JD's Journal
Having roamed this planet for six decades, and after 47 years of full-time employment in a smorgasbord of roles and locations, I'm sharing the gems I've gathered plus the wisdom of other remarkable leaders and innovators who I've encountered along the way. I don't have a clear destination yet, but based on my historical experience, it's certain to be a dynamic and unpredictable adventure. Welcome aboard!
JD's Journal
Harnessing the Power of Constructive Conflict
Can workplace conflict be a driving force behind innovation? Join me on JD's Journal as I explore the surprising benefits of workplace conflict and how it can help foster diverse perspectives and innovation. We'll introduce you to the Thomas-Kilmann Instrument (TKI) to better understand your personal conflict styles. Learn how to harness conflict respectfully and constructively to challenge ideas for mutual benefit.
The TKI can be found at https://psycho-tests.com/test/conflict-mode
Ever find yourself struggling in crucial conversations? You'll gain essential skills for navigating high-stakes discussions with confidence. I emphasize the importance of adaptability and highlight the dangers of overusing the accommodating style. Recognize the signs of crucial conversations and uncover why communication often breaks down in these intense moments. Through preparation and creating a safe environment, you'll be better equipped to handle these challenging interactions effectively.
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Tools-Talking-Stakes/dp/1260474186/
Transform your approach to difficult conversations and master your personal narratives with our practical strategies. Discover the AMPP framework—Ask, Mirror, Paraphrase, and Prime—to enhance your listening skills and build alignment. This episode provides you with tools to turn conflict into opportunities for growth, encouraging collaboration and positive outcomes in both personal and professional settings.
https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Life-Changing-Relationships/dp/189200528X
Hi folk, and welcome to the JDs Journal podcast where, every couple of weeks, my guests and I share some of our life's journey our successes, our failures, the valuable lessons that we've learned on the way and the resources that we've gathered that have allowed us to survive, prosper and thrive. The opinions and perspectives shared on JD's Journal should be taken and applied with your own good judgment. Episodes of the podcast are largely unscripted and unedited. I'll do my best to keep things on topic, but you can expect some occasional glitches and a little meandering along the way. I hope, if nothing else, you find that entertaining. Now let's get this episode started. Hi folks, and welcome back to the JD's Journal podcast.
JD:It's been a little while since I posted an episode. I've actually been traveling through greater China, hong Kong and Taiwan working with my teams there. I'm going to be home briefly. I'm actually headed to the Middle East and Africa tomorrow, so I'll be a little bit slower in my updates as well. But today I'm here to talk to you about conflict, and I know that the word conflict can make some people feel uncomfortable, can raise some emotions there, particularly these days we have such negative conflict around the world. But I'm here to tell you that in the business world, in the way that I work, I love conflict. Conflict is powerful. It's how we challenge conventional thinking, it's how we bring about new perspectives, it's how we identify the ideas and how we eradicate group thought. Provided it's not personal, I welcome and I encourage conflict as the foundation of positive progress. So let's take a moment to sort of step back and think about it. What's the basic definition of conflict? And, in simple terms, conflict is a situation in which your concerns and desires differ from those around you or different from the person that you're talking to at the time, and that's really all it is. I mean, we cannot completely avoid conflict in our lives. But, however, managing conflict is about making the best of these situations by being aware that each of us is different and each of us has perspectives and opinions and experience. That's valuable, and it's through conflict, it's through that challenge, that we can reap the benefits of those diverse perspectives and interests.
JD:So when is it a good thing in the working place? Well, quite simply, if a person sees something that they believe is not right or not optimal, or they're aware of a decision or a plan that they don't believe in or that's not the right plan, then they have a right, or I'd actually say an obligation, to speak up and challenge it respectfully and with composure, and hopefully supported by data, sound logic and strong intuition. When is it not okay? Well, it's not okay when it negatively or harmfully targets a person, their culture, their principles or their beliefs. There's no place for that in the workplace or in the community. From my perspective, the intention of conflict should always be to result in a positive outcome, preferably with mutual benefit for both sides of the conflict, and we'll talk more about that shortly For this podcast episode.
