The Solution Begins With You – Being Your Own Conflict Coach

How many of you out there wish you had more conflict in your life? Maybe you’ve been thinking that 2020 would be a great year to finally tell off your really difficult manager, or maybe you’ve decided that now’s the time to finally get around to sparking a healthy power feud with that ambitious colleague of yours? Certainly would make meetings more interesting, wouldn’t it? 

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Better yet, why don’t you just ignore one of your reports and change her roles and responsibilities mid-year, you know, just to keep her on her toes and remind her who’s boss? My favorite – maybe you can walk around the office hugging everyone, even though you know it makes people uncomfortable and could violate your employees’ personal space. Or, perhaps you have a vendor who’s doing well enough, but you figure they would do a lot better if you yelled at them a bit every now and then…

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As overblown as these potential conflicts all sound, I’ve seen each of them come up in very important places, within the last year alone. The only difference is the intent, in that oftentimes people are just way too busy, distracted, or oblivious to realize, much less plan for, your pain and suffering in the workplace. 

And yet we impute the intent all the time. How could my “super intelligent” manager possibly do all of this without realizing her mistake? Clearly she’s doing it purposely, for XYZ reason (insert anything….she doesn’t like me; she thinks I’m too old for the job; or it’s her way of reminding me that I am one of her peons; she was promoted due to nepotism and shouldn’t be here, etc.).

The minute you decide that someone is doing something to you purposely, your very fast and very strong subconscious brain is going to begin to work doubly hard to filter data and information to confirm your theory. This is the so-called confirmation bias, which can be absolutely destructive when it comes to resolving and reducing conflict in the workplace.

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Fun fact – at least one study has shown that when it comes to processing bits of data per second, your subconscious is 300,000 times faster than your conscious brain. That’s a staggering number if you really think about it, and it should leave you curious about what data is being filtered out before you even notice it. This speed of filtering is happening every second of every day, whether you are aware of it or not. You’re here because of it. It keeps us alive, and yet in key moments, it fails us completely.

The truth is, you (including your subconscious mind) play a part in and suffer through a very wide range of conflicts and disputes in the workplace. 

Perhaps you do not even notice them fully, but they are there, and they are very expensive to you and the organization you work for.

How expensive? I’ll share some calculations in a future article, but just think of it in terms of direct and indirect costs. Costs such as attrition, lawsuits, and personnel actions are direct costs. Costs like not wanting to go to work, having trouble sleeping, and finding excuses to avoid people at work are indirect costs, and can completely torpedo the success of an organization.

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Conflict is all around us, and we have no choice but to deal with it. And yet, most of us do the easy thing – we avoid it, and call ourselves above average at managing conflict even as we are doing our best to look the other way. Don’t be that person anymore, because it’s not helping you and it’s not helping your organization. 

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Here are just a few things you can begin to do to regain control in any conflict situation:

1.    Embrace the fact that you are your own Conflict Coach. This means you have a responsibility to yourself to work on the conflicts in your life. I have been focusing on the workplace here, but the same paradigms at work may also show up at home, so make that commitment that you are now going to coach yourself through these conflicts. This also means finding ways to do that =)

2.    Build or expand your Conflict Coaching toolkit by finding resources. You can talk to mentors, watch YouTube videos (Tony Robbins has some good ones), read articles in HBR or books on various conflict topics (giving and receiving feedback; having difficult conversations; nonviolent communication, etc). If you need some direction on this, just ask! I’m happy to get you started and I am sure that others in my community will also have suggestions for you. 

3.    Think about the question of intent and map it out. Is that person really motivated to harm you, or has there just been some kind of misunderstanding? This is a foundational question when considering how to address a conflict in your life. How much of the conflict is intentional and how much is accidental. Try to give the other person the benefit of the doubt by writing out all the facts that might cut the other way on the intention. [If one of my recent bosses reads this article they will make fun of me, because I’m guilty of this myself, and yet even when we know it’s there, it takes a lot of effort to address].

This is the first part of what I hope will be a 12-part series of articles on “dialing down the drama” in the workplace. 

Key Takeaways - Be your own conflict coach, get some specialized resources, and explore intent. 

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I hope this gives you something that you can take and run with right away, and I look forward to sharing a whole lot more in the months to come. Everything I offer will be from my own toolkit – that is, I’ve tried it all and it has shown real and lasting results. 

My client list includes amazing people from the United Nations, the U.S. Federal Government, top tech firms, law firms, and consultancies, innovative start-ups, and impactful non-profits; I hope this all helps you just as much as it has helped them.

Please do drop me a note or share if you like what you are reading.  I would love to hear from you and join you in your journey to conflict mastery. 

[Want to really make a huge difference in a conflict you’re having at work? Message me to hear more about our Conflict Master Lab that we will be launching later in 2020. It will be like nothing you’ve ever seen before!]

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