About Winning Conflict

Overview

Winning Conflict is part of a social change project with some big goals:

Grow awareness of very effective, but relatively unknown methods of resolving and healing from conflict, methods which are based in Nonviolent Communication and Relationship Coaching.
Make these skills as easy to follow and as accessible as possible, without requiring investing years of training to learn them.
Grow the communities of people practicing and supporting each other to use nonviolent conflict resolution.
Make professional help accessible to more people, so they can get support when needed.
Increase the number of people who are choosing NVC-based empathy practices, NVC mediation, and NVC-informed Relationship Coaching as actual careers, so they can do this full-time.
Make it effortless for those who want those careers, to do so, sustainably.

Origin Story

Hi, my name is John Reel.

In my early 20s, about 35 years ago, I discovered Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and I was instantly hooked because I saw how powerful it was for talking about and healing from conflict. I put it to use to heal and deepen connections in many of my own relationships that had suffered from conflict, and considered dedicating my life to sharing NVC at a young age.

However, I went in a different direction, and spent the next 25 years building and growing web-based software companies. During those years, I still had plenty of opportunities to apply what I learned from NVC and other modalities, and would frequently help others with conflict, but it was not until my late 40s that I switched gears to become an NVC-mediator and Certified Relationship Coach.

At that point in my life, I had some lingering bitterness from some very expensive and painful life lessons, so I jumped headlong and full-time into these practices to give myself some healing and to change the course of my life. As a result, I was fortunate to receive years of advanced training with some of the most influential trainers from around the world, including three years with John Kinyon, one of the top NVC mediator trainers and a year and a half David Steele, the person who invented Relationship Coaching.

But, over time, I noticed some trends that worried me:

I learned that very few people were successfully making a living sharing these gifts of NVC, NVC mediation, and many were also struggling as relationship coaches.
I kept seeing people, myself included, seemingly forget their NVC training when conflict came up and when their skills were most needed, including those who had dedicated decades of their life to NVC. Sometimes, instead of responding with empathy, we react with judgment, blame, and stating interpretations as fact, all things we avoid in NVC, because they escalate conflict and reduce connection. Intellectually, we know what to do, and we can apply it when we're grounded. But in other moments, we can go into reaction and revert to old and unhelpful habits.
I kept seeing how the empathy-based mediation process would feel amazing and be very effective, even when other modalities did not get the desired results. It often led clients to reconnect and solve their problems, in just a handful of sessions. However, when the next conflict happened, old habits would reemerge, and people often felt worse than when they started.

These realizations led to a real crisis of faith for me. I kept asking myself, if those of us with that much training cannot reliably live by our NVC values during conflict, how can this method truly benefit people who have not dedicated years to practice?

That question is what led to Winning Conflict...

When I began this mediation chapter of my life, I had this terrific plan to retire from tech, stop leading big projects, and live a nice, simple, and relaxing life, working with just a handful of clients a week.

But, now I had these new problems to solve. I spent a year pondering and planning...

How can these skills be easier to learn and use?
How can the community grow massively, so more people live by the connecting values of NVC?
How can those in the community, who long to share their skills, financially thrive while doing it?

Introducing: Winning Conflict

And now, a couple of years of work later, here is what I came up with. It's a moonshot plan to create massive social change.

Phase 1) Easily learning and using these skills:

When we have no structure to follow, it seems to me that we are much more likely to fall into our habits. Conversely, when we follow a step-by-step structure, it appears to be much easier to slow down and have connecting conversations that lead to understanding, healing, and solutions that get everyone's needs met.

In my practice, I have seen that, with structure, nearly anyone can connect with the principles of NVC and resolve conflicts, even without any previous training, whatsoever. And, when we combine NVC mediation (to facilitate connection, healing, and solutions), with relationship coaching (to facilitate developing our vision and action plans to achieve the relationships and life we want), we can relatively quickly fix and heal from conflict, and create relationships that are very fulfilling and sustainable.

Working on systemizing that structure resulted in the Winning Conflict book, card deck, and logbooks, to provide that structure, plus the Wheel Of Life app to speed up our progress. I am now making these available to the NVC and coaching community for free and will start piloting workshops and a group coaching program with those who join before I start an advertising campaign.

Completing these concludes phase one of my moonshot plan to change the world.

Phase 2) Growing the community:

In my decades working with tech startups, I learned a lot about marketing, which led to speaking at several marketing conferences and being in several marketing coaching and peer groups. Once I start running ads, I will be promoting Winning Conflict to people who just want to stop the repetitive fights they are having with the people closest to them, solve their problems, and live in peace. I will offer them the app for free, with the digital book for a single payment of just $5, to bring as many people in as possible, while ensuring that the marketing is sustainable with helpful add-ons like the deck and group coaching program.

Once the ads and landing pages start breaking even, the marketing will pay for itself to grow. Then, it can keep bringing in an increasing number of new people into the community and group coaching programs, each and every single day, helping them solve their immediate pain, while growing the community.

