The idea is how to approach the problem with some preparation to dispel what you would call “intention invention” or projecting what the other person is doing and why they are doing it.
Try to come up with some ideas, so that you have some kind of empathy. Try to start a dialogue in an open question environment. You will then begin to discover things you might not have found if you stayed mired in the original position.
Facilitating difficult conversations requires the ability to look at things with an empathy to the other side, with some preparation in regards to what you really want, how you want it, and alternatives to how you want to get there.
Good negotiators are civil, well informed, will challenge trespasses, but be quick to forgive those trespasses. To train people to deal with difficult conversations is a matter of both an empathetic review of how to deal with conflict, but also raising the bar on what truly is difficult.
In many environments, when you are dealing with one that is in collapse, every issue is so impacted and so layered with “this is what it really means” kind of statements, that almost anything from the whether the birthday cake for the last employee birthday was vanilla or chocolate becomes an issue. If you can figure out how to raise that bar back up, past an adult level and into a professional level of what an insult really is, you can then have conversations that ease those tensions and open up dialogue.
A difficult conversation tries to drill down to a more granular level on both sides of what really are the needs, concerns and points on both sides.