JD:First, I'm going to introduce you to an instrument that will allow you to understand your personal preferences in your approach to conflict. We're going to be working with the Thomas Kilman Instrument, or TKI. This is one of the most well-known tools for helping people understand how different conflict handling styles affect interpersonal and group dynamics, and I'll share a link with you in the show notes that'll take you to the TKI site and allow you to complete a questionnaire, and I'm going to recommend, at the right point, that you pause the podcast or at least commit to coming back to this after podcast to complete your profile and then use that to support the value of this particular episode and beyond. So the TKI not only identifies your conflict style preferences, but it'll also help you have a better understanding of all five of the conflict styles identified and, where it might be appropriate and valuable, for you to adopt those for the best outcomes. The TKI describes conflict styles in two dimensions assertiveness and cooperativeness and then it provides detailed information on how each style can be utilized, as well as the repercussions of overusing or underusing each of them. So if you're going to complete the TKI before proceeding, this is the right point in the podcast that you should hit the pause button now and I'll see you on the other side. Okay, welcome back. Now that you've hopefully done your TKI report and you've got it in front of you and you've had a chance, hopefully, to have a quick skim of the details there, let me walk you through the five conflict styles and share a little perspective on each of them.
JD:So the first style is called competing and, as you can see in the model competing, it's assertive and uncooperative. Competing is somewhat dominating, power-oriented style, where you pursue your own needs at the potential expense of the other. It may sound negative, but competing also means standing up for your rights, defending your position or what you believe is right, or simply trying to win at something. If you think about where you would most likely use this style of conflict, it would typically be when you're arguing, debating or using your position to influence others, stating your position and standing your ground. Now underutilizing well, let me start with overutilizing. So overutilizing the competing style could result in a lack of feedback, where people might hesitate to share important information, their perspective, for instance. It might result in reduced learning and it might mean that you're not empowering the people around you and ultimately, you're going to be surrounded by a bunch of yes, people who aren't really contributing to the discussion. People may fear intimidation and feel less empowered. If you're using this style, it may hurt innovation and the ability to improve the overall performance of the team or the organization. Underutilization of the competing style also has its downsides, as if you don't assert what you believe, your ability to influence others might suffer. You might also be depriving the organization by not sharing your valuable ideas and insights and you might not be fighting for the right things. You might delay critical decisions and frustrate people around you if you're actively avoiding this conflict style.
JD:The next style is collaborating, and you know, the collaborating style is again assertive, but it's also cooperative. You attempt to work with the other person to find a solution that fully satisfies the concerns of both parties, by digging into the issue to identify the underlying concerns of both and finding an alternative that meets both of those sets of concerns. It might take the form of exploring the disagreement to learn from each other's insights and resolving some issues that would otherwise have them competing for resources. It also involves confronting in a gentle way to find creative solutions. You seek to understand the other person's point of view by asking questions and staying curious, and then by merging perspectives, you draw from a broader range of experience and expertise. People naturally tend to support the solution that they help to create, so it helps you gain trust and support.
JD:Now, overuse of the collaborating style of conflict might result in, frankly, spending too much time on trivial matters and diverting attention from the important things. Performance may suffer if there's a lack of accountability and ownership, and it might make people take advantage of your collaborative approach and kind of to kind of lighten their workload or to kind of get their own way. Underuse might result in applying quick fix solutions that really don't address the root cause of the issue, resulting in the same problems being repeated or resurfacing again. You may not get the valuable support if you don't ask for inputs and address their issues. People might not feel comfortable challenging the status quo, thus not working towards raising the bar. People underuse collaboration because they feel they don't have the time or they don't trust others enough or are not confident in their abilities to communicate effectively. So be conscious of that. To communicate effectively, so be conscious of that.
JD:The next style is the compromising conflict style, and it kind of sits in the middle of both assertiveness and cooperativeness. When compromising, the objective is to find a mutually acceptable solution. It kind of falls in the middle ground between the two and it addresses the issue more directly than avoiding and giving up more than competing. So it means splitting the difference and exchanging compromises to seek a middle ground position. It's a good style to use when you have to create a quick or temporary solution or when you're dealing with time constraints. Now, overuse of the compromise conflict style can lead to a loss of the big picture perspective, as you may be sacrificing long-term goals for the sake of a quick fix to the issue at hand. It might also result in a lack of trust or authority, as it might seem as if everything is negotiable with you, and it makes it difficult for people to trust that you will protect and support them when things get tough. On the other hand, the underuse of the compromise model might lead to unnecessary arguments for relatively insignificant issues. This can be a waste of time and energy and can result in damaging relationships or basically reducing the trust. Negotiation is required, you know, for a healthy work-ship relationship, and so you want to kind of find the right balance there.
