Conflict, Confrontation And An Over Stuffed Walrus

So you’ve been reading this blog, maybe over the past couple of posts you’ve thought to yourself “Yeah…there is something I’m pretending not to know that’s going on in my life at the moment”.

On the conflict resolution front, maybe you thought “I’m going to need to talk to Alvin/Simon/Theodor* about this before the issue gets worse”.

Then maybe you read my post about confrontation and thought “Yes…I am very weary of it…it hasn’t gone well in the past”.

Well hold on there, sparky fire pants!

That’s awesome that you want to dive in solve some tough stuff but, before you trot off to tell Alvin/Simon/Theodor what you think of them AND the horse they rode in on, scan through this list of the top 5 mistakes people make during conflict resolution and ditch them when planning your conflict resolution strategy:

MISTAKE 1 – So…How’s it going…?

What’s wrong with this? I’m going to tell you (because I’m cool like that!). Without putting too fine a point on it, opening a conflict or a confrontation like this is disrespectful and dishonest. And, frankly, you’re not fooling annnnnyone.

I’m willing to bet you’ve asked this question, probably at work. You saunter over to a work colleague who you need to confront about something, you don’t want to be the mean boss, you want to make sure it’s clear that you guys are friends.

You sit down and ask this question. Their immediate thought…more than likely…is “Shit…something’s up”.

Most of us can sniff out a hidden agenda. 97% of communication is non-verbal so at this point your colleague is picking up on all sorts of clues that are leaking out. This question is now looking, sounding, smelling like a lead-in to bad news.

What happens next is that they come back with – “Great…everything’s going really well. I’m finding x,y,z a challenge but the team and I are brainstorming it this morning at 10am, I’ll make sure you get a full update on email as soon as we’re done!”

Sound familiar? Now where is the conversation? Nowhere useful, that’s for damn sure.

Most people will bluff their way through a thinly veiled confrontation for as long as they possibly can, coming up with plausible sounding rebuffs left, right and centre. But, if you have something you need to say, treat that person with the respect they deserve and say it.

Want more on managing conflict at work? – this place seems to have you pretty much covered. For the very high brow among you, check this site out.

MISTAKE 2 – THE BOURBON BISCUIT/CUSTARD CREAM/OREO COOKIE

This metaphor slightly falls down because ideally the middle of the biscuit/cookie would be something you didn’t want (instead of something you scrape off with your teeth…not something I’d know anything about *cough*).

This is the time-honoured classic where you sandwich a the conflict issue between two compliments.

Or you go COMPLIMENT – ISSUE – BLAH, BLAH, WOW, YOUR HIGHLIGHTS LOOK GREAT! BLAH

This approach does two things. It diminishes the compliment that you want to pay someone AND it diminishes the importance of the issue that you’d like to discuss. Mainly because there’s a but in there. That word always changes the direction of a conversation, it’s indirect and clouds the message. It also has the nasty habit of making people feel paranoid.

MISTAKE 3 – THE OVER STUFFED WALRUS

In London, there’s a museum called The Horniman Museum (stop giggling…). This museum is in proud possession of an over-stuffed walrus.

Why? Because the taxidermist who stuffed it a gazillion years ago had never seen a real-live walrus ever before in his life, and had no idea they had lots of wrinkles. So he totally stuffed it. Literally.

What’s this got to do with conflict resolution and confrontation? Well, I’ll tell you.

If you’re over-stuffing your message with too much padding, the message gets lost. We do this because we don’t want to hurt people’s feelings (again…not something I’d know ANYTHING about!). It’s a good part of human nature, we don’t want to inflict pain on others. However, if you’ve worked up a sweat psyching yourself for a talk but put so much padding around your message, you will have expended all of that emotional energy for nothing, as the message gets lost.

What’s really happening here is that while you’re telling yourself you don’t want to hurt their feelings, you’re really trying to protect yourself.

Dealing with your own emotions is probably tough enough, you don’t really want to deal with someone else’s. Replace the stuffing with clear requests.

MISTAKE 4 – MYSTIC MEG

Otherwise known as predicting the future! What happens when you do this is that you rehearse a script ahead of time in your head. You think you know what they’re going to counter with, then you figure out what you’re going to say…etc.

What happens when you script the conversation ahead of time is that you can get so locked into the responses you’re expecting to hear that when you’re actually having the conversation, you miss how they actually respond. Which may be completely different to your script!

It’s also possible that if you’ve rehearsed your talk enough, you’ll end up delivering it in a rushed, cold, impersonal way.

As I’ve already said, 97% of communication is non-verbal so the images your playing in your mind of the rehearsed scenario are causing neurons to fire off and those messages get translated into bodily reactions.

If you’re imagining an angry response and you’re tensing up in preparation for one – all this is being communicated through your body. The person you’re talking to may not be angry, or at least not to start off with, but they’ll pick up on your physical cues and, more than likely, start to get defensive.

MISTAKE 5 – GOING NUCLEAR

This is the confrontational equivalent of basically being North Korea. No diplomacy, no UN Peace Keeping Force, no highly publicized visits by heads of state.

Sadly, most of us are familiar with the person who confronts by going nuclear straight away. They lob in the confrontational grenade but often, they’re so terrified of the response that they skip the defensive maneuvers and go directly to the high level defensive.

Cue screaming match. Or stunned silence. Either way, it’s not a positive experience for anyone.

The take away from this post is this – come straight at the issue. Get right to the point.

Check back here for more pointers on exactly how to do that.

*Major kudos to anyone who got my Chipmunks reference…

If you’d like to join me on my up coming tele-seminar “Honest Communication Without The Hurt – 7 Steps to Heart Centered Communication that Ends the Argument and Starts the Conversation” – then sign up for my newsletter now. I’ll be offering early registration discounts and priority pricing once we’re ready to go.

Share on Facebook