4 Simple Techniques for Managing Conflict – Anywhere!
(Including High Conflict Disputes)
© 2025 by Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq.
Conflict happens. It can be over a minor issue or it can become an overwhelming dispute involving many people and professionals. For the past seventeen years, High Conflict Institute has developed, taught, and refined four simple techniques that can be applied in any conflict situation.
- Calming Upset People with EAR (empathy, attention and respect)
- Making Proposals (with a 3-step method)
- BIFF Responses (that are brief, informative, friendly and firm)
- SLIC Solutions (for setting limits, imposing consequences in 2½ steps)
These are especially useful in managing high conflict disputes, in which standard conflict resolution methods don’t work or make things worse. While the above skills can be used in any situation, let’s look at why some standard methods that are useful in most disputes (perhaps 80%) but often do not work in high conflict disputes.
Standard Conflict Resolution Methods
Attempting Insight
In many disputes, whether in families, at work, in business, and in communities, it is common to make efforts to give people insight into their own behavior. This is common when trying to get to the “root” of the problem. In dispute resolution methods, such as mediation and negotiation, it is common to explore each party’s “interests” and then find solutions that address them. Both of these tasks usually involve a degree of insight into oneself. It could be one’s own contribution to a problem and what behavior to change, or awareness of one’s own interests in negotiations and settlement of a dispute.
Unfortunately, in high conflict disputes, focusing inward on one’s own behavior or interests can trigger extreme defensiveness for some people. Therefore, we have learned that it is wiser to focus everyone in high conflict situations on looking at their choices now. This doesn’t tend to trigger defensiveness as it doesn’t require self-reflection and can create openness to new behaviors and solutions that hadn’t been considered before.
Resolving Emotions: In many counseling and conflict resolution methods there is a focus on resolving upset emotions. These are often at the “root” of the problem if there have been misunderstandings or offenses that need to be processed before the parties can truly move forward. Expressing how another person’s behavior made one feel often clears up where miscommunications started and grew into a dispute. Then, it helps to repeat back what was heard to check for accuracy and possibly provide some empathy for what the person felt. Sometimes this leads to apologies: “I didn’t mean it that way.” “I’m sorry I over-reacted.” Sometimes this leads to a complete resolution of a conflict. Some therapy and mediation methods have been quite effective at focusing on emotions.
However, people with high conflict personalities generally don’t process emotions through to a resolution or emotionally heal losses. Therefore, they carry many unresolved feelings and tend to become quite upset or outraged when emotions become the focus of attention. When asked about how they feel about aspects of a conflict, they often feel worse. Efforts to “resolve” emotions for them often backfire and make matters worse. It’s not unusual for them to impulsively abandon dispute resolution efforts at such times. Therefore, it’s wiser to focus on thinking and doing, rather than asking how they feel about a subject or a proposal.
Focusing on the Past: Much of dispute resolution work involves re-examining past actions and trying to “resolve” them so that the people involved can move forward. Whether there were misunderstandings or problem behaviors that need to be changed, by looking at the past in depth it often becomes clearer what went wrong and what can be done to make it better in the future. Understanding the facts of a case in detail often leads to a useful resolution.
Unfortunately, focusing on the past is highly triggering to people with high conflict personalities. They tend to be constantly defensive about their past behavior because it is so often high conflict (unmanaged emotions, all-or-nothing thinking, and extreme behaviors), and they are used to a lifetime of getting negative feedback about their behavior. Generally, can’t grieve and heal their losses (large or small), so they are constantly invested in trying to re-write history so that they didn’t have the loss. (“I was right to do what I did! You were wrong to do what you did! You better agree with me.”) Therefore, we have learned that its wiser to keep the focus on the future in your questions, suggestions, and the structure of your dispute resolution process.
4 Simple Techniques
The following techniques fit within our CARS Method® of conflict resolution, which steers clear of the above standard methods for the reasons given. This is an overall method that helps you remember what to focus on under stress in a difficult situation or high conflict dispute: Connecting with the other person to calm the conflict; Analyzing options to manage or resolve the conflict; Responding to hostility or misinformation that is often present; and Setting limits on negative behavior and imposing consequences when necessary. These four general approaches can be used separately, some together, or all of them depending on the conflict situation, in no particular order. The 4 Simple Techniques fit within these four general approaches.
EAR Statements™ (Connecting)
A simple technique for connecting with an upset person or others in a conflict is to give a statement that shows empathy, attention, and/or respect (an EAR Statement). Such a statement can calm them down enough so that you can focus on finding solutions to a problem or conflict. You can use these when someone is angry at someone else, is angry at you, or just upset about something.
For example, you might say: “I can understand your frustration with this situation (Empathy). I want to understand; tell me more (Attention). I have a lot of respect for your efforts to solve this problem (Respect).” But you don’t even have to address all three gestures; just expressing some empathy may calm the other person and make it possible to focus them on problem-solving after your EAR Statement. While you may acknowledge how the other person feels (can understand your frustration; hear your disappointment; see that this is a hard time), be careful not to imply that you know how they feel, but rather that you can see how they might be feeling. Then, don’t open up their emotions, just acknowledge their emotions and move on (“Now let’s look at your options”).
