Coming up on the Leadership Growth Podcast.(upbeat music) There is a pattern of behavior that drives me crazy in sitcoms, and so many of them are based all around this, and it is the absence of clear communication. All they have to do is take the main character and the kid or the wife, and suddenly they don't communicate or they avoid communicating or there's a misperception and they could have cleared it up earlier, but they don't. So they can then have 15 or 20 or 50 minutes worth of hijinks and confusion, and then finally at the end, they have the conversation that they could have had a half hour ago. And I'm sitting there going, this is not even, this is not clever.(laughing) It's a personal thing. Nonetheless, the point is to talk. Like, if you are in conflict, if you are not understanding something, if you think there might be a misperception, if you have the stinking conversation. Have the direct— interact, start small, before it gets even bigger, but talk. Go to the person and say, I need your guidance, I need your thoughts, I need your input, I need to hear something to confirm or to help me change, to reframe. Yes, it takes a little bit of time, but somehow we always have time after to go through all of the drama of things that probably could have been dealt with beforehand. Now, we're busy, I get it. However, how do we talk? How often can we talk? Hence, the importance of the regular one-on-one conversations, the touch bases, the regular interaction. If you only use email, pause, call up the phone, have a Teams call, something. But the point is to talk, talk, talk, and not to let things fester and these misperceptions grow.(upbeat music) Hey everyone, welcome to the Leadership Growth Podcast, where we talk about tools and ideas to help you grow your leadership ability. I'm your host, Daniel Stewart, joined with my brother, Peter Stewart, and we will be your guides today as we dive into another great episode, especially today as we talk through managing conflict, really navigating conflict as a leader. But before we do that, Peter, as we often dive into at the beginning, we kind of share an Insight of the Week.(upbeat music) What's on your mind that you'd like to share here?- Sure, let me share an insight from one of my boys, Little League coaches. So they had a pretty tough loss the other day, blowout. And we get this text from the coach. And I thought it just captured a lot of really good points that are applicable to a lot of scenarios. So here's what the coach said. Said, "Tough loss tonight.”"Put ourselves in a hole early.”"Baseball is a game of inches and bounces.”“And honestly, one or two of those go our way,”“the game is completely different.”“As strange as it may seem after a loss,”“I will say I'm very proud of this team as a whole.”“Every boy on this team hustled and never gave up.”“Everyone contributed and kept fighting until the end.”“As coaches, that's all we can really ask for.”“We preach to the boys that mistakes are going to happen.”“It's how you get past those mistakes and move on,”“which will define them as players”“for the rest of their baseball careers.”“I think they did very well in that tonight.” So I thought, here it is, tough loss. Boys played hard, but the coach was trying to put things into perspective. They put forth good effort, they hustled, they tried. Can they learn from these mistakes? And it's a learning opportunity for the next game.- Yeah. That's a touching and well-described little message. And we'll touch upon this learning opportunity later. That's such a great theme in general. And you know it just reminds me of, what is it? Baseball Hall of Fame. You know, if you get above 300, then you're amazing. And that essentially means you strike out. You are unable to be successful two-thirds of the time. And when you start thinking about it like that, I mean, in some ways that's pathetic.(laughing) However, that's reality. And for people who can go from 200 to 300, that's, I mean, that's beginning to be signs of greatness.- Oh, it's huge. Ted Williams, a long time baseball amazing player, record for batting average in a season, he was over 400.- Last one to do that. - But still 60% of the time, he wasn't getting on base or getting a hit.- Yeah. - Yeah. And that's what's interesting, I think baseball, and there are other sports that way as well, it's a spotlight sport. Meaning the action is focused on a single player at a time. It's on that batter. And so how do you perform when all eyes are on you?-Mm hmm. Recognizing there's gonna be a lot of very public failure. And so there's lessons to be learned. There are scenarios in the professional world where it's a spotlight.- Yeah.- Everyone's eyes are on you. Not every hit is gonna be a home run. And there are times you swing and miss.