JD:The next one I want to talk about is the avoiding conflict style, and this is an unassertive and uncooperative approach. The individual or whoever's involved doesn't pursue your own concerns or those of the other person. It's actually about not addressing the conflict at all, but instead evading the conversation. This might sound like a very bad style to have, but this can also be very useful at times. While it's not always good to avoid, it's also not always bad. Avoiding might take the form of postponing the discussion on an issue until a better time, or delaying until more supporting data is available, or simply withdrawing from a threatening situation and instead waiting for a time when things are calmer and conditions are better to support a constructive discussion. Avoiding requires great skill, as you need to know when to use it. You know withdrawing requires foresight and grace and it's not always to avoid the conflict. You need to know when to withdraw from potentially damaging situations and you need to be able to sense when a discussion should be postponed to another time or when the timing is right. For some people, delaying the decision is actually quite difficult.
JD:Now, overusing the avoiding strategy is deriving the organization from your contributions and insights and can cause yourself unnecessary stress and job dissatisfaction. You might find that important decisions are made on your behalf without your input, which might made on your behalf without your input, which might also damage your credibility and your influence. It may also cause the organization to make inappropriate decisions. Important decisions, if ignored, don't vanish. They fester or become more complicated than necessary. It may signal to others that important issues are not being addressed by you. Underuse may result in being at the forefront of every conflict, which makes people see you as a bully or argumentative or overstressed, and you'll end up with less energy when it comes to more important matters. If you champion every cause that comes your way, you may be losing an opportunity to empower others or you might engage in a conflict before critical or supporting data is available or when emotions prevent really a meaningful discourse that can lead to a good outcome.
JD:Now the final conflict style is accommodating, which is an unassertive and cooperative style. It's the opposite of competing, and when accommodating the individual neglects one's own concerns to satisfy the concerns of the other person. You see an element of self-sacrifice and yielding to another point of view in this mode. It's fine to use this style when you realize that you are wrong about something and you want to show that you are reasonable and fair. You know you are wrong about something and you want to show that you are reasonable and fair, and you empower people by allowing them to take the decisions, especially if they're junior to you. It helps you to accumulate favors that would pay off in another situation, like you know, building your emotional bank account with the other person, and this is useful when your organization's already going through tremendous change and people are under stress. It's also good to use when the issue at hand is more important to the other person than it is to you.
JD:Now, accommodating should not be a strategy to protect yourself from taking risks or making your voice heard. Others might lose sight of the fact that you have opinions of your own, if this conflict style is used commonly, that you have opinions of your own. If this conflict style is used commonly, people may assume that you cannot stand your ground, which may damage your credibility and your ability to influence others. In the end, you may feel frustrated as your inputs are no longer considered. With the underuse of the accommodating conflict style, it'd be difficult to build positive and supportive relationships. You might be viewed as unreasonable and unfair, or you might be perceived as lacking discretion and you simply follow the crowd. If you can never accommodate, you may not be vocally self-critical when you're in the wrong, or at least when you're perceived to be in the wrong.
JD:Now, hopefully, you're aware now of the report of your own conflict style preferences. You've had a chance to think about how they apply to you and you have a sense of all the five conflict styles available to you. And it's important to remind ourselves that every one of these conflict styles is appropriate in the right circumstances. There is a value in being able to use all of them and to recognize when you should. I'm personally a big fan of the collaborating and compromise styles and I think I default to those most of the time, but believe me that if the building is on fire and lives are at stake, the last thing I want to be doing is sitting down to explore the opinions and goals of the fire warden. This is not a time for accommodation. It's not a time for collaboration. Now to expand your own conflict style, confidence and competency, I want to recommend that you identify the styles that you use the least and that you purposefully find opportunities to practice using them, to see what the experience is and how they can work for you. Your TKI report is a great resource to go back to from time to time to remind you of the five styles and how they work.
JD:Okay, with our new awareness of conflict styles, let's move on and talk about crucial conversations what they are, how to prepare to ensure that you can have the most valuable outcomes from them. Now I'm basing this topic on the awesome book of the same name, crucial Conversations, and while I'm going to try to give you the essence of the book here, there's no way that I'm going to give it the justice that it deserves, and I highly recommend that at some point, you read it for yourself. I'm going to include the link to the book and also the website in the show notes. But first of all, let's start with a definition. A crucial conversation is a discussion between two or more people where the stakes are high, where opinions differ and emotions run strong, where the outcome significantly impacts lives and there is significant risk of negative consequences. And there are many different forms of crucial conversations and these will vary significantly depending on your environment and the circumstances at the time.
