Conflict isn't the problem. How you respond to it is. Mitchell Weisburgh shows business owners and team leaders how to de-escalate, connect, and move forward.
GROWTH PILLAR: Leadership & Ops
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Team leaders / Anyone who manages people or serves customers
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A practical conflict framework, free downloadable toolkits, and the neuroscience behind why we react the way we do — and how to stop.
Mitchell Weisburgh solves one specific problem: people don't know what to do when a conversation turns hostile.
Mitchell is a mind shifting coach, author of the Mind Shifting series, and a practitioner who has spent years helping individuals and teams break through mental barriers — especially under pressure. In this East Trade Winds session, he walked the room through two free toolkits from his latest book, Mind Shifting: Conflicting — one for customer service conflicts and one for workplace conflicts.
The session opened with a hard truth: when we're triggered, our instinct is to defend, fix, or explain. None of those work. The person across from you isn't ready to hear solutions. They need to feel heard first.
Mitchell introduced a four-step framework: shift into curiosity, ask questions that build understanding, establish trust, then move toward resolution. He explained the neuroscience behind it — stress hormones take 60 to 90 seconds to flush from the brain, which means pausing isn't weakness. It's strategy.
The community shared real examples: a help desk veteran who learned to ask "how would you like me to help you?", a restaurant trainer who reframed complaints as valuable feedback, and a business owner whose vegetable delivery company failed every step of this process.
Key topics covered in this session:
Connect with Mitchell Weisburgh:Website | LinkedIn | Blog | Substack | Instagram | Facebook | X | Events
Free Toolkits from Mitch:
Customer Service Conflicts: https://mindshiftingwithmitch.org/customer_service
Workplace Conflicts: https://mindshiftingwithmitch.org/practicals-workingconflicts-871986
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Mitch (00:06)
know, for your own business, ⁓ if you have people reporting, the people, ⁓ you could use them as coaching for your clients. Maybe they would, they would be. And so these re these two resources are actually material that comes. Well, my second book, which is volume three of the mind shifting series, which is mind shifting, conflicting. And that book is all about.
Mitch (00:09)
you can go over them with report to you. ⁓
and that you have helped.
from, well.
And
Mitch (00:31)
How do you deal with situations where you either know in advance this is going to be a conflict, or you get in the middle of it and you start conflicting with somebody? Our natural instincts are to kind of the other person. That never works in the long term. how do you a mode so that you can move forward one way or another?
Mitch (00:39)
and
roll over. ⁓
you get yourself out of then in.
either
with them or without them, but without the fight.
Mitch (00:57)
These are
a couple of resources that are based on the material of the book.
so this is the resource.
Mitch (01:02)
But
Mitch (01:03)
so you can download it. So I have a series of toolkits for different types of situations that could result conflicts. And this one here is the customer service conflicts. And so I'm also going to go through the workplace conflicts one. And the other ones will be up on our website,
Mitch (01:10)
conflict.
⁓ That's number here.
⁓ and
Mitch (01:25)
But basically when you're involved in a customer service conflict, the first thing that you should do is, this mindset shift. The mindset shift is generally when we're in a place where a person is kind of demanding more resources from them. They're upset about something that we did, or they want something for nothing that you you think that for maybe you messed up is our first instinct would be to explain something to the.
Mitch (01:35)
and
or there are
that you should pay for.
defend
something or to fix something.
Mitch (01:56)
when
we're dealing with somebody who is triggered, who's in there.
Mitch (02:00)
You know, they're I guess ⁓ saboteur
Mitch (02:04)
mindset, they're
not ready to hear solutions. And when we're triggered and we're in that survival or sabatour mindset also, we're not in the, we're not to reach out and connect. So the first thing to do is to understand, wait a minute. I, know, I, I'm frustrated to step and to ⁓ trigger our own curiosity about the situation because once we're
Mitch (02:08)
and seven.
Able. With them.
Also, back.
today.
Mitch (02:29)
If we're genuinely curious, we're much better able to listen and forward. So the first is to get into a curious mode, then to add questions which lead to an understanding. When we're asking those questions and the other person can see that we're in an understanding, they tend to gravitate towards
Mitch (02:31)
Then and to move. ⁓
ourselves, ask questions.
mode. ⁓
Mitch (02:52)
resourceful set because they're building trust in us and only then to move towards resolution. So those are the first those are basically the. However when we're you know when. We're in.