- You know, it also reminds me, I was just meeting with an executive leadership team earlier this week, and we were talking about decision-making traps. And one of those traps is the recency effect. And that recency effect can be so powerful. And when you think about having very high expectations for somebody on your team, which yes, that's what we preach. We want to have that. The challenge is giving some grace, some guidance, some space for learning, because not everyone is going to hit it out of the park every single time, to continue the baseball metaphor. And yet, the most recent experience can often anchor us so much. And that's how we view that person. Instead of sitting back and saying, wait a minute, let's look at the bigger context. Let's look at the bigger performance. That previous was a blip or it was a learning experience. Let's keep going. Now, if it turns into a pattern, that's different, but let's allow people the chance to strike out. Let's allow them a chance to try to get on base and then for them to keep learning and growing as long as there's some level of progress in that effort. Yeah, you keep trying, you learn from the mistakes. And to play on the other bias that can get in the way in terms of recency effect, the other would be the halo effect, in which we perceive that somebody is really good at a variety of activities because they excel at one or two. And so it can cloud our judgment and assumptions of how they're going to do. And so we don't get into that critical eye and really see how their performance is.- Right.- And so it's, yeah, there's that constant being able to reflect on our assumptions, say, are we really seeing things clearly? And looking at it from that development mindset, that growth mindset.- Yeah, and that's a fantastic segue onto the main topic here today, navigating conflict. How do we view conflict accurately? What do we do with it? How much of it do we encourage? How much of it is too much? And there are some of us who try to stay away from conflict as much as we can, and there are others who like live for it and try to stir it up when even it's not as necessary. Where's that balance? What does that look like, especially as a leader?'Cause to a certain degree, a healthy amount of conflict, disagreement, dispute, debate is incredibly powerful as a tool toward higher levels of performance. So Peter, as I say conflict, talk about how do you define it? How do you view it? What is conflict in your mind?- Oh, it can mean a lot of things. And I think actually before I get into the definition, it's a good thing for listeners to pause. And as we say that word conflict, what are those free associations that come to mind for you? You know, it's a great way to help know your natural tendency. As we say conflict, are you like, oh yeah, bring it on. Or is it, oh, I don't wanna go into work today. I know I'm gonna see this person have it. And, you know, the whole full spectrum in between. So having a little bit of that awareness for ourself can matter. So here, because conflict can be so loaded with emotion and a focus on who's right, who's wrong, it's a status, it's a progression, there's a lot that can go into it. Here is a very neutral definition of conflict which I've used for years. and it clarifies that environment in which conflict actually occurs. So conflict occurs when opinions appear to be incompatible. So let me say that again. Conflict occurs when opinions appear to be incompatible. So it doesn't mean whether they actually are or not. We're talking about the perception, the appearance of opinions that cannot dwell in the same place at the same time. They're incompatible. So it takes it away from I'm right or I'm wrong or you idiot or whatever it is to, oh, it appears that we have incompatible opinions. Can we talk about this?(laughing) At a very formal way, pulling the emotion out.(laughing) Yeah. How would you respond if someone came to you and said,"Daniel, it appears that we have incompatible opinions.” I'd be like, "Have you been talking to my brother?" I mean, because the essence is correct. We don't talk like that. And so, what's other language that we can use? Because in many ways, it's an invitation, and this is one of the main initial points I wanted to really highlight is for us to look at moments of conflict as learning experiences and kind of drawing on this idea of learning as we talked about earlier with the baseball, text and such, when moments of conflict, when we appear to be in opposition or indifference from somebody else or something else. Are we capable of pausing for a moment and saying, what can I learn about this situation? What insight? What can I learn about my psyche, my perspective, my effort, my desire? What's my outcome that I'm hoping for? And what's the other persons? Are they clear about it? What are they— Do I care enough about it to spend a moment and to say, what can I learn? But the point is to have that, huh, what can I learn here? What can I learn about you, me, us, the situation that might be helpful in the future? Yeah. It's that ability to pause and suspend judgment and invite curiosity. In which questions then can be asked of, all right, I'm not sure whether or not I agree with what you're saying. It may be in conflict to what I think, but I wanna understand what you're saying. Share with me more about what some of the reasoning behind your assertion, your thought, your fact. I had one CEO who would use the phrase coming from more of a technical world,"Let me come and swim in your data lake."(laughing) I wanna know what's the pool of information that you are basing your conclusion off of. Will you let me in?- So let's stay with this,'cause this is another key theme, not only learning, but it's coupled closely with a willingness to listen to the other person. That can be dang hard in the moment when you're emotionally triggered and/or you believe you are right, the other person is off their rocker, they're nuts. Whatever it is, as emotions can quickly escalate, and yet one of the most important parts of navigating conflict in a healthy way is to listen, is to pause long enough, is to ask something to help me understand. Where are you coming from? How has this worked in the past? How does this sequence... play it out? How do you listen in moments that are just really much larger than they might need to be.