JD:How do you know you're in a crucial conversation? Well, you're going to display some certain symptoms that will highlight whether you are in that state. So, physically, you might display a sign of stress and anxiety. For example, you might be sweating, you might be breathing a little bit more heavily, your heartbeat might have increased, you might have a stomach feeling or a dry throat or tension those physical signs that you're under some duress. Emotionally, you will experience some strong emotional responses, such as maybe fear, anger, frustration, urgency. Behavioral signs. You might avoid or engage in unhelpful behaviors, such as leaving the conversation, becoming quiet or not saying what you really avoid, or engage in unhelpful behaviors such as leaving the conversation becoming quiet or not saying what you really think, or raising your voice, being defensive, and so on. So, as I continue to talk through this topic, I'm going to encourage you to think and reflect on previous scenarios in your own life at work or at home, in your personal life that might fit into the definition of a crucial conversation and the experience you had at the time, and then I want you to try and apply the content as you think about that.
JD:A common characteristic of a crucial conversation is that often the communications break down, and it's typical after the fact for us to regret that either something that we said, or often, something we didn't say or didn't say effectively, was missed in the discussion. So why does that happen? Why does our communication fail so badly in these crucial conversations? Well, humans communicate all the time, but the higher the stakes, the less likely that you're going to handle a communication effectively. And this could be because you're used to communicating every day in low stakes exchanges, so you become less attentive and more automatic in the way that you respond In high stakes conversations. You've got to be mindful of everything involved in the communication, such as thoughts, emotions, the words that you use, the voice, the facial expressions and the body language that you express, as you're not going to be paying such close attention to communications on a day-to-day basis, then when you get into the situation, you may fail. You might also recall from my episode on giving and receiving feedback that under duress we go into the flight or fight mode. You go into this kind of defensive mode, a survival mode, and when we do that our cognitive capabilities actually are reduced quite significantly, impeded at times, and this is definitely a factor in how effectively that you're going to execute in a crucial conversation unless you're well prepared and you create a safe environment for the discussion.
JD:The consequence of failing to communicate effectively in a crucial conversation can be quite extreme and lots of aspects of your life or your work can be affected, such as you know, your career, your relationships, the level of trust and maybe even your health At a high level. There are really three ways that we deal with crucial conversations. One of our favorites is, in fact, the avoidance. A study conducted by an organization called VitalSmarts, where they surveyed 1,025 managers and employees about occasions where they had a concern at work but failed to speak up, indicated that 78% of the time they complained to others, they didn't address it directly with the person they needed to talk to, but they were complaining elsewhere that they took on extra or unnecessary work, that they were ruminating about the problem, festering on the problem, and so forth, and ultimately they were dealing with anger that related to it. So avoidance has its pitfalls, for sure.
JD:The second way is that we perform poorly in the actual response, in how we handle a situation, and then finally, hopefully, the one that we're aiming for all the time is that we perform effectively and that we execute that conversation in a way that produces the outcome we're after. So, with that in mind, how do we prepare? What do we have to do to be prepared for a crucial conversation? And some of what I'm going to walk through right now is going to sound quite obvious, but in the real world, so often we just forget, we don't take the time to have a think about what's the methodical approach, what's the preparation that I need here to ensure that we're going to be successful. So I'm going to walk through the recommendations from the book Crucial Conversations and add a little bit of my own context to that.
JD:So, first of all, let's start by deciding exactly what we're dealing with. Is this an isolated event, or is it a recurring problem? Is it an interpersonal issue? How serious is the issue. So if we can understand the seriousness, the impact of the issue, that'll help guide us in terms of how the conversation should be handled. You know, as an example, you might need to talk to an employee because they've missed a project or they've missed a deadline, but the question would be is it one deadline they've missed, is it one thing that they didn't do, or is it part of a series of patterns that have been occurring over a longer period of time? That's going to change the way that we think about the preparation for this conversation. Then the discussion itself why are we having the discussion? What are we trying to achieve coming out of this discussion? Are we looking for more information? Are we trying to uncover the root cause behind the issue? Are we looking for an apology or a corrective action? Do we need to develop a plan? Is the intention to come out of the conversation with an action strategy to address an issue?
JD:Having this understanding of what the purpose of the discussion is about, again, is going to be very critical for thinking through our preparation to be ready for the conversation. The right time and the right location is also critical the ability for us to be in an environment where we can have the conversation uninterrupted, where you know the privacy of the conversation is appropriate for discussions being had and hopefully the timing is such that it's you know it's productive for everybody that's involved in the conversation itself, and then finally just acknowledge that the conversation is going to be difficult, that everybody's going to be uncomfortable potentially in this conversation. So be thinking about what can I do to make this as safe and as constructive and objective as I can make it in the delivery. You might also have to deal with your own second thoughts. You know, as we talked about, avoidance is a strategy that's often adopted and so you want to think about. You know, if you start having second thoughts about having the discussion, you start thinking about cancelling the discussion. You know what's the risk associated with that, what's the implication if you don't proceed with this or if you don't proceed with this the right way. So think about those factors Now.
