Before you engage in an important conversation, are you checking in with yourself? What do you need?
When I provide training or speak on conflict management or conflict resolution, attendees tend to be professionals asked to serve as a “mediator.” Whether trained in mediation or not, these folks facilitate important and sometimes challenging conversations.
It can take a toll, whether acting as a formal or informal mediator at home, in your organization, or out in the community. How do you offer compassion when you face compassion fatigue or feel plain old tired?
Part of compassion centers on noticing needs. As Marshall Rosenberg teaches, at the core of every conflict is an unmet need. Noticing needs gets to the real issue and opens space to generate ideas to resolve issues.
What about your needs as the person called in to address conflict? This calls for self-compassion in conflict resolution.
Before approaching a conversation, it helps to understand your own needs. If a crucial need of your own goes unmet while attempting to help someone else, you may not best serve the situation.
To show up with compassion for anyone else takes self-awareness. I invite you to assess your own level of content and satisfaction in six major areas through a Noticing Needs Guide. When your needs go unmet, you tend to experience more conflict in life. This tool helps you increase your level of awareness.
This allows you to address what you need and show up more in alignment with who you are and who you wish to be.
Being called in to make things better becomes a burden particularly when your own needs continually go unmet. To help folks around you, remember to pay attention to your own needs.
Your level of content and satisfaction in your life impacts how you show up in the world. What are your needs? What steps are you taking to address them?
