Wer in Gesprächen seine weniger hilfreichen Impulse sinnvoll steuern möchte, um die Gespräche freudvoller, effizienter und produktiver zu gestalten, der findet in vorliegendem Artikel fünf Handlungsstrategien.

The question should not be “whether”, but rather: “what can I contribute so that a win-win situation results?” (Of course a win-win situation will not always be reached, but if one seriously searches for it, it will not just make one’s own attitude more productive, but for the most part it will also make the attitude of the others involved clearly more productive and therefore the likelihood of a consensual solution will rise immensely.)

Both in our professional and our private life there is a great number of relationships, in which cooperation for every kind of question and theme is central. Lacking cooperations that work would mean that we would not only be less successful, but we just could not live in the long run. Some of our cooperations are with us for a long time, others are short, sometimes last only a few minutes. A number of our cooperation dealings are characterised by stability, trust and openness and we do not want to miss them; others appear to us to be rather fragile, changeable and unpredictable or tedious, dogged and full of conflict.

Our intuitive thinking about causal connections follows a linear logic. We regard particular circumstances A1, A2, A3… as giving rise to or at least helping to give rise to facts B1, B2, B3…and these facts for their part are possibly the cause of further circumstances C1, C2, C3… The logic of our causal thinking is especially shown in conflict situations and above all, when we are the person affected in a conflict.