Recently, a long-time colleague (who described themselves as a 'veteran conflict avoider') shared a personal story about being in a conversation with their spouse related to dividing up financial assets and possessions as part of their divorce process. Needless to say, unless handled in an adroit and mannerly way, a conversation like this can easily become tense and acrimonious. And indeed, as the more contentious issues and items came up for discussion, things began to unravel, and the colleague's spouse lashed out with a verbal attack.

The remarkable thing is that in this particular situation, my colleague didn't avoid the conflict in order to make themselves feel safe, nor did they lash out in retaliation. What they did instead was recognize the attack as the other person's defence mechanism pattern and address it by saying: "That's not really helpful to this process".

A simple comment, but it was a bright little sliver of light showing the way forward, for the spouse was taken aback by the atypical response, and it triggered a different and softer response from them. In essence, that simple comment neutralized the attack and allowed the conversation to continue productively.

What my colleague had done was introduce an awareness into the discussion - one that had been gained over a period of self-reflection and coaching - one that was based on a 'window of insight'.

This month we're going to put on our night-vision goggles and take a look at how we can go about creating our own windows of insight.