How to Get it Right From the Start

I guess because of the work that I do, all those years in litigation and subsequently doing conflict resolution, I realised that people find it hard to do it by themselves. So then, okay, so how to get it right?

When conflict presents itself, there are some things that the savvy leader can do to get it right. I'm going to run through and introduce them here, and then we're going to dig into those further as we go along.
The first thing is to recognise the signs. When conflict is happening and things are getting escalated in a workplace, sometimes we can find ourselves in the middle of it and it helps to step back and ask ourselves some questions to recognise the signs.
The next thing to do is to be able to remain in a calm mindset, a calm way of being and feeling so that we can access our very nuanced conflict resolution and communication skills.

The next thing to do is to get advice, get input. Don’t think that we have to go it alone. I've talked with many leaders who will say things like, "Well, I was waiting to get somebody else involved. I wanted to see if I could solve it." I understand that feeling, but we do need to bring in other people.

We do also need to clarify expectations with people and provide supports for dealing with difficult situations, and work with people to figure out what the options are, make decisions and take action.

What Are the Signs of Unhealthy Conflict (Visual: The Dysfunction Spiral)

How do you notice unhealthy conflict? How do you recognise the signs of it?

In this work that I do, I have noticed that there are signs that show themselves over and over again. So, here's a little diagram to show what I think happens when a team is going off the rails.

It starts with just negativity, people complaining in how they talk to each other, and a level of reactivity to that negativity. People seem to get upset. That reactivity and negativity lead people to blame each other and be more focused on what other people are doing wrong than maybe what they are themselves bringing to the situation, and it also leads to a level of defensiveness.

That causes people to stop talking to each other. So, when the people are upset with each other, the team's going off the rails, that leads to feelings of frustration and then they start talking about each other instead of to each other. Word gets around that people are talking about each other.

Then there is mistrust. And I think also the human brain, when it starts to see others in a negative light, there's some confirmation bias that creeps in there.
We start to see things through a negative lens. People start maybe thinking more about formal complaints about each other. Certainly, there are lots of informal complaints happening. That leads to division in the sense of us and them.

In a team, camps can form. I only trust the people I like and the people who agree with me, and then there's the them who are not to be trusted. Camps can form within a team or between the team and management, or between certain teams within the organisation.

People start to give up. Once they give up, they're looking for other jobs. You may well have been in this situation yourself. So, people are looking for other jobs and then that leaves other people there to mind the store alone or with a reduced team, and then people start feeling burnt out and tired, and then lo and behold, you've got more reactive negativity and the cycle continues.

You've probably been a part of a work team or witnessed it happening on a different team and know that this is not the place anyone wants to be.

So How Do You Create a Healthy Conflict Mindset

But what to do, when you have the ability to influence either as a leader or as the contributor that you are, to make a change.

The first step is to really be mindful about the mindset that we're going to have about conflict. When we notice the signs, before we take action, we really need to think about, "Okay, how am I going into this? Am I going into this with an adversarial mindset?" which is one that is a little heightened and also comes to us naturally because we tend to want to look at, okay, who's at fault for this?
But the result is that we get into this adversarial mindset, which is really headbutting. That's where people will look at the other person as the problem instead of thinking about, well, what is our problem?

It's a personalization of the problem, which leads to people becoming more escalated and trying to persuade each other. But persuasion doesn't work, people just dig in their heels.

Instead, could we have a problem-solving mindset? That's different. That's where we say the problem is separate from ourselves. The problem isn't you, let's articulate what the problem is, give it a shape, give it a size and a texture, and see if we can't then bring all the ways in which we are different to bear on solving that problem.

That's a really key foundational point about thinking about, are we going to do conflict in an adversarial way, which really only results in a win-lose, or could we still disagree even, sometimes quite heavily, but bring those different ways of seeing things to bear on the problem and come up with solutions?

The next question will be how, and I will introduce the framework for how in a little bit.

Strategies to Maintain Calm

Once we've thought about, "Oh, I need to be in a problem-solving mindset here, if I'm going to get through this situation and provide good leadership to it." The next part is to say, "So I need to be in a calm state to be able to do that."

The calm state is what allows us access to our prefrontal cortex and other funky parts of our brains that do sophisticated things. I'm sure you may have been in a situation, either in an interaction with somebody, or maybe you get that email and it burns in the pit of your stomach and you know, because you've been told don't respond right away.