Phase 3) Financially thriving while sharing these skills:

While everything included in the Winning Conflict kit and workshops can help a lot of people resolve conflict without additional intervention, many people will benefit from immediate one-on-one support, either because their topics are too difficult or activating to ever talk about without guidance, or because the people involved want it solved before they have practiced on easier topics.

These people will be referred to a not-for-profit organization I founded to offer this level of support, called Harmonic Mediation Society (HMS).

HMS will soon be offering certification programs with practicums to offer:

Professional empathy support.
Help preparing for and role-playing difficult conversations.
Holding space and facilitating difficult conversations.
Coaching people to develop their relationship foundations for strong, lasting relationships, and their vision and action plans to create the best relationships and lives possible.

These programs will be open to anyone, without prerequisites, with fast-track programs for people with previous training in NVC, NVC-based mediation, or Relationship Coaching. If you are inspired to have a new career, or are already practicing these methodologies and want to more work and community, please join us.

The vision is that HMS will take care of all of your marketing (through a partnership with Winning Conflict, other partnerships, and other initiatives), as well as all the tech, billing, and other overhead that can be barriers for many practitioners, making it difficult for them to financially thrive. If all goes according to plan, those certified by HMS will be able to work with as many clients as they can handle, just focusing on helping people, doing what they love, and using their skills to contribute to social change.

Additionally, HMS will eventually offer frequent workshops to the Winning Conflict community and HMS clients, where NVC trainers and trainer candidates, along with other experts, can get exposure to large numbers of new faces interested in these topics. This will give NVC trainer candidates opportunities to practice teaching with beginners, and give certified NVC trainers and other authors and teachers, opportunities to grow their audience.

Phase 4) Empathy and Conflict Hotline

Once we have enough people involved, which will be accelerated as the global NVC community discovers what we are doing, my goal is to set up a hotline for empathy and conflict support, using a combination of volunteers and paid helpers who are trained in the framework to help people around the world.

If successful, this will further accelerate social change, as we help people change course away from escalation and toward connection, earlier and more frequently.

Phase 5) Advocacy and Generational Change

The end goal is for enough people to have their lives changed by these modalities that we reach a tipping point where we can successfully advocate for:

NVC empathy, NVC mediation, and relationship coaching to be recognized as legitimate healing practices that reduce stress, harm, and medical support costs, and to be covered by insurance policies, so they can be much more accessible.
These skills to be taught in schools around the world, with the same ongoing importance as reading and writing. We are all affected by conflict on a regular basis. What do you think life could be like if a generation of children was raised knowing how to navigate it with empathy? We are all in relationships. What do you think life could be like if we were all trained on how to make them the best they can be?
That is a future I am happy to be investing in.

Launching, And Requests

The book and card deck are done and I have a printer ready to print and ship 1,000 decks as a first run. I am currently testing the nearly completed Wheel Of Life app, which I absolutely love. I finally can organize all my thoughts!

I am waiting to be approved for a trademark and for the Apple developer ecosystem. These are blockers to finishing the app or shipping the decks. Once that gets sorted out, I will start sending the books and decks to select people for review and also make them available at a discount to anyone else who wants an early copy.

Once I have some feedback on what I'm offering, I will schedule and announce an online launch party. This will the beginning of us going on a year-long journey together to improve our lives while also providing feedback on how effective this method is.

As a group, with each of us going at our own pace, we will:

Identify all the conflicts we need to work on.
Follow the framework to address them.
Go through the coaching process of making our lives the best we can, creating new habits that will go well beyond the initial journey.
Use the methods in this book to support each other as a community, as we work on our conversation prep, and on our triggers and habitual responses that get in the way of increasing connection or accidentally contribute to escalation of conflict.

You will get:

Everyone who participates in the launch party will get the following, which I'm giving away to get feedback, testimonials, and case studies.

Free, life-time access to the Wheel Of Life app, including the Winning Conflict digital book and audio book, and digital log-books.
A trial of all the AI features in the book, which are incredibly helpful. (I don't yet know how much that will cost me to offer, so I don't know how long I can offer that feature for free... Yet.)
A year of free access to the group coaching program, with multiple calls each week. You can come to as many of these as you find helpful.
A discount on the physical book and card deck.

My Requests:

Please sign up and attend the launch party to participate.
Please share WinningConflict.com with your peers, friends, and family, so they can also get all the benefits of the launch party group, and so we can grow this together, faster.

Long-term Vision

I am very thankful for all the people who helped me get to this stage, and excited about what I am about to offer to the world. But this is not about me. I'm building everything with the vision for it to outlast my time here on this earth, hopefully helping people for generations to come. I see it as continually growing, with large numbers of people trained to do these workshops, mediate conflict, and bring more peace and understanding into the world.

Please join us for the launch party, and help us build it. :-)

With heartfelt thanks for your time,

John Reel

April 19, 2026