The worst part about communicating is that when you need to do it the best, we're often at our worst. Tensions rise, tempers flare and then it's far too easy to fixate on "winning points" than resolving anything effective. I want to share with you what I've learned about these conversations, how they can be diagnosed, debugged, and optimized.

And also reveal to you how it's not usually what's happening on the other side of that kind of conversation that can be fixed. We'll talk about the things that are under your control: Your words and your body. And spolier alert: your body actively works against you at the precise moment you need everything to be working in harmony. We'll talk about a workflow you can walk through improve your recognition of when you or the other side are out of check and how you can walk a conversation back to constructive dialogue.

This talk is very important to me because with these tools I have been able to recognize how I've spent years avoiding problems rather that dealing with them. With these tools I have been able to recognize when I fall into that same trap, and work my way out of it.