But how do you get there? How do you prevent that voice in your head that's going, "You have to stand up for yourself. Don't put up with this from people."

Calm self means use some strategies to slow down, that includes being mindful of our breath and stopping and taking, you know, three deep breaths or maybe 10.

Another strategy is to say nice things to ourselves. We've got that voice in your head, it's looking out for us, the job of that voice is to say, "Look out, you are not safe.
You need to be careful right now, other people are out to get you." It's got a purpose, but it often leads us astray. So, instead we can say nice things to ourselves, "Hey, you've got this. You're accomplished, you know things."

A really important thing to do when conflict is happening is to figure out ways to take a break. You don't have to commit to things right away. You can take a break and just use that to get back to being in a calm place. Use that as a time to think about things.

Taking a break can look like saying to somebody, "Hey, you know what? You've given me a lot to think about. I'm going to give that careful consideration and get back to you."

Another way we can help ourselves get centred or focused is carry a fidget object or engage our five senses. These are really mindfulness exercises that help us get back into our bodies so that we can do the hard work of handling conflict.

The final strategy is to think of something awesome in the sense that it helps us reorient ourselves that it's not the most important thing in the world. Yes, it's important, but it allows us to feel just a little bit, readjust our perspective on things.

Communication Skills: The Building Blocks you Need

From our calm state, the next thing I'd like to turn and talk about is some key communication skills that have to be used in order to engage in effective collaborative problem-solving or conflict resolution conversations.

I think of these as building blocks, and then we're going to plug the building blocks into a frame. I'm going to start actually with listening.

Employ Active Listening, Don't Listen to Respond (with Examples!)

There is a paradox when it comes to trying to really understand people or solve a problem, which is that if we want the other people to hear us, we really have to listen to them.

It's not enough to listen, we have to be seen doing it. I think most of us, when someone is talking to us, we are listening to respond, not listening to understand.
The strategy of active listening means that the other person can really truly get that we are listening to what they have to say.

There are some ways that we show active listening. The first one is to use encouragers. Like, mm-hm, uh-huh, and that kind of thing so that the person knows you're really listening to what they have to say, even if you don't agree, but that you're being quite attentive in listening to them.

The next strategy is to say back to the person what you heard them say. I'm thinking about the example that I told where the group of professionals, their meetings were devolving and people were really unhappy and not able to talk to each other.

This was a key skill that I taught them, you need to work on active listening with each other. I taught them instead of talking over each other, each person would take their turn speaking about an issue and then somebody had to give them active listening and respond to say, "So what I hear you saying is,"

The way this switched the dynamic was amazing, they went from feeling unheard and frustrated to feeling heard and it set them up to be able to solve problems together.
Sometimes though, you don't really want to repeat back to people what they're saying because what they're saying is highly negative.

Another strategy is to reframe what they said, for example, if someone says, "You know, things are really terrible around here. Nobody pays attention to us, they don't value our contributions, the company sucks." You are not going to repeat that back to people and say, "Oh, so what I hear you saying is," because that's a lot of negativity.

The reframe is to instead of repeating back, you flip the coin and feed it back to them, "Oh, so what's important to you is it's important to you to feel valued, it's important to have your contributions recognised. It's important to you that the company makes some big-picture decisions in a certain direction."

The final active listening strategy I want to highlight is reflecting feelings back to people. We've talked about reflecting their content back to them, but to also say something about, "Oh, it sounds like this is really intense for you. I can see that this is really important."

Those are some ways to demonstrate active listening. You might be thinking to yourself, "Is this just a communication webinar or where's the part about conflict resolution?" But I'm telling you for my money, the amount of time I spend employing these strategies in my work, it's basically all the time.

It's what helps me unlock the key from people who've been wound up in conflict and frustrated to be able to begin moving forward to what's next.

Ask the Right Questions (with Examples!)

Together with active listening, I am also asking questions. We have to ask questions to dig deeper, not questions to interrogate, to get to the bottom of all of the facts, but open-ended questions that are designed to show interest and let the person know you're very interested and get them talking more about where they're coming from.

It's how we move from adversarial positions to the interests that are underlying those positions.

