Archive for the ‘Mindset’ Category

Misunderstanding and miscommunication cause many of the conflicts we experience in life. As a result, working to reduce misunderstanding and miscommunication forms the foundation for much of my work to assist teams in their efforts to reduce and resolve conflicts.

When we work for clarity of communication, clarity of understanding, and clarity of intention, we move in the direction of eliminating conflict before it begins.

A curious rather than a judgmental attitude, asking thoughtful questions, and listening intently to the answers, all pave the way for clarity. These actions also pave the way for a productive team environment.

Thought for Thursday – Strive for clarity in all of your communications.

Last week, my wife and my youngest daughter experienced a communication breakdown. In short, my daughter, at age 13, changed her plans without consulting my wife. This created a problem for two reasons:

1. My daughter moved to a different location than the previously agreed upon location for pick-up, and
2. My daughter’s schedule directly impacts my wife’s schedule.

Understandably, my wife felt frustrated and angry. Rather than address the issue while she was angry, she waited until we could speak about it on Saturday morning.

As we discussed the appropriate parental response, my wife’s frustration from the previous day came to the surface. For a brief moment, she considered “punishing” my daughter. As we spoke, I asked one question: “What is your objective? Do you want to punish her because you are angry or do you want to make sure this behavior does not happen again in the future?” (I’m not convinced that I phrased this question in the best way for her in the moment.)

She stopped briefly. Then she said: “When you put it that way, I suppose I want to make sure this does not happen again in the future.”

In that moment, my wife’s intended actions began to move towards appropriate and natural consequences for my daughter’s behavior and away from consequences that would likely communicate vengeance and anger.

My daughter did not intend to cause problems for her mother. She just did not think through all of the implications of her decision. She has some things to learn. My wife and I need to help her learn them.

My wife did not intend to harm my daughter, she wanted to protect her from making poor decisions in the future. In the emotion of the situation, she initially had a difficult time seeing past her anger.

I had the “emotional upper hand” in this situation. I was not emotionally involved in the events of the previous day. I could easily, in this case, make an objective, third-party observation. My wife lived the situation, and her emotions were directly involved. She had a more difficult time making the switch in thinking because of her emotional investment. She did it. It just was not easy for her to do.

After my wife shifted her thinking about the situation, we then discussed it  further. After a few minutes, we came to an agreement about how to handle the situation in a way that would improve our odds of achieving our real objective – teaching our daughter a life lesson that will serve her well beyond the time she lives with us.

Monday Momentum Message – Be clear about your real objective before you confront another person.

On Monday, I offered Three Tips for Heading Off Conflicts Before They Start. My third tip was to work to ensure open lines of communication.

In situations where you work closely with people over a long period of time, it is easy to start getting a bit “relaxed” in your communications. This relaxed communication approach has both good and bad implications. It can be good because it can foster openness. It can be bad when we lose the communication discipline to carefully consider what our words and actions communcate to others.

For example, my wife tends to communicate in a direct, bottom-line, high-energy fashion. When she gets really worked-up on a topic, I have difficulty telling the difference between passion about the topic and anger directed at me. Even after nearly twenty years of marriage, I still cannot easily distinguish between these two emotional states.

She is aware that her passion sometimes looks like anger to me. She works to control her expression and to tell me in words what state she is in rather than leaving it to me to interpret her tone and actions. She works hard to communicate more clearly, and she is still a human being. Sometimes she is tired, in a hurry, pressured, or otherwise distracted, and she forgets the discipline she normally works so diligently to apply to her communications.

Because we know that these moments will happen despite her best efforts. We have agreed to two code words that help me to quickly understand her thoughts and feelings. In our case, we have agreed that I can ask: “Sandra, are you angry or are you just passionate about this topic?” When I ask that question, she tells me her mental state in one word. As a result, I know exactly how to interpret the situation and how to best respond to her.

In about 95% of the situations where I would naturally interpret her behavior as angry, she is actually just passionate about the subject. In most situations, anger never even crossed her mind. Using these code words has helped us head off more conflicts than I can now count.

You can apply this same concept with the people in your life either at work or at home.

Thought for Thursday: Discuss this idea with some of the people close to you. Identify potential areas of misunderstanding or miscommunication between you, and develop code words that you can use to immediately clarify the situation for both of you.

In my last post, I offered three ways to Be a Victor, Not a Victim. In the context of conflict resolution, the thought is not about seeking victory during a conflict. Rather, the thought is about taking personal responsibility so that we don’t “play the victim” by blaming the other party.