The High Conflict Institute book on this technique is: Calming Upset People with EAR: How Statements Showing Empathy, Attention and Respect Can Quickly Defuse a Conflict (Unhooked Books, 2021), which includes 28 sample conversations.
Making Proposals in 3 Steps (Analyzing)
In a high conflict situation or any conflict, it helps to move away from emotions and focus on options for what to do to resolve the conflict. Helping the other person look at their choices helps them focus away from upset emotions and on to logical problem-solving. One of the ways this can be done is to ask the person to make a proposal. This often helps them focus on finding a solution. When two or more people are faced with decision-making, we recommend this 3-step proposal-making process:
First Person: Make a proposal that focuses on Who will do What, When and Where.
Second Person: Ask at least two questions about the proposal before responding.
Second Person: Then simply respond by saying: Yes, No, or I’ll think about it.
This simple technique takes the argument out of the process and can significantly shift people from blaming to problem-solving very quickly.
The book on this 3-step technique for making proposals and decisions is: So, What’s Your Proposal? Shifting High-Conflict People from Blaming to Problem-Solving in 30 Seconds (Unhooked Books, 2014), which includes over a dozen examples of making proposals in a variety of situations: family, workplace, neighbor, and so forth.
BIFF Response® (Responding)
Whether someone is writing a hostile email or simply expressing some misinformation to you, a BIFF Response® can help. These are usually in writing and are Brief, Informative, Friendly, and Firm. Brief usually means just a paragraph, even if you are responding to a long email or text. Informative means straight information with no arguments, opinions, emotions, defenses, or judgments. Friendly doesn’t have to mean super-friendly, just a pleasant greeting (like “Thanks for letting me know your concerns”) is usually sufficient to give it a positive tone. Firm doesn’t mean harsh; just end the hostile conversation without leaving any hooks outstanding (avoid “What do you think of that, Buddy?”) If you have to ask a question, try to keep it simple by asking for a Yes or No answer with a response date.
There are several books available this technique in different settings: The first, general book for everyone is BIFF: Quick Responses to High-Conflict People, Their Personal Attacks, Hostile Email and Social Media Meltdowns (Unhooked Books, 2011, 2014). The three other BIFF books focus on divorced parents (BIFF for CoParent Communication, 2020), the workplace (BIFF at Work, 2021), and legal professionals (BIFF for Lawyers and Law Offices, 2024). Each of these books has about 30 examples. Look for more books on this technique over the next few years.
SLIC Solutions™ (Setting Limits)
SLIC Solutions is the fourth technique in the series and is often the most important one. Some people can’t stop themselves from offensive or harmful behavior, so others need to stop them. This can be used with anyone in your life and can be learned at almost any age. The technique is easy to remember:
Step 1: Setting your Limit (think about your possible consequence in advance)
Step 2: Imposing your Consequence (with five questions to ask yourself)
Step 2½: Using an EAR Statement (in about half of situations)
Our book on this subject (our newest book) is: SLIC Solutions to Conflict: Setting Limits and Imposing Consequences in 2½ Steps (Unhooked Books, 2025). This book contains over 30 examples of setting limits and imposing consequences in families, divorce, friendships, workplace, community, and online. It is especially good for parents, employers, young adults, professionals, and anyone who needs to set limits in their lives.
Conclusion
These 4 simple techniques address the main problem areas of high conflict disputes and situations. Some people have a particularly difficult time connecting with people, so others must help them by reaching out more with EAR Statements. In high conflict situations, it’s hard for many people to think of more than one solution, so looking at choices and making proposals can get them to think more and react less. Hostile communications in writing are increasingly common and BIFF Responses can turn the conversation into productive problem-solving or simply ending the hostilities. Setting Limits and Imposing Consequences (SLIC Solutions) are often necessary as high conflict people often can’t stop themselves.
Fortunately, these four techniques can be used in almost all conflicts, not just high conflict situations. While they don’t focus on standard efforts for insight and resolving emotions and the past, they focus on problem-solving in general and often satisfy parties to a dispute because of their simplicity and efficiency. The only situations in which it would not be safe to use these techniques would be those of potential violence or other harm, when the best approach is to get out of the situation rather than trying to manage it.
Overall, these 4 techniques are simple, relatively easy to learn (although practice helps a lot), and surprisingly effective for managing high conflict situations or any dispute.
BILL EDDY, LCSW, Esq. is a lawyer, therapist, mediator, author and trainer in managing people with high conflict personalities. Ekaterina Ricci, MDR, MLS, is a mediator, dispute resolver, and biologist. He is the developer of all four of these techniques and the author of over 20 books on managing high conflict situations.