- Yeah, oh, it is one of the hardest things. It pulls in, you have to have a little bit of emotional intelligence to recognize your own emotional experience. And am I too amped up? Am I too emotional to really have this conversation?- Yeah.- Sometimes we do need to take a time out, say, I want us to get to the bottom of this. I want to understand what you're doing, but right now I gotta take a breather. You know, I need a pause. I gotta get my amygdala, the front part, you know, get our front part of my brain active again as the amygdala is hijacked. I've just become too emotionally aroused and intense and into this. So that's one step. It's being aware of, can you really have a good rational thought right now? If you can't, conflict management, resolution, conversation, there isn't much good that's going to come right now. Or if you sense that in somebody else, it's not the time to really get into the details of the conversation, it's how do we help them cool down? And sometimes it's giving them that space. But I will say, nobody has ever calmed down by being told to calm down.(laughing)- Well put. Okay, so let's go there a little bit more. Let's go to some place that's really thorny and hard to deal with. So a different executive team I was working with actually just yesterday, they have such challenging dynamics. There are a few people on that team that have such long histories with each other that they're in constant conflict with each other. No matter what the other person suggests, in any meeting, the other person will immediately dismiss it, discount it, not pay attention, even if it might have merit. How do you deal with that? Or are we just at an impasse? Because ultimately we'd say, yes, slow down your reactions, pause, be the better person, manage how you react, and listen, look for some kernel of something. And yet the other person may never want to calm down. And this is the challenge, of course, how do I control myself? And how do I deal with the situation when the other person refuses to calm down, refuses to reframe? Peter, how do you manage through that?- That's really an easy scenario. I don't know why you're saying that's a complicated one.'Cause it is, it's here we, I mean, it's fundamental to these human interactions. We do not have the ability to control the reactions of others, even though we would love to in certain situations. You touched on an important point of trying to even build on common ground. You're trying to make that easy. Sometimes those scenarios can't be fixed with a dyad, with just two people.- Oh, yeah.- That's why occasionally you need to bring in somebody else, a third party, a mediator, an additional voice to help facilitate that dialogue. It doesn't have to be a professional necessarily, but it's somebody else who can be sitting there listening as you set up a little bit of a ground rule on, okay, we gotta work through this. We have come to an impasse in which it is detrimental to our organization or our team or whatever it is. If we both wanna coexist here, we gotta figure out a path forward. And it doesn't sound like we can figure it out on our own. So we're bringing in somebody else to help us get there.- So there's that mediator route. It's looking at base assumptions, seeing what there's commonality. What about this other idea, another main point here, which is to clarify acceptable behavior and clarifying unacceptable behavior. In some ways, that's expectation management. And there might be some ability to do that peer to peer. Boss to direct report might be a little easier in some way because there's more of an authority that one can leverage. direct report up to their manager, managing up, can be especially challenging. The idea of clarifying behavior, how does that, how might that look? Because that's really important, and you can clarify yourself to look at the mirror and say, these are the behaviors that I will allow myself to do when I'm in a state of conflict. And these are the behaviors that are no longer consistent with my values. And that's where sometimes the danger is your own personal values can get thrown out the window when you are in the height of emotional conflict. And the key is to be able to then reflect and say, wait a minute, who am I? What do I truly value? So that I can look at myself in the mirror later and still have some level of respect and consistency about how we wanna behave. So how do you then clarify these behavioral expectations? What's acceptable, what's not during conflict?- I mean, you just highlighted some really important steps there for an individual to do, to take that look inside, what are the values? What are those things I'm not going to compromise?'Cause that says a lot. But then back to your question, well, how do you set that up? How do you communicate it? Hopefully you're setting this up at a time in which it is not a period of emotional intense arousal, in which you've already level set these conversations, these expectations, how do we treat each other? What are the values that we're bringing in to these conversations? How do we propose to work through conflict as it comes? So you've set the, you've prepared for it. In fact, you know conflict will happen. So it's not a surprise. Why? Because you're building trust in a team and that sets the stage so you can actually have good productive healthy debate and conflict.