For anyone reading this blog for very long, you know that I have not posted here in a long time.

Over the last month or so, I’ve been carefully looking at how I allocate my time and where I post content. From that evaluation, I realized that I wasn’t posting here very frequently because I wasn’t really having fun doing so. This blog became an anchor around my neck.

Well, I’ve decided to change that.

I just launched a new blog at RecoveringEngineer.com with a slightly different focus. Here’s a paragraph from the “About This Blog” page at my new blogging home:

This blog is about learning to get out of your own way. It is about learning to take a close look at your thoughts, feelings, responses, and reactions to find better and more effective ways to build and maintain relationships.

I’m not sure at this point if I will continue to post content here. I may if it’s appropriate, but I think the new blog will have room for the content that would have normally gone here.

I have moved a few posts from this blog to that blog so that it has a bit of content to get started. I may move a few more posts in the future, but I’m planning to just pick up the ball and run with it developing new content and moving forward rather than looking back.

I’m still interested in conflict resolution. It is still a big part of what I do both personally and professionally. I just wasn’t excited about writing only about conflict resolution.

If you have subscribed to this blog’s feed, I hope you’ll join me on my new blog. I think it will be more fun, engaging, and enlightening for all of us.

Thanks.

Yesterday, I stopped at a fast-food restaurant to grab a sandwich. When I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed six or seven cars in the drive through line and no one standing in line inside the building. So, I parked my car, walked inside, purchased my sandwich, and returned to my car in about two or three minutes.

When I exited the building, four or five of the cars originally in line when I arrived were still in line and the line had grown to something like ten cars. And still, there was no one waiting in line inside the building.

This situation occured on a sunny day with the temperatures near 60 F – a beautiful day for November in central Indiana.

At first, I thought how silly the picture was of people waiting in their cars in line for ten or fifteen minutes when they could be in and out of the parking lot in three to five minutes by simply going inside. Then I made the connection to leadership, communication, and conflict resolution.

People have a tendency to do what seems to be easiest even when it will not produce the fastest or most efficient results.

For example, we sometimes avoid a conflict resolution discussion because it seems easier to ignore the situation in hopes that it will go away. Generally, the situations get worse rather than better when left alone. So, by avoiding a brief conversation now, we buy ourselves a week or a month of hurt feelings and reduced effectiveness. It seems easier in the moment, but it costs us in the end.

Or, we fail to confront poor performance with our employees, children, or friends because we don’t want to experience the pain of resolving the issue. As a result, we get more of the poor performance in the future until we get frustrated enough to “deal with it” (probably in a highly elevated emotional state) in a way that escalates the frustration rather than resolving it.

Conflict conversations, confrontations, and efforts at resolution are not always easy. Avoiding (or sometimes condemning) can seem easier in the moment. Taking a lesson from the drive through example:

Easy isn’t necessarily best.

Effort, work, and emotional investment to resolve a conflict while it is small can pay huge dividends in time savings and preserved relationships.

While this blog is primarily about exploring thoughts, tips, techniques, and approaches for resolving conflict in teams, I thought it might be important to acknowledge that conflict can actually be a good thing in some situations.

Good conflicts are the natural result of people working together towards a common cause. Well-intentioned, hard-working people can have honest differences of opinion that can generate conflict.

As long as the involved parties avoid mean-spirited attacks, negative judgments of character, and act in ways that preserve the relationship rather than damage it; the conflict can be good. Under these conditions, conflicting approaches and thoughts generally lead to better, more thoroughly thought out solutions to problems.

So, as we continue to look for ways to deescalate and resolve negative conflicts, let’s also remember that not all conflict is a bad thing.

Photo by shuttermonkey.

Recently, I was working through an issue with another person. They were distressed over the results of a process that affects both of us. I helped to create the process. I have authority to change the process if necessary. And I have knowledge of the system to troubleshoot and fix a fair number of problems.

As we were discussing the issue, they kept talking about their concern without giving me the details I needed to fix it for them. Since I was trying to fix the problem, I started to get a bit frustrated.

They talked.

I grew frustrated.

The talked some more.

I grew more frustrated.

The cycle continued until I said: “I get that you are concerned. I totally understand that you have a concern. Is it okay if we discuss how to solve the problem so that your concern can get resolved?”

They immediately said, “Yes, that would be great.” Their emotional level decreased. They focused on giving me the information I needed to fix the problem for them. And we had the situation resolved in less than 5 minutes from that point forward.

The other person is not a bad, difficult person. They are committed to their work. They want to do a good job, and they had a genuine concern. Because they had a concern, they became emotionally invested in the situation, and their emotional investment became a barrier to our communication. They needed me to understand that they had a concern.

Until I acknowledged their concern, they could not see past it to help me solve the problem. Their need to be heard and understood outweighed their ability to focus on the details of the problem.

The learning lesson in this is pretty simple. When you engage in a tense or emotionally charged conversation with another person, hearing, understanding, and acknowledging their emotion about the situation often creates the right environment for moving on to joint problem solving.

The converse is also often true. Failure to hear, understand, and acknowledge their emotion can create an insurmountable barrier to effective communication and joint problem solving.