Part One in a three-part series applying insights from conflict styles to parent-child relationships.  By Laura Bowles, coach and mediator, Style Matters trainer, and founder of The New Normal, LLC. 

Being a parent changes many things!  For me,  my conflict style was one of those.

On the Style Matters inventory, my highest score in Storm is Harmonizing.  This means that when things get tense, I tend to focus on keeping others happy, and I am quick to let go of my own goals and agendas if necessary to achieve that.   I think of myself as flexible and responsive to others!

Conflict comes with parenting. However, it got complicated when I became a parent. I quickly realized that I couldn’t let go of my agenda all of the time. I have a duty to set boundaries with my kids, and often it’s right to be firm about those boundaries.  You have to wear clothes!  Brush your teeth! Don’t jump into water that’s over your head if you can’t swim!  

Perfect Downloads for Summer Reading

There are some high quality, no-strings resources on conflict out there  for free right now!   If you're looking for summer reading, here's two good options.

High Conflict by Amanda Ripley

Since publication last year, Amanda Ripley's book, High Conflict: How We Get Trapped and How We Get Out has consistently drawn praise from reviewers. It's an engaging presentation of key skills and strategies for dealing with entrenched conflict, the kind we see and feel all around us these days.

Ripley structures the book around a series of real-life stories and shows how people used things like investigating the understory (there is one behind every entrenched conflict, she notes) re-framing, broadening identities, finding commonalities, marginalizing the fire-starters (the people who get a thrill out of the fight), buying time and space, and other responses that can get beyond polarization.

The publisher, Simon and Schuster, for reasons I'm not clear about, is currently offering the book as a free download on their site or Amazon Kindle.   If you get the book from Kindle, you can also get it in Audible for listening.   I was told it's available only till end of July - which might be true or just publisher hype to create FOMO (Fear of Missing Out, a common marketing strategy).

Let's Talk about Hard Things by Anna Sale

While you're downloading High Conflict you might as well also get another outstanding book on conflict which Simon and  Schuster are also offering as a free download. Anna Sale's book, Let's Talk about Hard Things is about conflict with people we love, with chapters on death, sex, money, family, and identity.

An easy way to expand your conflict resolution ability is to begin using the two step discussion process. This is so simple that you might say, "Isn't it obvious?"  Well, no.  It certainly wasn't to me for many years.  So here's a personal story that shows its power. 

In a large institution where I worked, people rolled their eyes about the facilities manager.  Kathy had been there for ages and people said she was an inflexible nitpicker.  Everyone had a story - we all had to go through her to arrange space and technical support for our meetings and workshops.

Soon after I arrived, I too had my moment with Kathy.  I needed access to meeting rooms at unusual hours.  This required a special key - which she tightly controlled.   I also needed her permission to bring in special equipment.

These are scary times, and it's not just COVID19.  Polarization is rooted now in ways not experienced in living memory.  Groups live in separate worlds, with their own news, networks, rhetoric, and influencers.  Violence, threats of violence, and disregard for democratic processes are commonplace.  It is not exaggerating to say that  the rule of law and democracy seem to be in danger.  

What can we do about it?  The causes are many; there will be no single solution.  High on the list of essential responses, I believe,  must be strategies to improve skills in resolving conflicts and building consensus.   But how?

Our methods of making decisions and resolving conflict are out-dated.

Author and former CIA analyst Martin Gurri points out that public institutions today are an inheritance of the 20th century, "the heyday of the top-down, I-talk-you-listen model of organizing humanity. They are too ponderous and too distant from ordinary people. Legitimacy depended on control over information: failure and scandal could be dealt with discreetly. Once the digital tsunami swept away the possibility of control, the system lapsed into crisis." (see his dialogue with Yuval Levin here)

Like it or not, there's no going back to the old ways of leading and managing.  We must expand the skill set of leaders at all levels. 

Does your behavior in conflict change sharply when you get upset?  Do you turn suddenly aggressive when surprised or angered?  Or, when conflict heats up, does your assertiveness quickly fade, replaced by avoidance or accommodation?

What is a Storm Shift?

Such patterns may reflect a strong Storm Shift in conflict, a marked change in behavior as stress rises.  Stress, anger, or fear trigger a shift in brain functioning, away from rational "upper brain" management, towards control by the instinct-guided "lower brain".   This can bring drastic changes in response to conflict.

A Storm Shift is not necessarily bad; it can in fact be good if your automatic responses are skillful and appropriate for the situation triggering them.  You want the surgeon who operates on you to react instantly, for example, if your blood pressure drops.  You want a quick shift to a different modality, an instant command of the situation, with clear orders to the medical team.  No negotiating, no pussyfooting around!

We're reading a lot these days about leaders who bully. 

In "When the Boss is a Bully", a recent NY Times article points out that aggressive toughness has its rewards.  Some people like the idea of a very task focused leader.   Better to have a leader who gets the job done, albeit rudely, than one who nicely fails to deliver. 

