Everyone struggles with conflict-based conversations, especially with those of heavily opposing view points.

Personally, I have for years.

I'd deal with all sorts of people who have strong and opposing view points as well as people who carry a lot of unconscious bias. It was easy for people to escalate the conversation in to sure fire chaos.

Sound familiar?

What changed for me was noticing people escalate issues, and the diction they use. And as soon as that clicked, I started to understand that overcoming conflicting, if not opposing conversations with people wasn't that hard—I was just doing the wrong thing.

Here's what I should have done instead:

Do not call them out - Call them in.

When someone asserts an idea that goes against the grain, it's quite easy to call them out on it.

But if you call them out, you are socially isolating them in a conversation. In return, you can expect a level of hesitancy, even push back, to you and the group. They get defensive, even apprehensive. They may not even realize it.

Calling them out is a sure fire way to feel singled out.

And it won't get the results you're looking for.

That's because calling someone out is to single them out and have them stand alone. You calling them out is many ways, a power move, enacted by you. You may not even know that's what you're doing.

To create greater empathy in a conversation, and allow for more perspectives, try calling them in.

As in, "Hey, I want to call you in on what you said there. Can you elaborate? What do you mean?"

It's an oddly simple trick you can do. You're only changing one word - you're flipping "out" to "in". But it will make all the difference. Everyone wants to feel heard and seen in a conversation, and to not feel excluded. This is a quick and easy way to do that.