TOPIC: Non-violent communication for diffusing charged situations
How to have conversations around difficult situations, such that people don't feel attacked or take things personally... including nonviolent communication techniques.
SITUATIONS
A spectrum from negative feedback to mediation to ejection, in environments from open source projects and online communities to teams within companies
- providing negative feedback
- addressing pests
- mitigating toxic behavior, ejecting bad actors
- communicating around power dynamics
- building healthy and effective teams
PREVENTING CONFLICT
- Codifying positive and negative behaviors via Contributor Guides and Codes of Conduct
- Keeping the good of the project/the team front and center
- Creating a sense of safety
- Humanizing people, truly getting to know each other and empathizing
RESOLVING CONFLICT
- Finding similarities and then exploring the differences to add more nuance and nix the "us vs them"
- Being vulnerable and acknowledging that someone might not be doing so well
- Confronting issues face-to-face or with rich media such that we don't lose body language, facial expressions, etc
- Finding what's not being expressed so that we can find what truly needs to be addressed
- One-on-ones and retrospectives
- Staying calm and curious rather than escalating