-Yeah. And so, now, if you haven't set it up ahead of time, that's really where it's looking at having that when can we be actually level headed enough to begin to talk through and what is the objective here and now for this? What are we trying to get at here? And then let's knock that down a couple levels because we may not get there. And it's those incremental gains. What else would you add?- Well, you're reminding me of the importance of a team charter. One of those team charter elements is to create and identify the norms or the behaviors that are expected on a team. That's part of that conversation to say, okay, during good times, during bad times, during uncertain times, these are the behaviors that we will aspire to. This is what we will shoot for. This is what we should expect from each other on this team. The ideal, of course, is to do that ahead of time. Will it always be followed? Not necessarily, but it's aspirational. We have something to come back to and say, what did we just learn? How can we keep aspiring to this? How can we keep improving? And it's a key point, especially to consider as you do a team charter, when we're in moments of stress and conflict, how do we expect that we show up? What can we do to help each other be able to do that? Because on our own, we might more easily just kind of fail on some of those behaviors. But to have some sort of standards, expectations ahead of time, and for all of us to agree to it, critical to help. And then I would also add, we all show up in stress a little differently. And to be very honest with ourselves, for some of us, we become increasingly more analytical. And we dive deeper into the numbers, and we use that as kind of a crutch because we don't want to then assert our own opinion. Others, we take things really, really personal, and we then take it all on ourselves and immediately assume that people are out to get us, though they don't like us somehow. And others, we withdraw out of the situation, the conversation completely, and we avoid. And we say, nope, it's not me. All of those are behaviors that we need to be aware of what we do as well, so that we know how to manage that. Yeah, please.- I'd add a fourth to it, and those are the ones that acquiesce. They just... it's not that they're removing themselves necessarily, they're just going to agree to everything.- Right. There's —I'm just gonna accommodate whatever's needed, whatever happens. So it's recognizing how are those coming across? And to your point of building that team charter ahead of time, clarifying those ground rules for when conflict happens, it helps to get the conflict before it's festered too much, before the roots have gotten too deep. You know, going back to, we could use the firefighting analogy. You know, the one alarm, two alarm, three alarm, four alarm fire, how do we get conflict before it's hit that four alarm state so that we're able to see it and to look at it and to recognize when it is. It's much easier to deal with it when it's relatively small.- Yeah.- Before it's turned into a huge thing.'Cause then over time it just escalates and rolls over. So this actually reminds me, Daniel, I know you love sitcoms.(laughing) Why, and I say this facetiously, these drive you nuts. What is it about sitcoms that just, why do you just hate 'em?- So I'll be clear. Sometimes they're okay, but there is a pattern of behavior that drives me crazy in sitcoms, and so many of them are based all around this, and it is the absence of clear communication. All they have to do is take the main character and the kid or the wife, and suddenly they don't communicate or they avoid communicating or there's a misperception and they could have cleared it up earlier, but they don't. So they can then have 15 or 20 or 50 minutes worth of hijinks and confusion, and then finally at the end, they have the conversation that they could have had a half hour ago. And I'm sitting there going, this is not even, this is not clever.(laughing) It's a personal thing. Nonetheless, the point is to talk. Like, if you are in conflict, if you are not understanding something, if you think there might be a misperception, if you have the stinking conversation. Have the direct— interact, start small, before it gets even bigger, but talk. Go to the person and say, I need your guidance, I need your thoughts, I need your input, I need to hear something to confirm or to help me change, to reframe. Yes, it takes a little bit of time, but somehow we always have time after to go through all of the drama of things that probably could have been dealt with beforehand. Now, we're busy, I get it. However, how do we talk? How often can we talk? Hence, the importance of the regular one-on-one conversations, the touch bases, the regular interaction. If you only use email, pause, call up the phone, have a Teams call, something. But the point is to talk, talk, talk, and not to let things fester and these misperceptions grow.- 'Cause they grow so quickly. And here's an indicator for you of when they fester. How often you have those side conversations complaining about somebody else. And especially if it's the same person or it's the same issue, really what does that complaining do? What function is that helping? It's really not doing anything, but further reinforce your own frustration with it, making it more intense, and now you're polluting somebody else's opinion of somebody else as well, as you're complaining to them about it. Why not take that initiative and try and have the more direct conversation with the individual?