Archive for the ‘Self-control’ Category

This post is a follow-up to last week’s Monday Momentum Message.

A key tenet of effective conflict resolution is that conflict resolution discussions are more productive when they focus on finding future actions that will fix the current relationship problem.

Sadly, many of us gravitate towards discussing what has or has not already happened rather than talking about what we would rather see in the future. As a result, many conflict conversations become “he said, she said” discussions where emotions flare and conflicts escalate rather than “here’s what we agree to do in the future” discussions where emotions stay in-control and conflicts get resolved.

When we talk about the past, we tend to talk about things that neither of us can change. Nothing I do will change the fact that I hurt your feelings. Nothing you do will change the fact that I received your words as demeaning and disrespectful. We can talk about our feelings at great length, but no amount of discussion will undo what has already been done.

I see great value in understanding the impact of my words and actions on you and you understanding the impact of your words and action on me. I also understand the need to discuss our emotional responses until we both feel understood. I see no value in discussing the past in an effort to “undo” it.

Recently, I overheard a conversation about a misunderstanding between several people who were involved in the situation but were not present for the conversation. One party tried, on two or three occasions, to revisit why the miscommunication was not their fault and how it could have been avoided if so-and-so had done this instead of that. Basically, they invested their energy in placing blame rather than in resolving the issue. Fortunately, the other party quickly turned the direction of the conversation back to a future focus about how to make sure everyone involved had the right information in the future.

One party worked really hard to avoid taking the blame. The other party ignored blame altogether and focused on a solution. The conversation quickly moved from “he said, she said” to “what can we do together to fix this.” Emotions almost immediately calmed, and both parties had a productive conversation.

When we focus on the past, we generally focus on blame. When we focus on the future, we tend to focus on solutions.

Monday Momentum Message – Learn from the past, don’t stay there.

If you look through my blog, you will probably notice that Tammy Lenski is one of my favorite conflict resolution bloggers. She consistently has great content at Conflict Zen.

This weekend, I noticed this post where she mentions that she will be speaking at a Women’s Leadership Summit in Manchester, NH in June. Her post inspired my thinking for my topic today.

Here’s the short version of what she will be speaking about at this conference:

Too many negotiations get cluttered with baggage, sidetracks, pop-psych diagnoses and other traps that inhibit reaching resolution and minimizing debris in personal and professional relationships.

A professional mediator and negotiation coach will teach you how to unclutter negotiations and focus on the most important parts of the discussion. You will learn how to:

• Recognize what is really important in any negotiation.
• Keep the conversation on track.
• Set aside the garbage and prevent it from polluting the negotiation.

Reading the description of her talk reminded me of how often we let conversations get too complicated. We talk at length about past events that cannot be undone. We go off on tangents about what would have happened if:

• I had done this
• You had done that
• I had said it this way
• You had said it that way
• blah, blah, blah…

How many times have you found yourself “in the weeds” when speaking to your coworker, your boss, your spouse, or your child about a conflict? For me, I find that it happens far too frequently. When it does happen, focusing on the past is almost always the cause.

I find that getting off-track tends to come from an effort to discuss or fix things that either do not really matter to the future of our relationship or cannot be changed by anything we do in the future.

In writing this post, I find myself thinking about one of my favorite scenes from the Disney movie The Lion King. As Simba, the young lion, and Raficki, the wise, old monkey, walk across a field, Raficki hits Simba on the head with his walking stick. Simba says: “Hey, wha’d ya’ do that for?” Raficki replies: “It don’t matta’. It’s in the past.”

With that thought in mind, here’s my Monday Momentum Message: Focus more energy on what you can do to positively impact the future than you do on what happened negatively in the past.

The well timed and disciplined pause can be a great conflict resolution tool. While conflict resolution nearly always requires a face-to-face conversation, knowing when not to speak can be just as important as knowing when to speak and what to say.

As Abraham Lincoln said: “I am very little inclined on any occasion to say anything unless I hope to produce some good by it.”

As you move through this week, keep in mind this Monday Momentum Message: Use the Power of the Pause.

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.