If you’ve attended training with me, no doubt you’ve heard me speak about the fact that communication underpins all human relationships – be they professional or personal.

And while most of you work with me to improve your communication, leadership and self-management in a professional sphere, the skills you learn in my sessions are applicable to your personal relationships too.

In fact, I often share stories of people who – mid-workshop – have realised they needed to have conversations with the people they love at home about how they’re feeling or the things that are affecting them because they’ve dropped the ball on communication in that space.

Like the leader who identified he was regularly passive-aggressive at home because he was exhausted after being assertive at work all day.

It’s a sad reality that the people we love the most often get the worst of us and when you add in the stress and potential conflict of a relationship breakdown, communication can really go awry.

So today I’m sharing something a little different with you.

Rather than share communication or leadership lessons for the workplace, today I’m sharing with you a podcast episode I recorded with the wonderful Nikki Parkinson on The Divorce and Separation Podcast.

In this episode, Nikki and I discuss the importance of effective communication during marriage separation and divorce and how my Five Cs® model for communication under pressure from my first book, Soft is the New Hard, can help you navigate this incredibly tough time.

Even if you’re not in the throes of separation and divorce yourself, there are plenty of nuggets in there for handling any high-stakes or potentially high-conflict personal conversation.

Listen to it yourself and please share it with anyone in your life who is navigating separation or divorce.

I hope it helps.