- Yeah, and sometimes we will not have that because we can imagine all sorts of things after not going well, fair. We need to imagine this and yet challenge ourselves to have a direct conversation, allow the other person the chance to become aware and to rise up and be an adult and have a direct conversation. It might be unsettling at first, give them a chance. Now again, all of these things, we need to consider the full situation and yet have a direct conversation and express that you also care. So that care and directness. This leads to the other point here, this common ground idea. We've mentioned this, there is a lot to just look at. How do we identify this common ground? Because sometimes we ignore the common ground and we focus so much on the differences. when in fact, inevitably, there's something, there's something that we can go back to. How do we do this, Peter?- Sometimes it's a little trial and error, and you can start close, saying, hey, are we both wanting to help this customer? Are we both trying to meet this deadline? Are we both trying to at least help this organization still exist? Are we both trying to at least provide for loved ones or whatever it might be. Sometimes you really have to pull back and go just completely foundational as you've taken a few shots at trying to find some that are in closer proximity to actually what you're doing. But it's seeking for that, it's trying to find it. And you can guess, but you can also ask. Ask the question of, why is this so important to you?- Yeah.- When you ask that question, it's like, I hear your passion around this. Sounds like we don't necessarily agree. Can you share with me why this hits you so strongly? What is it about that? Odds are, in that explanation, you can look for some area to connect on.- Yeah. And this why, you're making me think, an executive I worked with several years ago, I was pushing him, in a coaching situation, I was pushing him to understand why he viewed the situation the way he did. And so I asked him why, and he gave me an answer, and I sat back, and I said,"Why?"Why else?" And he was like, "Okay," and he gave me another reason. And it was about on the third or fourth. And you could tell that he was getting a little agitated. Because I kept saying, why else? Give me another why. And any time I will do that-- and this is the five whys. It's a known tool. It's fantastic. But to actually apply it in a personal conversation to understand what really is driving somebody. Where I find you finally reached it is when it becomes incredibly personal. It's no longer about the team or the company or society, or it's how is it going to help them? What is it that they truly value that it connects with? And suddenly you can sit back and go, thank you. That's why. That's why. Yeah. Oh, it's powerful. And it's a tool you can leverage. It takes patience and it takes trust to be able to dig in. But once you get to that third or fourth why, you're right. Inevitably it's personal and it's forced them to really dig deep and think. Yeah. So we've talked a lot about navigating conflict. Conflict is gonna happen. It will continue to happen. That's one thing I'll guarantee. I'm gonna put a personal promise, conflict will continue down the road. But how do we not be afraid of it? How do we feel confident in it? And even leverage it as a tool, a tool to be able to advance ideas, to build relationships, to so many different things. So Lightning Round, Daniel.(upbeat music) What is the one thing you would suggest to a conflict avoider.- The conflict avoider who does not want to embrace conflict, this is what they should do. They need to sit back and they need to focus on how much they care about the person or the situation and to then frame up very clear ways of communicating what they have in common and what the challenges are. How do they care? And what are the commonalities? And to then have the guts to say it. And they may need to have somebody else push them, but they focus on the care and the direct conversation to be able to then move things forward. The other thing I'll add is whether you're a conflict avoider or somebody who embraces conflict, whatever you are, also work on your ability to forgive. Forgiveness is a powerful thing that we undervalue at times. We may not be able to forget. We're really good. We wanna try to forget, but at least forgive and move forward and focus more in the future.- Oh, it's so critical to let that opportunity for growth to happen. Because if we approach every interaction fearful that we are going to say something wrong, we've already put a governor on ourself. But if we are willing to forgive and feel that others can forgive us, then okay, we may not say the perfect right thing at the exact right moment every time. Because odds are we're not. Because we're mortal humans.- Yeah.- But giving that forgiveness is important.- Peter, another great Leadership Growth Podcast. Always a pleasure.- Thank you.- Well folks, thanks for listening, especially as we've developed and focused our tools and insights around helping us navigate conflict as effective leaders. Please join us for a future episode, like and subscribe, as well as send us ideas and topics you'd like us to talk about at podcast@stewartleadership.com. We'd love to hear from you. 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