Mitch (03:00)
steps to come with, well, really when we're
any type of a conflict situation, ⁓ ourself, own mindset to want curiosity, so that we start asking questions and trying to understand what the situation is by satisfying that curiosity.
Mitch (03:08)
awareness of transforming our own of moving question
questions
and that attitude then build up trust.
Mitch (03:23)
the other person, if we have
the trust and connection with the other person, we can move towards resolution. ⁓
Mitch (03:27)
then move forward toward. So.
So this guy looking at different types of situations, and once you're in that curious mode, giving you some tools.
Mitch (03:33)
The then is.
are
giving the person you're coaching some tools to be able to ask those questions to establish those trusts. ⁓
Mitch (03:46)
reach an understanding. So
when you sense that a customer is angry or
Mitch (03:54)
frustrated, okay?
Mitch (03:56)
Your goal is to help them feel heard before they solve anything. So questions such as, can hear that you're
Mitch (03:59)
or you have to.
frustrated
right now, can you walk me through what happened? And or, well, OK, you were expecting it to And then how did this affect you? And then what would make it you? And you can just see or you
Mitch (04:07)
Well, this is what happened. Can you tell me what you were expecting?
this right for you. See, or you can
hear in the tone of the voice that when the tone of the voice is coming through as curious, nice that in the other pair is
Mitch (04:22)
it a person, whereas
if you were to say, what did you expect to happen? That's the standpoint of our survival brain. But what were you expecting to happen with a complete and effective effect? And why do they show?
Mitch (04:27)
back to bed from a, you know, brain, or were triggered and triggering them.
to have. Serious tone of voice gives it completely different. These work is because they
Mitch (04:47)
that you care about them and that you
Mitch (04:49)
you're not just
closing the ticket and once the other person feels heard brain shifts from their own problem-solving mode because ideally what you want to do is not me or you
Mitch (04:52)
their bright fight mode to going to.
you
versus this other person, what you want is this other person taking a look at a problem and trying to solve the problem together. those are questions you can ask when you're frustrated.
Mitch (05:03)
is you and the
So questions that one could ask customers angry or satisfied.
Maybe I'll just stop for a second right now and to just get some actions to.
Mitch (05:20)
either these four steps here or the type of questions, tone of voice for the questions. Does anybody have any thoughts as you start going through that?
Mitch (05:23)
question that anybody
Thea (05:29)
My sister works for an electric company in California and I'm thinking of her because she gets angry customers all the time and I'm like, she could benefit from the lines like, well, what were you hoping would happen next? And, you know, what were you expecting? And yeah, I like those kinds of questions. I think it makes sense. And the tone of voice and the curiosity and
Also what you were saying about not immediately going into defense mode, but just to go into the understanding mode. I think these are great.
Mitch (06:00)
these are free so you can pass them out and you any
Mitch (06:03)
You can give them to anybody.
And Wayne.
Thea (06:05)
I really like what you've done here. Have you been able to find a way to go from the knowledge of it? I see that into mindset. So it's integrated even when you're not in the book or how do you make them live their new life?
Mitch (06:22)
So that's, I wish I had a really simple answer to that because it's a great question. I will say that, and this really more comes from the first book than this book, this answer, but when we're in the moment,
Mitch (06:32)
then that might.
in all
Mitch (06:37)
likelihood
we're reacting from our survival brain and we don't have time to really step back a lot and really think. And so being in the moment means that we access to the things that we already know how to do. can add to those things that we're fluent in. So if we know that we're going to be in a situation with a person to think through that situation and come up with some things and the attitude we want in advance and kind of
Mitch (06:51)
Given that
and
Mitch (07:06)
simulate it and puts those actions and those skills into what we might call our muscle memory or into our limbic system so that we have access to them quickly. it's thinking about the situation in advance, thinking about what the issues might be, coming up with possible things that we can do and or say, and what our attitude should be.
Mitch (07:07)
practice that.
then.
