Feb 14, 2017
From David Maxfield: When someone goes silent in a tough
conversation they back down, cave in, and knuckle under. These
conversations almost always fail.
Other times, conversations fail because they go to violence.
Someone gets hostile or defensive, and they explode in anger, often
without realising it.
Here’s the tricky part: after remaining silent over a period of
time, people tend to move from silence to violence, and it’s not a
gradual process. When people go to silence, their problem isn’t
solved. When they fail to speak up, their concerns fester, turn
ugly, and the person flips from silence to violence.
We wanted to learn more about how people made this sudden flip, so
we decided to study this phenomenon in the prison
system.
Learn more at vitalsmarts.com.au/change