Communication | Stanislav Valasek

Resolving Conflict in Two Steps

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Most of us don’t resolve conflicts at work. We postpone them, work around them, or explode. And yet they often involve people we see every day. This article describes a purely rational tool that has helped me turn many such situations into agreements.

What a conflict is

For this purpose I define conflict like this: in a specific situation, you feel a strong negative emotion.

Three important things follow from that:

The person carrying the conflict is responsible for resolving it – the one with the strong emotions. You cannot change someone else’s emotion, but you can change your own behaviour.
A conflict is not about a specific person, but about a specific situation. If you were in the same situation with someone else, you would feel equally strong emotions.
Conflicts often have layers. Once you resolve one, another may appear.

Why resolve it? To turn the situation from a conflict into a non-conflict and make it easier to work with people you meet often.

Two levels of resolution

Rational – with the people you work with often, you agree on the most ergonomic rules possible to prevent your strong negative emotions and function better. This is the foundation, and it’s what this article is about.
Personal / therapeutic – changes your inner patterns in that situation. This is the level that brings long-term, lasting change.

Step 1: prepare on your own

Notice and admit that it is a conflict.
Name how you feel.
Describe the situation as specifically as possible, but impersonally: what it looks like, the way of communicating and the environment in which you feel the strong negative emotion.
Decide whether you will open the conflict. It helps to name what will happen if you don’t.
Prepare a proposal that is feasible for you and as low-cost as possible for the other side – a change in communication, environment or way of working. This is not about your comfort.
Look for more options. Write down one or more proposals.

Step 2: talk to your partner

Describe the specific situation and the emotion it triggers in you. It is important not to blame, but to describe that this is happening to you. It is not about the person; it is about a specific situation, behaviour, place and time.
Ask: “Are you willing to help me find a solution?” If not, you can walk away and leave the conflict unresolved, or decide unilaterally how you will behave in that situation.
If yes, propose a solution. It is your proposal for an agreement. Ask whether it works for your partner and what other ideas they have.
Negotiate and look for a solution acceptable to both.
Summarise the solution you reached together.
Thank your partner for their time and willingness to find a solution.

What it can sound like

I’d like to raise something with you. When someone in a meeting takes over before I’ve finished a thought, I feel frustrated and then I’d rather stay quiet. It’s not about you – it happens to me in this situation with anyone. Would you help me find a solution?

My proposal: when I present, give me two minutes without interruption and we’ll keep questions for the end. Does that work for you, or do you see another option?

How the conversation can end

Every negotiation ends in one of three outcomes – ordered by how favourable they are:

Agreement – my preference.
Compromise – I avoid it, and if I accept one, I know why.
Confirmation that we can’t agree – nearly as valid as an agreement. At least we both know where we stand.

And remember: an agreement holds for as long as it works for both sides. When it stops working for one of them, it is no longer an agreement. So it’s worth reconfirming it with your partner from time to time.

What this tool does not solve

When both sides are willing, the tool works very well between people who communicate often. Expect some closeness as well, and room for mutual understanding along the lines of “oh, so that’s how it is for you”.

What it doesn’t address is why the situation triggers strong negative emotions in you. With rules you haven’t really changed yourself – you have only created a less conflict-prone environment. And quite often, the same or a slightly modified conflict resurfaces in a new environment.

The real cause can be explored through coaching, mentoring, with a personal guide or with a good therapist. From personal experience, I strongly recommend it: once you understand the reason behind these emotions, lasting change follows – and not only at work.

Invitation to reflect

Look back and name three people and three specific situations in which your emotions took over.
Pick one relationship that matters to you and in which you meet the person often.
Go through step 1: name the situation, the emotions, the consequences of not opening the conflict, and prepare a proposed agreement. Then find the courage and open it.
Write down what you learned. What helped you – from preparation to the conversation itself? What is your interaction like now?

Fingers crossed!

This article is based on my upcoming book Management Essentials. If you want to go deeper, to the cause of your emotions, have a look at .

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The Structure of a Request: How to Write an Email That Gets an Immediate Answer

Sun, 13 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

To get the same result from a colleague you may need three one-hour meetings – or a single email. That is the difference in communication efficiency. Inefficient communication frustrates both sides, and if you communicate like that with someone often, their willingness to work with you slowly drops.

I measure communication efficiency simply: by the total time and number of interactions needed to reach the result. And the biggest difference is made by how the very first request is phrased.

Three parts of every request

Before every request, stop, think and phrase it like this:

What you need – information, brainstorming, a decision, inputs…

Why you need it – you give the other side context so they can come up with a better solution than you would, and so they know what happens if you don’t get it in time.

How you need to receive it – when and in what form (phone call, email, meeting, structure of the output).

Example 1: asking for information

Hi Peter,

I need all planned outage dates of the TAPO system and their duration, from today until the end of the year. If you don’t plan that far ahead, I need to know at least one week before each outage when TAPO will be down.

We have deployed a payroll module that works with TAPO, and when TAPO is down, payroll calculations go wrong. The vendor will only fix this at the beginning of next year, so until then I need to pause payroll processing during those times or find another solution.

Let me know which option works better for you. I always need the information by email, the first batch by the beginning of the month, when we switch to the new system. If I don’t have it, I will have to postpone our go-live until I do.