Mitch (07:28)
practicing those so that they become second nature.
speaker-7 (07:31)
Mitchell, I love this work. My perspective is from the nervous system that the amygdala has already been triggered, and now you're in survival, right? So the prefrontal cortex is already shut off. So our ability to come into a thinking state is really compromised, which is why we're in survival and fight. So the curiosity state, which is so important to get to, that comes in the parasympathetic state, and that only comes when we are safe, which
Mitch (07:57)
Darn it Sharon when I say you're supposed to be relaxed you're supposed to be relaxed. Why can't you? I know
speaker-7 (08:02)
Calm down. have a thing. No person ever calmed down when they were told to calm down.
Mitch (08:08)
you
Mitch (08:09)
Right.
No, perfect. Exactly. Go ahead. Sorry. I couldn't resist.
speaker-7 (08:13)
No, that's all I wanted to input. So thank you. love your work.
Mitch (08:18)
Thank you. And so just in all seriousness, of course, you're 100 % right. When we're in the moment, we're in our limbic brain. We're in our survival brain.
Mitch (08:29)
you know.
Mitch (08:30)
our emotions are flared up. And part of what has to be learned how to do is to recognize when we're in that and to understand that once those stress hormones are flooding our brain, minimum 60 to 90 seconds,
Mitch (08:45)
it takes.
in
this tube to flush them out of the brain.
Mitch (08:50)
And so to be able to say, wait a minute, something I'm getting riled up right now.
Mitch (08:56)
If you can, let me take a
Mitch (08:58)
take a time
out. Let me talk about something that doesn't get me riled up so that I
Mitch (09:02)
I
can calm down.
Mitch (09:06)
or maybe
start asking myself some questions would make this fun.
Mitch (09:10)
like what would be
fun or what do I really want to get out of this.
Mitch (09:15)
And questions like that will naturally start activating the prefrontal cortex. it's not a, you know, those are possibilities.
Mitch (09:21)
Those are the things, but there's
no one thing at time, as you know. But thank you. Naomi?
Mitch (09:25)
thing that's going to work all the time.
Thea (09:30)
Many, many years ago, I used to work in customer service. That was kind of my first real job. It was in Ireland and I worked with Danish, Swedish, British customers and everything. And we got all the angry customers and ⁓ boy, I wish I knew, you know, I, I known this because the company wasn't prepared to have any kind of any kind of training to, you know, to solve this problem. So, you know, we did our best.
obviously, and that wasn't always the best. And sometimes you got upset and it took you so much time. Yeah. Again, just to reset your nervous system after a very nasty call, because it's not easy to take those calls and it's not against you and you know that, it's hard not to take it personally, of course.
So thank you for that.
Mitch (10:12)
And when you when you have when people are having those reactions on you it just
Mitch (10:13)
Thank you.
It takes a toll.
Mitch (10:18)
I would say, your point, we have to do something for ourselves to get ourselves back in a feeling of responsibility and feeling good about ourselves after that is so important.
Mitch (10:21)
that we have.
a feeling of equanimity and calm after this report.
Mitch (10:32)
I did want to scroll because there's other types of situations in question. So I think I'm going to go through every one of them. But I wanted you to see that there's other things here.
Mitch (10:40)
Kenneth, go ahead.
speaker-1 (10:41)
I love what you're doing here. I teach a management class for service managers and one of the things that they always have to deal with is unhappy customers. And there's a couple of things that I teach them to ask is first of all, it's when the customer's venting, say, what else?
Mitch (10:54)
perfect. I love that.
Mitch (10:55)
Yeah
speaker-1 (10:56)
And
you just keep saying that till there's nothing left. So you've all the pressure out of that pressure cooker. And then the other one is, I love this one, is what can I do to make things right for you? Because then you know what they want. And you can also at that point in time, typically you decide if they're going to be a reasonable customer or an unreasonable customer.
Mitch (11:04)
Right. Yeah.
So, and I have a question about that because my first thought about hearing that is that if you ask that question too early, then what the person wants is probably something that can't be done. And they may be insistent on it. And so if you could ask some other questions first, like and what else and what else, and let them calm down, then maybe that would be the time to ask the question. Or do you think asking the question really early on
Mitch (11:24)
and
station.
