How to Confront Gracefully and Wisely

Dennis and Barbara Rainey write on How can I resolve conflict well in my marriage? What they share about loving confrontation between spouses could apply to other relationships as well:
Confronting your spouse with grace and tactfulness requires wisdom, patience, and humility. Here are a few other tips we've found useful:

-Check your motivation. Will your words help or hurt? Will bringing this up cause healing, wholeness, and oneness, or further isolation?
-Check your attitude. Loving confrontation says, "I care about you. I respect you and I want you to respect me. I want to know how you feel." Don't hop on your bulldozer and run your partner down. Don't pull up with your dump truck and start unloading all the garbage you've been saving. Approach your partner lovingly.
-Check the circumstances. This includes timing, location, and setting. Don't confront your spouse, for example, when he or she is tired from a hard day's work, or in the middle of settling a squabble between the children.
-Check to see what other pressures may be present. Be sensitive to where your spouse is coming from. What's the context of your spouse's life right now?
-During the discussion, stick to one issue at a time. Don't bring up several. Don't save up a series of complaints and let your spouse have them all at once.
-Focus on the problem, rather than the person. For example, you need a budget and your mate is something of a spendthrift. Work through the plans for finances and make the lack of budget the enemy, not your mate.
-Focus on the facts rather than judging motives. If your partner forgets to make an important call, deal with the consequences of what you both have to do next rather than say, "You're so careless; you just do things to irritate me."
-Above all, focus on understanding your spouse rather than on who is winning or losing. When your spouse confronts you, listen carefully to what is said and what isn't said. It may be that he is upset about something that happened at work and you're getting nothing more than the brunt of that pressure. In other words, you are not the problem and all your spouse is trying to do is express some pent-up frustrations and feelings.