JD:According to the book, there are seven steps that are needed to manage crucial conversations. Now, the first of the seven steps is to really start with yourself and, first of all, to notice the signs that this is in fact a crucial conversation. So, if you go back to the definition I gave earlier. The stakes are high, opinions differ, emotions are running strong and that the outcomes significantly impact lives or there's a significant risk of negative consequences. So, with that in mind, you want to return to the dialogue that you're having with yourself and understand.
JD:Is this a crucial conversation? If you decide it is, then the next step is to consider what do I want for myself and what do I want for others? Coming into this is to consider what do I want for myself and what do I want for others coming into this thing, and what do I want for our relationship. With that in mind, how would I behave if I really wanted those outcomes? You know what would be my position. How would I act in that case? It's also important to refuse the sucker's choice, and the sucker's choice is those either or choices which can be used to justify unhelpful behavior as part of the discussion by saying that you had no choice but to argue against whatever it was, or to withdraw that. There was no other option. That's not useful in a crucial conversation conversation.
JD:So you want to think about what do I want, what don't I want, and think about how to accomplish both of those. So, in terms of what do you want. You know, do you want a change in the behavior of the person, or do you want a change in the approach to a plan or whatever? Think about those desired outcomes and then think about what do I don't want? What is it that I don't want to have as part of this conversation? It might be just as simple, as I don't want to get into a heated argument, or I don't want to be in a position where my competency is compromised or whatever happens to be. So think about the balance between the want and don't want, and then again thinking deeply about how can I accomplish both. How can I have an honest discussion with the person about whatever the matter is. That allows me to achieve the outcomes I'm looking for, but it also allows me to avoid those things that I don't want to have.
JD:Step two is to notice when safety is at risk, and really that's about looking for signs that people are uncomfortable or scared or anxious about the meeting, because that's going to have an impact on the quality of the conversation. Frankly, and again, as we've talked about before, in this defensive mode, they're only going to be thinking about themselves. They'll only be thinking about how can they protect themselves or defend themselves, and so that's going to impede the value of the conversation and one of two things is going to happen. We're either going to resort to silence or violence. And we think about silence. This is kind of when you selectively choose to share or not share information or to engage. And the kind of approaches that are seen here when we go into silence mode is that you mask, which is basically when you play down your ideas, or you selectively slow down your thoughts or don't share your thoughts. You might be sarcastic, or you might sugarcoat things, or you know you're just not delivering things in a kind of transparent way.
JD:The other way is avoidance, you know, basically changing the topic or making light or addressing other issues, bringing other issues into the discussion and then finally withdrawing, which is basically when you leave the conversation or you cease to engage. On the other hand, violence in this context is really it's compelling others to adopt your view, which basically forces them, you know, to inline. And that can be done through either controlling. When you put pressure on people to adopt a viewpoint, you may interrupt others, you might overemphasize certain facts or dictate the direction of the discussion, you might use your seniority or your position or your status to dominate or compel in the conversation. Another way is labeling, which is about putting labels on other people or ideas so that they can be dismissed. Name-calling, really generating that kind of categorization that's going to be counterproductive. And then finally attacking, which is basically intimidating or ridiculing other people.
JD:All of these behaviors will have a negative impact on the quality of the conversation and the outcomes that can be achieved. So to personally kind of overcome the risk of falling into silence or violence, you really need to self-monitor by focusing on what you're doing and how you're behaving and how it's going to affect the conversation. But equally, you've got to be looking at the behaviors of others and adjusting the dialogue based on what you're seeing. If you're seeing those behaviors in terms of silence or violence, you really either want to course correct or take a pause and revisit the timing of the conversation to a point where it can be constructive. The next step is really making it safe to share, and making it safe to share is about dealing with the conditions where safety could be a risk, and that's going to come when there's a lack of mutual purpose so you're not having a conversation with a common goal in mind or if there's a lack of mutual respect, where there's a sense that that kind of trust and respect between the parties is not in place and you really want to focus on ensuring that you can restore both the purpose and the mutual respect.