We want to highlight the skill of asking open-ended questions, which is simply, "Could you tell me more about that?" Or "I heard you say this; can you say more about what that means for you? What do you hope for this?"

Something that happens when I teach people about asking questions, their primary question is, "How would you like to fix that?" Or "Do you want to hear my advice about how to fix that?" I want to encourage all of us to resist the urge to fix.

When people are coming forward with concerns, they want assistance with, they don’t want to be fixed. Oftentimes, they want someone who's going to listen and work it through with them, but that's not the same as running around waving your little fix-it wand on everybody else and imposing your solutions on other people.

We want to ask them open-ended questions and get them to say more. We might ask some informational questions to find out a little more about what they're talking about.

We can check in and clarify with them. "Here's what I think you're saying, but I'm not really sure. Is that what you meant?" The ultimate goal is to dig deeper, to find out what's really important and, "What's important to you about this. What's your goal here?"

These are not fix-it-solution questions, those come later. These are to get the person talking more about where they're coming from and why it's important to them. As I mentioned, from where I sit, for the work that I do, when I can get people using those two skills combined with a key skill around how they, then, state their own needs, this gets us working together differently.

Sharing Perspectives & What Do You Both Need? (with Examples!)

This skill is around how do you share your own perspective. It's important in collaboration and in conflict resolution for people to be able to say, "Here's what I need." Because otherwise we're just sitting around agreeing to what other people need all the time. And that's not the point.

The point is to be able to assertively say, "When this kind of thing happens, here's what I need." So let me point out a difference between how we talk about what we need.

Oftentimes when people are feeling upset, they will communicate in "You" statements, "You should have done this, you should have done that." And they come across as blaming and accusatory.

By contrast, when we communicate with "I" statements, it comes from a place of problem-solving. So, if you are saying, "You never empty the dishwasher, you don't respect my time. You think that I'm just here to do all the housework."

It might be true and it's not going to lead to a productive discussion. Where we say things like, "You should have have done this," or "You didn't do that," or "It's clear, you think this", the brain doesn't listen to somebody else using the word you.

It will, however, listen to the word I. So, as an example I can say, "When I come home and the dishwasher is still full, I feel unappreciated because I work so hard. And what I really need is for us to take turns emptying the dishwasher".

Obviously, workplace conflict is more complicated than that. Although I have done workplace mediations that included parts about people feeling really resentful that they were the ones that had to clean the kitchen.

So those three communication skills are active listening, asking questions out of curiosity to dig deeper and find out more.

And then the ability to share a perspective to say, "From where I sit, from my perspective, what I experience, what I see..."

We take those three building blocks and we put them together into a collaborative problem-solving framework.

Building a Collaborative Problem Solving Framework

I didn't make this framework up. This is the framework that gets taught if you take a negotiation course, a conflict resolution course, a mediation course.

It includes six stages, which you can see are preparation, introduction, issues, interests, solutions, and agreements.

And they can move around, it's not a linear model, it's a circular model because you can go back and forth between the stages or you can find yourself back around starting in preparation on a new issue.

Let's imagine that a concern comes forward in the workplace and someone says, "You know, I need help solving this problem." Maybe it's because they're feeling disrespected by another team or by somebody on the team and you're thinking, "Okay, how are we going to handle this?"

Step 1: Prepare

The first step is to prepare. If you’ve learned anything about negotiation, we have to prepare first. And to do that, it's getting into that problem-solving mindset that we talked about. There might be information that we need to acquire before we jump in.

Unlike the example of the manager that threw two people in a room together without notice, there might be information or time is needed, whether it's needed to prepare mentally for the people who are involved, or it might be about finding a time that's going to work for other people and figuring out where you're going to have that conversation.

Is it going to be by phone call? Are we going to have a meeting together? there are several things to do ahead of time to get ready.

Step 2: Introduce the Conversation

If you're going to attempt to help some people through conflict resolution or that you yourself need to have a conflict resolution conversation with somebody, the next step then is to introduce the conversation and set the tone.

What we're going to start with is inviting somebody into a problem-solving discussion. You can say, "Hey, can we chat about this?" Could we set aside some time to have a conversation about that thing that happened yesterday?" "I've noticed something in the workflow that isn't working, I'd love to talk about that."

