Campusalam

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Whether you are running a group, chairing an event, or just witnessing a conversation taking place that is going wrong – it is indispensable to have effective communication techniques up your sleeve to turn negative or destructive situations into a more positive direction.

There are number of situations that can arise in your environment which could become very serious – and yet could be prevented or improved simply by the skilful use of words.

Key skills to have are ones that allow you to:

- Calm down situations that are becoming angry, emotive, or aggressive
- Defuse personal conflicts and attacks
- Turn away attempts at manipulation or exploitation and protect the vulnerable, including yourself

If you learn and practice some of the skills in this section you will be able to do all three of these things.

The more calming you are – and the less you provoke emotion, defensiveness or resistance – the more successful you will be in transforming destructive behaviour, and the safer you will be when you do it.

The items on the left will give you fundamental insights and successful strategies so that you can handle difficult situations effectively and safely. The theme is that confrontational and provocative methods are almost always counter-productive, if you want people to change. That’s because they arouse strong, negative emotions that lock people into their attitudes and behaviour. So you need to inspire trust and confidence so people feel safe to let their defences down and see things honestly.

You will also be safer yourself if you calm people down and reduce the emotion. Getting into confrontational situations where angry people become even more wound up and provoked can be dangerous.

Most of us lack a full range of techniques and skills to calm people while still standing our ground – and even more, to calm people while inspiring them to change their behaviour. This page has some examples of those skills.

Check out the topics on the left!