Mitch (11:38)
that there's different ways of handling it.
speaker-1 (11:40)
I would say maybe a little bit later in the conversation after they've gotten their steam out, but it starts to give you a picture of where their mindset is. Especially when you're dealing in like physical repair work where I'm saying I need to send a technician back out to fix a piece of equipment. even if the customer tells me they want a brand new machine, which is an unreasonable request, I will tell them that this is what I can do for you today. Let's see if we can get your machine back up and running. It'll take some time to make a decision on whether you, you know,
if we're going to replace the equipment or not. And then if you can fix the equipment, usually then you can ask, you know, you'll find out that now they're reasonable and they're okay with where they are. The ones that keep saying they want a new piece of equipment, if you want a new piece of equipment, you know, they make it very clear they're unreasonable. And then you have to figure out a plan to deal with that.
Mitch (12:22)
And I'll tell you, as a person who's been on the receiving end of customer service, the question I really love is when they say, it really plugged It's like, yes, it's plugged in and it's on. That, to me, like, hate that. And you get it every single time.
Mitch (12:30)
plugged in, is it on?
But yeah, well, thank you, Ken. And, you were next.
Mitch (12:40)
⁓ Adam, think you...
speaker-4 (12:41)
Thank you. Yeah, I worked in really top-end restaurants in London for 10 years and ended up training the people how to deal with this sort of behavior. But what our approach was from the receiver of ⁓ complaints or unhappy customers was always to frame it in our own minds that this is feedback. And it's really important to take on board that complaints are feedback. It might not be.
great feedback, it might not be pleasant feedback to receive, but it's valuable feedback because for everybody who complains in a service-based industry, there are probably five to ten more who just vote with their feet and never come back. They stay silent, they leave. And so when people complain, it's really valuable feedback.
Mitch (13:26)
And if somebody can keep that in mind, that also gets them much more in that curious frame of mind to connect with the person.
Mitch (13:32)
which allows them with the. That's brilliant.
Great. Thank you. And Tony.
Tony (13:37)
Yeah, thank you Mitchell. Yeah, this is very relevant to just something happened last week where the company I have that delivers vegetables on a regular basis We normally will cancel is they have auto shipping which I never
understood but they said just make sure that you cancel it before the date. Well we got busy, we didn't cancel it and they sent everything that we didn't like and so it's just like we've never ordered black radishes, we've never ordered you know various products so we just talked to them and it's like they didn't listen at all. It's like well we have your credit card on file and ⁓ that's just the way it is you know it's auto shipping is what we do.
I understand but the model doesn't work for me. So I forgot. So anyway, they gave me a little bit of a credit because most of the stuff I had to give to neighbors and friends and stuff. But then it got to the point where I left the baskets at the door when it was time and the driver was supposed to drop off one basket and then take the empties. Well, he didn't take the empties and the company blamed me for
Mitch (14:44)
Of course.
Tony (14:45)
The
fact that it didn't... So they weren't listening. So finally I said, okay, I'm just going to cancel the account and I couldn't talk to anybody. So I had to do the AI bot. And so I said, I just want to cancel. And they say, we'll be with you within 24 hours. That was Thursday. So when promises are made and then I'm just waiting here, it's like you said, if you feel you're not being heard and nobody cares, it's like...
I don't know why I deal with these people. yeah, these are good points, Mitchell.
Mitch (15:16)
And to get the perspective on the person on the other end is really important.
Mitch (15:16)
And, ⁓
So thank you. Thank you, Tony. Yeah.
Mitch (15:23)
and
Joseph.
speaker-7 (15:24)
Yeah, great presentation, Mitchell. And ⁓ so very so many relevant questions and points there. And just one I wanted to touch on. Even when it feels personal, even when they're really fired up, it's rarely personal. It's just they're coming from where they're coming from. our tonality makes such a big difference. I took a lot of practice, but I had to learn to keep my tone softer. And then so often.
It's made a difference when I've just slowed the rhythm down because they're often so fired up and they're speaking so fast and it's just pouring out of them. But when we slow it down a little, slow the pace down gradually, it takes a lot of the steam out, even separate from the questions we ask and how we ask them.
Mitch (15:51)
Hmm.
Those are two.