JD:You want to get to a point where there's an acceptance within the meeting or an alignment within the meeting that we're working towards a common purpose and that we respect each other. And you know that might involve using, you know, some humility, some vulnerability. It might involve apologizing where that might be appropriate. It might be using contrasting language that you can use to kind of fix misunderstandings or correct misunderstanding and so forth. And one of the frameworks that's introduced in the book that I really quite like is the CRIB approach, the CRIB tool. It's C-R-I-B as an acronym and the CRIB stands for, first of all, to commit and seek a mutual purpose. So that really that focus on arriving at a common North Star, if you like, the R is to recognize the purpose behind the strategy and to really understand what are we trying to get to, what are we trying to achieve here in terms of the discussion and the strategy around that? You want to strive to invent a mutual purpose. So really try to align on that common North Star, as I said, and then, once you've done that, that's really opening the door then for you to brainstorm new strategies and actually co-develop strategies. If that can be done, it changes the context of discussion significantly if you're collaboratively and cooperatively coming up with a strategy and a path forward towards a solution.
JD:The fourth item on the list is mastering your stories, and when you think about your stories, this is your internal dialogue, right? This is the conversation you're having with yourself and your stories. Your dialogue is really a path to action. This is the thing that's going to motivate you and control you in terms of how you work. And you know your stories really. You know they're triggered by something happening and you see it in your way, and this is the story that you will tell yourself. You basically create an interpretation of what's going on. That interpretation will generate feelings and emotions, and then you will act on these motions. And so the opportunity here is really for you to unpack your story, the emotions and actions, to really understand them, like how am I behaving, how am I presenting myself and why am I behaving that way? What are the emotions that I'm experiencing right now and how are they affecting me and what is the story that's led to those emotions, what is the dialogue I'm having with myself that's leading to that? Then I need to really openly, as best I can, look at the facts and ask what evidence is kind of backing that up behind the story. Is this story justified? Is there evidence to back it up? And you really want to try as much as you practically can to separate your interpretations from the actual evidence, separate the story from what the evidence is, and be willing to adjust the story, be willing to be wrong, be willing to be corrected, self-corrected on that, and then, based on that, you can re-evaluate your emotions by asking if you're having the correct emotion that's matched to the story, to the situation as it stands, matched to the story, to the situation as it stands.
JD:Our internal dialogue can take the form of what the book calls clever stories, and when you think about the clever stories, they kind of fit into three categories. One of them is victim stories, where you are the sucker, you're the one who's being impacted by something else. It's that really that external impact, that external effect that you're dealing with. The second category is the villain stories, and that's where you effectively vilify the person that you're engaging with, you convince themselves that they've got some kind of malfeasance in mind for the position that they're taking, for whatever reason, and telling that story kind of justifies your behavior. And the third category is kind of helpless stories, Like I've got no choice, there's no action I can take.
JD:Again, it's a little bit of a victim story here in some cases, because you just feel like you're disempowered or you're telling yourself you're disempowered to be able to do what you'd like to do. What you need to be thinking about is how can I turn those into useful stories? How can I challenge those positions that I'm in? First of all, recognize that I'm playing the victim, I'm going down the vilification path or I'm feeling helpless If I think about the victim's story. The question is really turn that around. So turn the victim into an actor and ask yourself I turn the victim into an actor and ask yourself you know, am I playing down my role? You know, am I really undermining myself by being the victim here? And what's a different role that I could play in this engagement? What's a different role that I could play in this scenario?
JD:In terms of villains, we need to humanize them again. We need to get back to where we trust them as being a workmate or a peer or a collaborator, and be asking ourselves, you know, would a decent person behave the way that I've told myself this person's behaving? One of the ways that I think about this one, this one comes up quite a lot in my mind with engagements that I have in certain circumstances. And you know, it strikes me that I don't think anybody gets out of bed in the morning, or very few people get out of bed in the morning and think I'm going to be a jerk today. You know I'm going to be really hard to work with today, I'm going to be complicated and frustrating and, just you know, just hard.
JD:And so, you know, I revert often to curiosity. I'm like, if a person is behaving this way, what is their motivation? Why are they behaving this way? Are they feeling defensive? Are they feeling like they're under the pump or they're being set up in some way? And I really want to try any way, practically, that I can walk in their shoes if you like to understand what might be driving what seems like an odd and aggressive behavior. Because, in my experience, if you like to understand what might be driving what seems like an odd and aggressive behavior, because in my experience, if I can get to that, I generally find that's not the case. There's something going on or I'm misinterpreting their behavior. In fact, they're not a villain whatsoever.
JD:And then, in terms of the helpless scenario we really want to think about how can I turn that into an empowerment story? How can I convert that by asking you know, what do I really want for this and what do I want others to get out of this, and how would I behave if I wanted that outcome? How can I think about, you know, not being helpless, and what can I do to think differently, about being in control and being able to drive a positive change within the guardrails of what exists there? So a lot to unpack there. The next one is about speaking, or point five is about speaking honestly without offending people and in the right conditions. You want to create a dialogue where you can speak honestly and openly, but it's not causing offense, it's not causing people to be harmed, and so there's another framework here that's been provided by the book.