At that point, the only thing we really need to get into detail about is when, and where, and how, and who.
We don't need to have the conversation. In fact, it's probably best not to, but just invite someone into the conversation.

This is the introduction phase because we are setting the tone for what kind of conversation are we going to have.

Step 3: Articulate the Issues

The third step is to figure out what are we there to discuss. The word that gets used is issues. But another way to think about that is topics.

It's, "What are we here to talk about? What are we here to solve together?" So, whether it's setting up a team meeting or even creating a mini agenda for a conversation with someone.
Could we talk about effective teamwork? Could we talk about effective use of our communication tools so that we're not all overwhelmed with lengthy emails or voluminous emails all the time.

e want to use neutral wording. We don't want to say, "We're here to talk about your terrible emails." We want to say, "Let's have a conversation about effective use of email communication." We want to avoid position statements when we're setting out an issue.

We're not going to say, "The problem is you're a terrible email writer." We're going to say, "We need to talk about effective use of emails and our Teams channel."

We also want to avoid either/or, we want to avoid framing the issue as something that's either-or. If you're saying, "Well, we need to talk about whether or not these people can work together." Now you're setting people up for adversarialism and positionality.

What we want to do is leave it as a descriptor that we all understand so we can talk about it without setting up the position or getting people into an either-or situation too early.

Finally, after we have ascertained what the issues are that we're talking about, and it might be two or three, or it might be more than that, now we get to explore the interests.

Step 4: Explore Interests

We've had three stages of getting ready and framing the structure of the conversation, which tends to improve the quality of problem solving and collaborative conversations greatly.

We're going to explore the interests by using those "I" statements, we talked about, asking questions, and demonstrating active listening. The point here is to allow for multiple perspectives to exist at the same time.

Like that group of professionals where I taught them how to go around the table and each person could say what they thought, we were getting away from adversarial debate. The point was that all the perspectives could exist and we didn't have to shoot them down, we didn't have to disagree with them.

We could allow them to exist and resist debating them at that point in time. Stage four is about getting the perspectives on the table, asking questions to understand why they're important to people, what's going on there for you.

Dig deeper so that now we've got a full array of information and only after you've got people's perspectives on the table, now we can start fixing.

Step 5: Generate Solutions

Stage five, now we can start saying, "Here's what I think we should have do."

This stage is not about getting back into debating who's right, who's wrong, and who has the right idea about what to do.

This stage is about a brainstorm. Brainstorming ideas, getting a list on the page, the idea being that we're going to put ideas on the page that relate to those interests that we already talked about.

It isn't to just go back to the beginning and start putting the thing you always wanted to have happen there, but to say, "Could we generate ideas together that address the different perspectives that we brought forward?" Another way to think about this is to exchange proposals.

Saying, "Here's what I think we need to do," comes across like a demand. And you have that same problem where the other brain's not listening. Saying, "Here's my idea," "Here's my suggestion".

"Here's what I propose." It's interesting, it opens up the other person's brain to hear it and build on it, or hear it and be more flexible and say, "Well, yeah, I could do that" or "I can't do the whole thing, but I can do part of it. And then what if we also did this?"

Now you're in something that is flexible as opposed to rigid and prone to debate.

I suggest getting three to five options on the table for potential solutions. You might know some of the options aren't workable, that's fine.

If someone says something that's extreme, it still goes on the list because it's technically an option. But you don't stop there, you don't shoot them down, you just say, "Okay, technically it's an option. What else? What other options are?"

Get more options on the table. Once you've got several options on the table, now we can think about going back and assessing them.

Let's do some pros and cons for these options. What are some potential obstacles? Could we get around the obstacles? Do we have access to resources to get around those obstacles? Generate some more options to get around the obstacles?

Ideally what you've then got is an understanding of some options and a sense of who's willing to do what going forward.

Step 6: Generate Agreements

The final stage is to confirm your agreements. So, we’ve probably had some revision and prioritisation, maybe some ranking and refining of what those options were and what people can agree to.

Then start posing the question, "Okay, where's everybody at on this one?" And you might need to go around the room again or check in with everybody and say, "Can you live with this? Is this something you can live with? Is it something you're willing to try?"

