THE LANGUAGE OF EARLY CONFLICT RESOLUTION
The language we use in a conflict situation can determine the escalation (or otherwise) of that situation. It is the difference between ‘We’ve got a real fight on our hands’ and ‘We need to look at how we can work this out’. In particular, the language we use will need to strike the balance between acknowledging the issue and turning the existence of the conflict itself into a problem, thereby transforming it into something bigger than it actually needs to be.
Timing can be everything in resolving a conflict. The earlier the conflict can be addressed, the more opportunities for resolution and creative solutions there are available. At the same time, early stage conflicts or disagreements can run their course so it is important to avoid escalating them into something bigger than they need to be.
Personal conflict coaching
Although many of the early resolution tools and techniques discussed here are based on the principles of mediation, the essence of this book focusses around personal conflict coaching. This is the role individuals and managers can adopt to allow conflict to be addressed at an early stage. The personal conflict coaching set out in this book provides a unique, time-efficient and sustainable approach to ongoing conflicts and enables a sustainable culture of early resolution.
In our normal day to day, we are inclined to egg each other on when talking about conflict situations. If a friend or colleague complains to us about someone we often sympathise and agree with them, as opposed to helping them address the issues they are presenting. It is very easy for us to fall into the drama of the situation, and generally unknowingly, support the friend or colleague to be at odds with the other person and prove they are right and the other person is ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’. We may decide that we also, as a result of the conversation, take issue with the other person – and so the conflict develops and grows.
A personal conflict coach (or conflict coach, the term we will use in this book) is someone who will serve as a support to an individual in a conflict situation and help them find a roadmap out of that situation. Their role will be to balance and ground the individual in that situation. The conflict coach will help avoid the dysfunctional blaming and shaming behaviour that we have established fuels the conflict by guiding the individual to work through that situation, take responsibility for the part they have to play in it and become empowered to take action or make decisions throughout the process. They will serve both as a coach and an impartial champion who will enable the other person to achieve solutions as opposed to become entrenched in their position.
When we talk about coaching in this context, we are not necessarily talking about being a qualified coach but rather about applying some of the thinking or assumptions that a coach might use. These ways of thinking or coaching assumptions can include:
- being supportive
- enabling conversations that are built on truth, openness and trust
- enabling others to take responsibility for their own lives
- believing in the abilities and potential of others
- not judging or giving advice.
When we talk about a coachee, we are simply referring to someone who is receiving this sort of informal coaching support.
In practical terms, a personal conflict coach could be a manager, a team member, a housing officer, a member of the local community, a fellow student and so on. How, when and where the conflict coach provides support will vary depending on the setting (community, workplace, campus).
Sometimes the conflict coach/coachee relationship will be very informal where one party asks the other to ‘conflict coach’ them through an issue. Having said that, boundaries will often need to be set up in the personal conflict coaching relationship. These will include the scope of the conflict coach’s support, confidentiality and its limits, how the conflict coach and coachee interact with others, what happens if the conflict coaching relationship is unhelpful or doesn’t work and compensation or “quid pro quo” for the conflict coach.
How this works will depend on the setting as well as the individuals involved. Organisations and communities using conflict coaches will also need to communicate that they are available, what their role is, how to access them and so on. Conflict coaches may be part of an organisation’s early resolution scheme. These processes and practices are examined in more detail in Chapter 10 Principle 5: Build a culture of early resolution.
By adopting personal conflict coaching as a mindset, we are able to create an environment conducive to resolving our day-to-day conflicts. The result is that the focus of our workplaces and communities can move away from blame and shame and become less reliant on authoritarian figures telling us what to do. Rather, we move towards empowering, constructive environments in which we can learn and expand our horizons as a result of our disagreements and mistakes.
Facilitating vs fixing
In any personal conflict coaching situation, the conflict coach will never attempt to fix the situation. In other words, they will not try to resolve the situation or provide solutions. Rather they will facilitate the resolution process by enabling the individual with the presenting conflict to find a solution to it that works for them. The belief systems we bring to a situation can open up or shut down possibilities for resolution and are essential in creating or preventing early resolution.
In order to effectively resolve an issue we need to be conscious of the effect of not only our words but also the opinions, judgements and beliefs that sit behind them.
When we facilitate, we engage in helping others to work through a process or come to an agreement or solution while standing back and not getting directly involved in that agreement or solution. In other words, we help the process, agreement or solution to happen. In facilitating, we allow and even encourage a person to go through their process and find their solution. We do this in the belief and knowledge that the person presenting with an issue or a problem can find the answers to their challenges and problems because they know more about those challenges and problems than anyone else. The facilitator is just the agent to support the process of finding those answers.
When we fix, we present a solution to the problem to make it go away, and to some degree, to take away the problem from the other person. However, when we do this, we come from the perspective of our own limited beliefs or perspective and assume that we know the answer – or that there is no answer. Examples of limiting beliefs or perspectives are ‘I know better than this person’, ‘They are never going to achieve what they think they can’, ‘They are not capable of xyz.’
We also generally come from a perspective of urgency – that something needs to be done about the situation now. Our feelings of urgency generally translate very quickly into fear or anger driven by the pressure of finding the ‘right’ solution. This risks shutting down the possibility of finding a true or sustainable solution because the range of what is possible or what could be true starts to diminish.
When we fix, we risk shutting down the seeking instinct and triggering the fear/panic instinct. This is because in fixing or telling somebody what they should do, we take the problem away from the individual experiencing it, and in so doing effectively tell them that they may not be capable of addressing the situation themselves.
Facilitating and playing with the issues may arrive at the same result as when someone tries to fix the situation. However, facilitating play allows the parties to explore the issue and open up the possibilities. It also has the potential to allow an honest and blame-free conversation that can get to the core of the issue, ensuring that it does not resurface as opposed to putting a plaster over it.
Expansive listening and questioning
For play or creativity to be possible, we need to make space for it through expansive listening and questioning. These are set out as steps 11 and 12 in Chapter 6 Principle 3: Applying the resolution framework for difficult conversations.
Many of our conflicts could be avoided if we practised deep or expansive listening with the other person. This means not just listening to the words and body language and the inferences of the other person but also being aware of what is not being said or being skipped over.
Expansive listening requires us to empathise and, as such, be prepared to suspend our judgemental nature. We cannot play if we feel judged. We need to be heard and feel safe in what we are talking about in order to play with or explore the solution.
The requirement to suspend our judgemental nature, in turn, requires us to acknowledge how judgemental we are on a day-to-day basis. During the course of one day, we can make judgements about whether we can trust people to be our friends, share a confidence or carry out a particular job, and in so doing we make decisions or judgements about what we think they are capable of, what their values are, what they think and so on.
If we start to notice the judgements that we are making about other people, even the most non-judgemental of us will realise that we do it all day long. You may right now be judging me while you are reading this book! Discernment and judgement are key to making good decisions but can potentially get in the way of expansive listening.
Just as expansive thinking enables us to open up opportunities, so expansive listening and questioning allows the other person to see the bigger picture and explore different perspectives, possibilities and options. Expansive listening and questioning does not limit the speaker with what the listener, or indeed the speaker, may think is possible at that time. Rather it allows for creative brainstorming which can often provide options for resolution that had not been previously considered or thought possible.