JD:The framework is STATE, that's S-T-A-T-E as an acronym. The S in STATE is about sharing your facts. So you start by telling the other person what you believe the facts are and how you're applying those. And it's not about bringing your interpretation as much as you practically can. You want to talk about, again, the things that are literal, that are factual. The next step, the T, is to tell your story, is explain what you've concluded, based on the facts that you just talked about, so you can share with the person. Based on the fact that you didn't hit these deadlines or you didn't do whatever, I have concluded that you don't care as much about the project or whatever your conclusion seems to be. And, again, so you can tell that in a story form.
JD:The next step is where you want to learn, you know from the other side, and so this is the A and this is to ask for the other's paths, ask them for what their facts and their stories are, and good questions that you can ask there is, you know, do you see this differently? Or how do you see this? What this? You tell me in your words, what you think is going on. Or you could say this is how it looked to me, have I misunderstood or am I seeing it differently than you are? And that, again, is that opportunity to get perspective from the other party in terms of what they consider to be the facts of the matter and what they've deduced from that. And it's critical at that point that you are open and curious and willing to have your own facts and your own perceptions based on those facts, altered based on what you hear.
JD:The next one is the next T, which is to talk tentatively, and that's really about the language that you use or the tone that you use as you're having this conversation, and so part of it is, you know, if you're talking about something that isn't maybe 100%, you know, confirmed as a fact, you might feel like it's very strongly like a fact, but it's not quite there. You might be asking the question in such a way, or might be posing the topic in such a way, or you might be posing the topic in such a way where you'll say I get the impression that something is the case or, from my point of view, this is how it looks, and it kind of softens the language and it kind of creates the opportunity, the invitation for the other person to feel like they can challenge what you're saying there and in my opinion, for instance you know, this is my opinion, this is how I feel. Now you tell me what your opinion is and again that creates that opportunity for dialogue and for learning and curiosity and so forth. And then the final element in state is to encourage testing and that's really to invite other views, other perspectives. You know that will challenge your own thinking and if they, if they're reluctant to share to their own ideas, if you're finding that they're kind of closing up and they're not, they're not contributing, you know you might say I might, you might say something like I could be completely mistaken. You know I may have got this all wrong. You know what, if the, if the complete opposite is true, talk to me about that. Tell me what that would be, or tell me what, how that would be. You know how you could correct me in terms of my perceptions, really be creating a kind of safe way for them to share what's going on.
JD:The next one is six, which is to explore the other's path, and again I'm going to use the framework that's provided in the book the framework is called AMPP which is to ask for their stories, as we talk about to mirror, to confirm their feelings. And when I think about mirroring I'm thinking about things where I can kind of replicate. I can tell my side of the story, to kind of build that picture and hopefully, by having them share their story and then me sharing mine, we can find how it integrates and how it becomes clear in terms of the engagement, active listening and paraphrasing for clarity. So the P in AMP is to paraphrase for clarity and then, you know, the final P is to prime for open dialogue, again, to create the environment that allows dialogue to take place, because that's how we're going to learn.
JD:If you'd still disagree, like if you still disagree, then the challenge is to look for what you can agree on. You know, there's a model that isn't in the book, but it's a model that I've learned to love over the last few years. That's called the hierarchy of ideas, or chunking, and the notion behind chunking is that if I can't agree on something at the detail level, then I want to go kind of up. I want to chunk up to the next level and ask the question. So maybe I can put it this way If I was working on a product that had particular piece of functionality in it that I was disagreeing with somebody else about in terms of how that functionality should work, then what I can do is to kind of go up a level and talk about the business purpose of that functionality. So in a customer scenario, I might want to come up and talk about what that functionality was intended to provide as a customer experience and test and see if we agree on that. Now, if we still don't agree on that, we might go up a layer again and talk about the use case, the high level use case for the customer. Can we get aligned on that? And if we've aligned on that, fantastic. Now we've got a common ground that we can work on. With arriving at a common ground, my options are to go back down into the detail again, but with the person, go on that journey with them and see if we can align at the next layer down in terms of the specific functionality of what it was to be. Or I can go sideways and I can look at alternative approaches that might work as a compromise. So it's this kind of notion of chunking down and chunking sideways or laterally to come up with scenarios that allow us to go on the journey together, hopefully getting to the detail again but being in alignment as we get there. It really is a foundation for us to build alignment, synergy and trust, as we kind of work through the detail. And so it's basically this notion of find agreement, then build on that foundation and then compare views but never suggest that they're incorrect Kind of work with them to get to a point where you're kind of tweaking the understanding as you go.