Today, I’m offering a thought that goes with my last post. A thought that will allow you to own your piece of the conflict much more easily. Simply put, the idea is this:

Consciously assume that the other person had a positive intention for whatever they did or said.

If you are anything like me, this will take some work. On more than one occasion, I have assumed the worst of people and gotten angry only to learn later that the other party did not intend what I assumed they intended. I have thought that people were insulting me, only to find that I misunderstood some colloquial phrase. I have thought that people were angry, when they were actually in pain or frustrated by an event that had nothing to do with me.

Rather than assume that someone intends to harm me, I have learned to first assume that I misunderstood. I assume that they meant something other than what I heard, or that they are struggling to communicate their thoughts and feelings. By assuming the positive, I have found that I feel less stress, less frustration, and less irritation with others. Because I feel less stress, I am better able to work to understand their perspective without feeling compelled to force my perspective on them.

I am not perfect at applying this principle. Just read through my blog, and you will find examples of times when I did not pull this off very well. In fact, it is in the times that I failed to do this that I learned the lesson again.

When we assume positive intent, we have greater control over our emotional response, and we retain the power to control what we can control – ourselves.

In looking over the post before publishing it, I notice that it begs the question: “What if people really do mean you harm?” I acknowledge that some people really do have ill intent, and that opens a whole different sort of discussion. I find that starting with the presumption of positive intent, I am more often right about them than I am wrong. As a result, I have fewer real conflicts with people, and the ones I do have get resolved much more quickly. It is when I assume negative intent that I have more problems.

Thought for Thursday: Assume positive intent until they prove otherwise.

(I owe a hat tip to Kit Cooper for reminding me of this idea with his post over at Lifehack.

In much of my work, I see a tendency that many people have (including me) to play the victim during interpersonal conflict. I encourage my clients, and I strive myself, to overcome this tendency to blame every conflict on the other party.

I call this tendency to blame others a victim mentality. When I am blaming others, I am a “victim” of their behavior with no power to change things. I don’t really like to be a victim. So, I prefer to shift from “victim” mentality to “victor” mentality by focusing on three specific things that are completely under my control.

I strive to:

1. Own my piece of the conflict.

This idea leads directly from my posts over the last few weeks about questioning my perspective, changing my perspective, and, fixing the problem. I have seldom seen or been involved in a conflict that was entirely one party’s fault. Rather than play the victim, I take charge of my fate by identifying and owning my piece of the conflict.

2. Initiate discussion

I rarely see a conflict resolve itself, and I nearly always see open, honest discussion precede the resolution. Many people will flee from conflict rather than confront it. If I want to be a victor and not a victim, I need to take the responsibility to initiate the discussion.

3. Forgive the other party

One of my colleagues, Dr. Robert Rohm, says: “Being bitter and angry is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Harboring negative feelings towards another person does nothing to fix the situation and does much to damage the relationship. These negative feelings actually give the other person power over me. If I want to be a victor and claim control of my thoughts and actions, I have to forgive the other person so that we can get the issue resolved and agree to a suitable action plan that meets both of our needs. I could write on this one point at length, and I may at some point. I won’t go any further with it today.

I encourage you to be a victor and not a victim when you are in interpersonal conflict. Focus on these three concepts to take control of your thoughts, feelings and actions. When you are a victor, you position yourself to build momentum in all of your relationships.

Yesterday, my wife had an interchange with my oldest daughter that did not go very well. I only heard part of it, but I heard enough to know that they experienced a brief conflict.

As I took my daughter to school, I managed to “unpack” her frustration so that we could solve the problem. Through discussion with my daughter, I learned that my wife had offered a solution to a situation at school that my daughter heard as critical of her actions. Please catch this key point: my wife offered a solution, my daughter heard a criticism.

Neither one of them wanted a conflict. Both of them wanted the day to start smoothly. In the rush of getting out the door early in the morning, their communication wires got crossed. No bad intentions were involved. It was just a case of poor communication.

One person thinks and speaks in a direct, bottom-line, “solve the problem” fashion (my wife). The other person thinks and speaks in an indirect, step-by-step, process oriented fashion (my oldest daughter). Both of them want the relationship to work. And both of them have moments of frustration with the other. It’s just a normal, everyday situation.

When I returned home from taking my daughters to school, I discussed the situation with my wife. She openly embraced my observations about our daughter’s perspective without becoming defensive, and she took action to correct the miscommunication as soon as she saw our daughter in the afternoon. My wife took responsibility for the communication breakdown rather than blaming my daughter.