It takes a lot of active facilitation to ascertain where you have agreements. And it doesn't just land all by itself, it takes checking in with people and really listening carefully to say, "Well, actually it sounds like we have agreement on this point and this point. Am I right about that? Did I hear that properly? Did we get that agreement? Is it okay, everybody, if I write that down as something we've agreed to," and then move on to the next topic and continue to pull together this set of things that have been agreed to.

Once you are clear what's been agreed to, whether we're talking a team plan for what to do next, an inter-team plan for teams working together, or a one-on-one conversation around how we're going to navigate our situation together, ideally that gets written down, but that just might be an email.

So, it should have be talked about with the person to say, "Okay, so I think we've agreed to this, it's important that we write that down. And how about if I send you an email? Here's what I think we've agreed to. Is it okay if I send you an email and you tell me if I didn't get them?"

So now you've created a way to go back and check in on what was that everyone agreed to, did we do that or do we need to refine it?

I've taken you through the six stages very quickly in this model. The point is to show that the opposite of adversarialism is not just nothingness.

It's not just we hope for the best. There is a structure to successful collaboration and successful problem-solving.

I recently delivered a workshop to a technology company that was looking to really enhance their collaborative problem-solving skills for all of their leaders.

After spending a few hours with them teaching these skills, practising the skills, and then taking them through a model of it where we had some live examples of issues for their company, at the end, someone said that their takeaway was to trust the model because it works.

And it made me feel really good. Once again, it's not like I created the model, but understanding that we need structure when we're going to do conflict resolution, whatever it is.

When a Formal Investigation Should Be Considered Instead (with Examples!)

Now, I'd like to switch gears to say sometimes, you know, you need help and sometimes conflict resolution isn't going to be the right process.

I'll declare my bias here. I happen to be a strong believer in conflict resolution processes.
Let's pause for a moment, if things are happening in your workplace and it's feeling complicated and stressful to think about, "When might I need to go to HR or to my superior?" and think about do we need to do a formal investigation.

The purpose of an investigation really is to find facts about what happened in order to then take steps. So, rather than a collaborative problem-solving approach, which would be about how are we going to talk about where we're different and figure out how to move forward, an investigation is about looking back at what happened.

If the conduct is of such a serious nature that it would likely result in serious discipline or even termination of that person's employment, you can't go that alone.

You need to bring that forward and get support around what is the correct process. A progressive discipline record is advisable. And that's probably because there's a history with this person, there may be strategic reasons or organisational reasons where it would be more suitable to be in a position to impose discipline.

Now, I don't actually believe that you can manage behaviour and change workplace behaviour through trying to discipline people into better behaviour. With that said, sometimes that's what's needed.

So, if there's a desire to be in a position to impose progressive discipline, an investigation is likely going to be required.

Another time when we are not going to attempt conflict resolution is that there are indications that someone might abuse that process.

That's why preliminary preparation work is so important before we pull people off the floor and throw them in a room together, to get a sense as to whether they're going to be able to engage in that process with an open mind and in a way that's not going to because more harm.

Another time when there may be a need for a formal process, if there's the potential for serious risk to the employer. That risk might be some kind of legal liability or it might be a risk of reputation of some kind.

Who To Ask For Help in Your Organisation

I want to remind you who the other resources are that in many organisations are available to help. Leaders and employees in organisations don't need to go it alone.

They may have access to a human resources department or a person whose job it is to really be knowledgeable about these things and to help guide in terms of process.

In a larger organisation, you might be lucky enough to have an organisational development or OD department or learning and development. There may be conflict resolution courses or coaching available to help people through difficult situations.

Depending on the situation, if it's quite serious, it might be time to involve employee or labour relations. Their job is to guide leaders through the more serious types of formal processes.

If someone is inside of a union, then consulting with union reps and getting some help for the situation. Or if a person's not in a bargaining unit, think about getting legal advice about the situation.

We also have access to outside resources. There may be mentors, coaches, conflict resolution practitioners that can come in for a short period of time to help the organisation. Leaders can say, "Is this a time we should have be bringing someone in for some consulting support for this?"

I do talk to a number of human resources professionals, employee and labour relations professionals in my work and the amount of time I hear, "Gosh, I really wish that they had brought us in sooner because it would've been a lot easier to be helping earlier on in the trajectory of the situation than coming in to do cleanup after."