Thank you,

Notice: Peter immediately knows what to deliver, why it matters, by when and in what form. He even has two options to choose from. He doesn’t need to ask follow-up questions.

Example 2: asking your manager for a decision

How do you get your boss to answer your email right away? By making every request as ergonomic as possible so it takes her minimal effort. You do the work for her – she only decides.

Hi Marta,

I need your approval to buy new bug-tracking software.

I recommend Fizzy by 37signals at 200 € per month, a cloud solution with no limits on users or projects. I validated it with Jana, who leads testing, and it is her favourite too.

If this works for you, just reply “OK” and I’ll buy it with the company card today. If you have questions, send me a time and I’ll call you.

Alternatives considered:

Atlassian Jira, cloud, 4,000 € per month (25 € × 160 licences). No guest access, so we can’t build a client portal.

GitHub, cloud, 2,400 € per month (15 € × 160). Too technical for our product team.

Thanks in advance for your time and decision, Stanislav

One word is enough to answer. The recommendation, price, validation, next step and alternatives are all in one place.

The warning signal

You are writing an explanatory sentence at the end of the email.

When that happens, go back to the beginning, clarify what you actually want to say and rewrite the message using the structure above. An explanatory sentence at the end is almost always a sign that the request was not clear from the start.

Why it works

It forces you to think through what you actually need. What does the expected result look like? Where does your responsibility start and end?
You respect other people’s time. Every request draws on the most valuable thing people have – their time and attention.
You reduce spam. Fewer words that don’t serve the result, fewer follow-up questions.
You quickly learn whom you can rely on. Answers to clearly structured requests are a litmus test: who delivers what you ask for, who fairly declines when they can’t make it, and who avoids.

Invitation to reflect

Go through your last three sent emails. Did they contain all three parts – what, why and how?
How often do you get exactly what you need in the first reply? How many times do you have to clarify and add to your request?
Pick one area of your work where you will use the request structure for a whole month. Then compare what changed.

This article is based on my upcoming book Management Essentials. The next step is .

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3 Golden Rules of Communication

Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Most misunderstandings in teams are not caused by a lack of intelligence or goodwill. They come from assumptions, from looking for someone to blame and from arguing about who is right. That is why, before and during every important discussion, I remind myself of three rules:

Nothing that has not been said exists. What has been said, I take as sincere.
We never look for a culprit, always for a solution.
We never look for the truth, always for opinions.

Let’s unpack them.

1. Nothing that has not been said exists

Yes, I know – we are supposed to read between the lines. This rule, however, invites you to name explicitly what you read between the lines and what you sense from the other person. For example:

My assumption is that you’d like to work more with the team and spend less time preparing reports. How do you see it?

Or:

I sense you don’t really want to do this work, even though you accepted the task. How is it for you really?

The result? You don’t act on assumptions, but on facts that have been named and confirmed. You communicate transparently and, at the same time, you test how willing both sides are to say what they need or don’t want.

The second half of the rule matters just as much: what has been said, I take seriously and as sincere. If a colleague says “yes, I can do it”, I don’t twist it in my head into “probably not”. If I have a doubt, I go back to the first half and name it.

2. We never look for a culprit, always for a solution

This rule is key the moment something goes wrong. Instead of looking for whom to blame, you can say it out loud to the team, for example:

This and this happened to us. It’s a great opportunity to learn so we get even better. I need us to set aside an hour as a team to look at this situation. I want us to talk about what was done, and possibly by whom and when, and then, based on the facts, propose how to do it differently next time. I’m not interested in finding a culprit – I want us as a group to find a better solution so that none of us falls into the same trap again.

With this you invite the team into learning and growth. The person who made the mistake brought you an opportunity – and you, as the manager, are using it.

And what about the person who caused it? What has worked best for me is asking them to take responsibility for the damage caused – in proportion to their role. The team then remembers for good that every action has consequences. If you are consistent, people understand you are not after punishment but after learning – and that whoever caused the damage has the most work fixing it.

3. We never look for the truth, always for opinions

If you are after a result, you are interested in subjective opinions, not “the one truth”. Opinions let people speak freely without having to defend a truth that you or the other person believes in. When you share your opinion, you know it is your opinion – and it is easier to accept that someone else has a different one.

Truth is a tricky thing. An opinion automatically carries the responsibility of the person who voices it. It is easy to hide behind “the truth” – and that is exactly where most conflicts in teams start.

When you keep the discussion at the level of opinions and respect, the team can take the useful part of every opinion. Very often this creates a group opinion that fits the problem far better than the opinion of any single person.

How to use the rules in practice

Before the meeting: write the rules on paper or into the meeting invite. In team retrospectives you can say them out loud right at the start.
During the meeting: when you notice an assumption, name it as a question. When the discussion turns to blame, steer it back to the solution. When an argument about truth starts, ask: “What is your opinion and what is it based on?”
After the meeting: do a short reflection (below).

Invitation to reflect

Use the rules to guide your communication in your next team or one-to-one discussion. Right afterwards, answer:

Which rule did you use, and how?
With what result?
What do you notice looking back at the discussion?

This article is based on my upcoming book Management Essentials. I also work on team communication in and .

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