This learning point ties directly to this Monday’s Momentum Message where I asked you to question yourself and your results. My wife did not get the result she wanted, and she immediately questioned her perspective. She looked for ways under her control to correct the situation. As a result, she is building positive momentum into her relationship with our daughter.

Thought for Thursday: Identify the areas in your interactions with others where you subtly (maybe even unintentionally) blame them for problems between you. Then, take the responsibility for fixing the breakdown.

Over the last few weeks, I have been evaluating my online writing habits, and I have come to the conclusion that some things need to change. I need to make my writing more intentional and more consistent.

Starting this month, both my newsletter and my blogging behaviors will change. I will publish my newsletter twice per month, and I will post a blog entry twice per week.

I’m still evaluating options for layout and content in my newsletter that I will announce in the next week, but I have made some decisions about this blog.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you can expect to see new thoughts posted here every Monday and Thursday at a minimum. Monday will contain my Monday Momentum Message targeted at providing information you can use to build momentum as a leader, team member, and communicator. Thursday will contain my Thought for Thursday that will relate to the Monday Momentum Message and provide further thoughts, context, or insights to make the message stick even better. I want to make this blog a place where you can come to continually grow in your ability to resolve conflicts, lead teams, and communicate more effectively.

So, here’s the first Monday Momentum Message.

________________________________________

In January, I attended a music competition with my daughters. They have both competed in this festival for several years, and I have attended the event every year that they have competed.

I have noticed something interesting about this competition: they are nearly always behind schedule within about two hours of the start. As the competitors and their accompanists move from room to room to perform for the judges, the meticulously prepared schedule that has room and time assignments on it gradually becomes just a list of whose next to perform
with little or no regard to the actual time of day. Competitors wait for judges. Judges wait for competitors. Competitors and judges wait for accompanists. The waiting goes on and on. As near as I can tell, the competition always ends 1-2 hours later than scheduled. From a practical standpoint, the schedule is meaningless.

As my wife and I moved from one judging room to the next at the most recent competition, I asked my wife a rhetorical question: “If the schedule is always behind, why don’t the organizers find a better way to schedule the time slots or acknowledge that they can’t get all of the competitors through the process in the short amount of time they allow?”

That rhetorical question then reminded me of the Albert Einstein quote that “Insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.”

The point of this story is not to criticize the organizers. Frankly, they do an amazing job coordinating the schedules of hundreds of people in a one-day event. The point is my recognition (again) that I have to change my thinking and my behaviors to get different results.

From that rhetorical question to my wife, I then began to think about my business, my communications, my interactions, and my relationships. I began to wonder: “Where am I doing the same things over and over again with poor results and not taking the action to change?” Thus, the redesign of my newsletter and blog. I am making the move to change some things that are not yielding the results for me, or for anyone else, that I want.

Do you want to build relationship and results momentum with your team? Do you want to grow as a leader, as a communicator, or as a team member? If you do, I encourage you to question yourself. What are you doing or saying that consistently does not give you the results you want? Find that thing and change it. Make an action plan. Change it and you will start to build momentum.

I have two colleagues. Both of them contribute something valuable to our personal and professional relationships. Both of them are good at what they do. Both of them have strong opinions. Both of them feel free to express their opinions. Both of them have direct and bottom-line communication styles. Both of them have a very strong task orientation. Both of them have a sarcastic approach to humor.

I respect what both of them “bring to the table.”

One of them makes a statement that I laugh at and accept as a joke. I might even reply with my own humorous sarcasm.

The other makes a similar statement that I take personally and accept as criticism. I might even directly challenge why they said something sarcastic to me.

What’s the difference? Why does one of them bring out a protective response and the other brings out a humorous one?

Is it them? Or, is it me?

While there are differences in their approaches. There are far more similarities than differences. The similarities make me wonder, “Could I be overly sensitive with one of them? Could I be looking for a reason to take offense?”

I’m not with you every day. I don’t know everything about every interaction you have. I am with me, and I know that sometimes (maybe  I should say “often”) the response other people get from me has more to do with my perception and my thinking than it has to do with them.

I think I need to check my thinking about some of the people in my life. I think I need to work on receiving them more openly and  less judgmentally so that we experience less conflict, our relationships can move forward, and our business ventures can prosper.

Over the next week,  I plan to focus on asking the question “Could it be me?” rather than assuming the problem is with them. Won’t you join me?

Guy Harris, The Recovering Engineer