[MUSIC] Welcome to Week 2, to start this week, I want you to do something for me. I want you to close your eyes and think for a moment about a conflict you've experienced over the last few years. Not something like buying a car or a house or a brief running you had with someone at work. Think about a situation you would legitimately describe as a real conflict in your life. I want you to really think about the circumstances, the person or people who are involved, the issues of the center of the conflict and the motions the situation evoked. How does thinking about it now make you feel? Are you remembering intense feelings? Are you noticing negative emotions starting to boil up? If so, stop there and pause for a moment, try and shake off those negative feelings. Let's talk about how this reflection exercise worked for you. I imagined for some of you, it got you feeling quite angry. What do you think about that? Is it possible that the situation is not fully resolved? Perhaps there is residual ill feeling there, may be a conversation that's still to be had. Others among you might say that when thinking about the situation, you feel quite calm and possibly that the exercise made you realize the situation is completely resolved. Whichever of these groups you fall into, I think you'll agree with me when I say that conflict is certainly very different from everyday forms of negotiation. Conflict may not be an everyday occurrence for you, but at different points in your life, you are destined to find yourself in conflict. In many ways, conflict is inevitable. The important thing is how you go about trying to resolve the situation. Will it be all-consuming and disrupt many areas of your life? Will you go to great lengths to avoid it? Or will you view it as normal. Will be drawn to it, withstand the stress and display high levels of emotional and mental resilience? Of course, not every negotiation or attempted conflict resolution is going to be successful. Often negotiations break down, stall of file completely. Sometimes people take positions and refuse to yield. Other times the issues on the table are too difficult for the parties to navigate without additional resources, including time, extra information for the aid of a respected third-party. Sometimes decisions are made by the parties, a better way forward that is then rejected by the people they present. No one ever said negotiating or resolving conflict was easy, but it is important work and very satisfying when you can get it right. By the end of this week, you will learn to channel conflict away from it's more destructive effects towards constructive outcomes. Use of theories of human conflict to help you guide resolution but different types of conflict. Finally, you learned to trouble-shoot before things go arye.