Hi Ryan,
thank you so much for sharing your experience. I’m super happy that the exercise helped you. I’m also quite “konfliktscheu” so I can relate.
Especially during times like these, I see once again that it’s super important to work on our conflict competence. So, right now, I’m also in the middle of yet another heavy self-reflection and improvement cycle.
Greetings from Austria to Germany!

I am very “konfliktscheu”, tend to give in very easily when we are debating on how many story points a particular ticket should have, and experience a bit of “fear” any time I receive a code review, particularly from a certain senior developer on our team. Aside – Sometimes I wonder if its an American (konfliktscheu) vs German (love to debate and have “un-fun” conversations ; ) ) thing.

I did the exercises described in your post here, and I think they will help, so I will try to do them regularly. When I assume that the senior developer is trying to help us reach a higher standard and have better code in our code base, the code review is easier to read. That is how I am trying to look at it now. When I assume that he is desperate to show people what he can do or share his viewpoint by criticizing, then the review is obviously much harder to accept.
So thanks for helping me take a different perspective on conflict. I am looking for to reading more posts of yours.