Mitch (16:07)
two great points and
the slowing down of your voice is, I mean, it's just fascinating to me because, you we all have these mirror neurons, you know, all mammals have them, but people have more than animals. And we have this drive to copy and mimic the other person. So these mirror neurons, when you're speaking in a slow, steady voice, the other person has this urge to
Mitch (16:18)
it's but other animals and
to
and then their parasitism.
Mitch (16:35)
mimic it and do the same thing. That calms down the system
and they start matching you and you can get back into that mode where it's you trying to solve a problem. I see that Percy you have a question too. One thing that I'm going to do is I just want to take a second here and put the other URL into the chat.
Mitch (16:45)
you have the you and then
or
so that you have it.
Mitch (17:02)
and I see Sharon, you mentioned the mirror neurons also.
Mitch (17:05)
and ⁓ co-regulation.
Mitch (17:06)
And yes, and the Vegas nervous system also, that's good.
So just the second one was, and I don't think I'm going to actually go through that, but I think that, you know, you'll see it's very similar to the first one is. First one was customer service. The second one that I was going to show was the workplace conflicts. But if you see it's, you know, it's the same pattern and the same goal, you know, very similar goals. And then the questions are different because the.
Mitch (17:20)
The first.
And
Situations
are different.
download. Go ahead.
speaker-5 (17:35)
Thanks Mitch. ⁓ I, I ran a help desk for 20 some years and I found that I was the second level. So they'd already explained their problem to the first person. And so I would get the call to say, Hey, I can't fix this. Can you take a look at it? And so when I call back the, the user it was like, I, you know, I already told the other guy. I get that.
Mitch (17:46)
Mm-hmm.
speaker-5 (17:58)
But he used his voice to tell me what was wrong. I need to hear it from you so we can actually identify the problem. So that kind of calmed them down. And the other thing I would do is if I had to do an on-site, I would look around and see what else needed to be fixed. Is there anything else? That keyboard looks terrible. We're going to replace that. I can't believe you're using this mouse. It hardly works. We're going to send that someone up to you.
Mitch (18:04)
Right?
speaker-5 (18:22)
And by doing that, you developed a little bit of credence for the next call. Cause you know that it's going to come.
Mitch (18:27)
Right, right, yep.
speaker-5 (18:29)
And you know, a lot of times it's, I understand the problem. How would you like me to help you?
Mitch (18:34)
That's a great question.
speaker-5 (18:35)
Because I can't get where you want to go, but I need to have enough information so we can move where we can.
Mitch (18:41)
And then.
Mitch (18:42)
You know, just and along those lines, you you mentioned up finding the things that you could fix for them. So you're kind of going beyond and you're forging. You know, and something not exactly the same, but, somewhat related is to be able to talk to them about things that you both that are interesting to both of you. So if they, if you look around, if it's person to person and you, and all these pictures of cars, be able to ask them, you have a lot of pictures of cars.
Mitch (18:50)
this religion.
You know that it's hard to be a wow, you see.
Mitch (19:09)
You know, getting them to think about something else, kind of distraction, also flushes those stress hormones out, establishes a connection so that you can go back to this.
Mitch (19:12)
and talk about the interaction.
back discuss
the problem which is another
speaker-5 (19:22)
Absolutely.
if you can remember a few details like that, like how many kids they've got, you know, what kind of age they are, you know, you can start that conversation while you're trying to fix the problem, lowers the temperature.
Mitch (19:24)
You have lucky.
Mitch (19:25)
Yeah.
Yes.
Mitch (19:36)
Yes,
and that's what you're trying to do initially, lower the temperature. And then I see from Sharon Charles central vagal nervous system is built. ⁓
Mitch (19:45)
We're not with one
by caregivers nervous. It's called co-regulation and and.
Mitch (19:50)
That co-regulation part is like so important because very often, even with adults, they're not necessarily capable of calming themselves down, but doing things like Joseph brought up, slowing down our voice, talking to them in a curious way, we're kind of co-regulating with them and helping them calm themselves down.
Mitch (20:06)
being
Mitch (20:09)
If you grew up in an environment where you did have caregivers who could do that for you, then you're so much ahead of the game.
So if you have questions on any of these, feel free to reach out.