Difficult Conversations in Polarizing Times with Sheila Heen
We were delighted to feature Professor and Deputy Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project Sheila Heen at the 7th Annual Bruce E. Meyerson Lecture on Dispute Resolution on March 11, 2024. Difficult Conversations live at the heart of human relationships – whether in the dining room, the conference room, or the town square. How we handle these conversations shapes the nature and health of those relationships, fostering resilience or fragility. We’ll look at what we’ve learned over the last few decades about what gets us stuck and what helps in our individual relationships. And we’ll reflect together on how this applies to the health of our communities in an age of polarized rhetoric, binary thinking and moral judgment. How do we learn to hold more than one view as essential and work to hear each other?
Sheila Heen is the Thaddeus R. Beal Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School, where she directs the negotiation teaching program. She is Deputy Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project and a Founder of Triad Consulting. She has written two New York Times bestsellers, “Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most” with Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton (3rd ed., Penguin 2023), and Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Even When It’s Off-Base, Unfair, Poorly Delivered, and Frankly, You’re Not in the Mood)” with Douglas Stone (Viking/Penguin, 2014). She is schooled in negotiation daily by her three children.
