Difference, and it turns out, what is that book really about? It's not really about negotiation, or maybe only secondarily. It's about empathy. He basically says the key to negotiation is empathy.

The Accusation Audit

Not surprisingly, the key to conflict resolution and confrontation, especially when we expect to be accused of doing a bunch of bad things, is a kind of empathy. I mentioned this technique in passing once before in a video about how to prepare for difficult conversations. In the video, I say, "One of the best ways to prepare for difficult conversation is to think of all the questions that the person might ask you and think of all the things that they might be feeling."

This technique is related to that but has a great name. Chris Voss calls it an accusation audit. He says,

"Before you go into a conflict situation, a confrontation situation, do an accusation audit."

What does that mean?

It's very simple. It means think about your counterpart, the person you're going to be negotiating with or is in the conflict or confrontation with you. Put yourself in their position as much as you can and get out a pen and paper and list all of the accusations you think they're likely to make against you.

This could be painful. It could require some humility to think of all the things you've done wrong. Some of these accusations can be valid. Some of them might not be valid. Doesn't matter. We're not here trying to defend ourselves thinking about the validity of these accusations. We just want to list them all.

This is my main technique for dealing with a confrontation and being successful at conflict resolution. Think about your counterpart, and before the confrontation, do an accusation audit. Think of all the things they're going to accuse you of. Write them down, and then pair this with the other techniques for empathy which we've talked about before. I'll link to other videos on empathy where I talk about active listening, mirroring, empathic responding, and labeling what people say.

Accusation Audit in Action

Now you have a list of 5 or 10 accusations that you think they're likely to make against you when this confrontation gets started. One thing you can do is actually summarize them and say them at the beginning before they even have a chance.

Let's say you think someone's going to accuse you of being disloyal or dishonest or not working hard enough. You can come into the situation and say at the very beginning,

"I've been anticipating this conversation, and I knew it was going to be difficult. I have the feeling from our previous conversations that you think I've been disloyal and dishonest. And you think I haven't been treating you fairly."

Include whatever the other accusations are in your audit. Get them out on the table.

If you've been sensitive in your empathy, if you have good cognitive and emotional empathy, then you've accurately perceived what these accusations are. Now you've sort of disarmed them in a way. It doesn't mean they might not still feel that you're guilty of some of the things they've accused you of, but now you've got them on the table. You've proven that you've been thoughtful enough to acknowledge these criticisms.

Maybe when the person hears the anticipated accusations, they'll come across as too strong and say, "I don't really think you've been disloyal. I don't really think you've been dishonest, but..." and then they can talk about what they really do believe.

Summary

This is it. Make your accusation audit and then combine it with these other empathic responding techniques, especially summarization and labeling to say what they're feeling.

Be prepared for them to make an accusation at you or possibly just lash out with anger. It's then that you come back with labeling what you think they really feel. “It seems like...” or “I can tell that…” – remember we talked about these words, how to recognize people's emotions.

"I can tell that you're angry."

"It seems like you think I've been dishonest. It seems like you think I've been disloyal."

I think you'll find that this technique and all the empathic techniques, if practiced and integrated into your communication style, will work magic in your confrontations and allow you to succeed at conflict resolution.

That's all I have for today. A simple technique. I hope you try it. These techniques only work if you try them.

Go down below in the comments and tell me if you've used some of these techniques successfully or unsuccessfully, or if you've read about this. I'd like to get more of a discussion going in the comments so we can build a community around these ideas and learn from one another about what communication skills work and what communication situations are most challenging, so I can make posts about the things that concern you most.