JD:Another element that's kind of in the book that relates to this exploring the other's path is really around listening, and I'm a huge, huge fan of active listening and so forth. But their model kind of talks about starting with the heart and there's kind of four pieces to that. One is to be sincere. You know, when you ask people to share what's on their minds, you really want to mean it sincerely. You really want to mean it sincerely. You really want to be authentic, that you are receptive and open and somewhat enthusiastic to hear what's on their minds, what their, their feelings. Be interested, be ready to peel the onion with them to understand what's behind it and really get to the source of what's going on for them, again with authentic curiosity, and to continue like.
JD:The next one is to really really continue that curiosity and avoid kind of overreacting to it. Make sure that you're creating an environment where it continues to be comfortable for them to share. We may be taking them in a path where they're feeling quite vulnerable in terms of the level of detail that they are sharing about their thoughts, their emotions or their history or whatever it is to me, and you really want to create an environment where they feel comfortable to continue to do that and then finally be patient. You know, once they've shared their feelings and opinions, like, give it time, give it space for them to kind of wind down and move on. Give it a chance for the thoughts to settle. Obviously, make it so they understand that you might be processing everything that they've shared with you as well, and that demonstrates again that commitment to be sincerely interested and authentically, you know, taking in and absorbing and thinking about the opinions that they've shared. They might be quite emotional for some of the things that they've shared and you want to give them a chance for those emotions to stabilize and settle down before the dialogue continues. So again, don't be afraid of white space. You know a lot of us can't deal with moments of silence in meetings, but they're incredibly powerful and so it's really important to be teaching yourself to allow those moments to be there and let things settle down before you move on and kind of look for visual cues or audible cues that tell you it's time now to move to the next topic.
JD:So the seventh item or the seventh topic that they have in this process is really about how do I turn the conversation into action now. So we've worked our way, we've done the preparation for it, we've set the scene, we've managed the dialogue in, hopefully, the safest way that we practically can. Hopefully that's led us to a point where we've reached some synergy on what the circumstances are and what we both want as outcomes. And now we want to turn that into a set of actions. And there's a couple of elements to this.
JD:I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but the book does spend quite a bit of time looking at the decision-making process. Is it a consultation process? Is it a vote? Is it consensus? What happens to be what really matters is what are the actions that we're going to decide on, who will own those actions and when are they going to be completed? And it would be unfortunate to have done all the work in preparation and execution of the meeting to then walk away and have not captured the actions that were going to come out of it and when they're going to be completed and who they're going to be completed by. So I think it's incredibly important to make sure that you go through that process and also agree on follow-up, document the decisions, document the commitments that are made, make sure that the accountability is well understood and then arrange when you're going to follow up on that. So this pretty much ends my super condensed summary of the Crucial Conversations book and framework.
JD:Again, if conflict is a topic that you're interested in, if this Crucial Conversations is something that has piqued your interest, I highly recommend the book. It's had such an impact on me. It's one of the reasons why I chose it to be the final and essential book of the Leadership Accelerator program that I developed back in 2018. That's still running today. This is kind of the final spit and polish that we have with our leaders in terms of teaching them how to handle these most difficult conversations. So, again, it's highly recommended.
JD:I did want to touch on one last book, or another book that I think relates this topic quite nicely. I think that dovetails very well. The book is called Nonviolent Communications. It was written by Marshall Rosenberg and it really introduces a framework for constructive dialogue and negotiation. It's based on the ancient Indian principle of anhisma, which actually Gandhi adopted as part of his foundation for the nonviolent actions adopted in opposition to the colonial rule in India back in the time. The same underlying principles can be found across cultures and religions around the world and you know, rosenberg really started studying these principles very early in his career and in the 1980s, early 1980s, he released the book while he was traveling the world as a independent peace negotiator.
JD:When you read the book you'll hear some of the engagements that he had in very complex and quite troubling environments, everything from village level disputes that were going on right up to full regional disputes going on between warring nations and so forth. And, based again on this Enhismer approach, it really built a framework for negotiating alignment based on the values and the needs and the common understanding of the parties are in conflict. It's quite powerful as a framework. If you do a search on the web, you'll find some visuals that represent the nonviolent communication framework, which is actually quite useful to have as well. Anyway, look, that's the topic of managing conflict today. I hope you've taken away some learning that's of use to you, some gems there, two book recommendations as well, and I will look forward to coming back with another episode in the next few weeks. Take care everybody and be good to each other. Thank you.