People tend to extend the benefit of any doubt to a leader who acts decisively, according to research cited in the Times article.  One researcher calls this the "leader's rosy halo" effect, a tendency for others to fall back and follow someone who is bold, decisive, and confident.  There is no evidence pushy leaders offer better solutions than anyone else, but others are attracted to decisiveness and tend to follow.  

  

Conflict Styles and Strong Leadership

A key concept in the conflict styles framework is that every conflict style has strengths and weaknesses.  We need all five styles.   Don't write off toughness just because it's not nice.

I learned this the hard way in my twenties when I found myself regretting I had not been more firm with my dog in training.  One day she ignored my call, as she often did.  She ran onto a road, and died under a car.   

Sometimes when there's a conflict, the best thing to do is say nothing and just drift away.  Or say firmly, "Let's not take that on right now. "  If you're good at selective conflict avoidance, you will have a greater sense of order and control in your life, and you will have more time and patience for the issues most important to you.

This post is the first in a series to help  you expand your skill with the five styles of conflict interpersonally or in leadership.  In each post I'll show you several transition phrases for one particular style - in this post for Avoiding. Each of the five styles of conflict in Style Matters - which are similar to those found in the venerable if now out-dated Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument - will feature in posts that follow.

Not everyone needs this post!  It's especially for people who find conflict Avoiding difficult or scored low in Avoiding in their score report.  If you scored high, other posts in the series will be more useful to you. 

Sometimes you have to be pushy in conflict.  You have to say No! and really mean it, insist that people step back, or lead in a direction others resist.   If you are not able to do this, you will someday be taken advantage of or violated in ways that hurt and handicap you, for years. 

Worse, you will someday fail to meet your responsibilities in a role you care about, like parenting, teaching, coordinating group activities, leading a team, facilitating meeting, exercising professional duties, or any number of other things important to you and your community.  Success, health, even life itself, sometimes depends on someone being pushy.

But most of us prefer being nice more than being tough. 

In this post, second in a series on the five styles of conflict, I show you how to balance nice and tough, using transition phrases for being pushy in challenging situations.  These are phrases you've prepared in advance of stormy moments to help you gracefully initiate a conflict style that is challenging to pull off.

General Principles for Graceful Directing

Directing involves pursuing a goal without be distracted or deterred by the resistance of others.  There are many shades of Directing, since skilled people usually blend some other styles into the mix. But in its pure form, Directing gives high priority to a task or goal and  low priority to relationships. 

The Cooperating Style of conflict management is about actively seeking ways for both sides to win everything they want.  I assert myself clearly and confidently.  You do the same.  We work together to find solutions that allow us to both get what we want.  I win and so do you - how wonderful! 

Or maybe, how ridiculous.   A magical conflict style that makes everyone happy?  Ha, haa, haaa.   We could be forgiven for starting a review of Cooperating with a big laugh. Real life isn't that easy and we all have stories to prove it.

You can't do conflict resolution without doing anger management.

Anger is an emotion that everyone needs.  Don’t wish it away.  It provides resources essential to self-protection and survival.  It helps us respond quickly, with high energy, to dangerous or unpleasant situations.

But that doesn't mean it's fine to rant when you're pissed.

Talk About Anger in a Non-Angry Way

Researchers in several fields find that expressing anger in an angry way feeds the problem.

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I spent much of the last month writing new text for the score report of Style Matters. That’s the 10 page personalized report from the online version of my conflict style inventory, whose numbers, with my reflections thereon, go out to users after taking the inventory.

Commanders in military establishments, janitors in neighborhood associations, freshmen at Bible colleges, and pretty much everybody in between read (and I like to think, ponder) this thing; according to logs on our server, nearly 365 days a year.

As usual in our multi-religious family, I did both Pesach and Easter celebrations. Sort of. But mostly, while others congregated for holidays, I wrestled epiphanies in text on my laptop.

And got new hope and vision as I remembered why conflict resolution continues to grip me. Here my traditionalist and my modernist, my believing and my agnostic, my monastic and my populist selves meet. Conflict, or at least reflecting on human responses to it, remains holy ground to this once Mennonite farmer, now aging peace process facilitator.

Can you lead in times of emergency?  Don’t think that's for someone else.  Life exempts none from this call.  

Unless you're a hermit, a time will come when you too must act and lead in the face of danger, no matter your rank or station.

And now is the time to prepare.

Directing Stars in Emergencies

In times of grave threat, tough decisions must be made and actions quickly taken.  What protective measures to take?  Must you flee?  What to carry with you? Who gets priority for assistance?  What about those who won't budge?  Where to shelter and how to get there?

Professional emergency responders such as police, fire, medical, and transportation structure decision-making and action in tight chain-of-command hierarchies.   Superiors decide and give orders; subordinates obey.  

Do you know people who get upset and insulted easily?  They may not realize it, but they're setups for easy manipulation. When you’re easily triggered, you’re a sitting duck for anyone having a bad day.  

All it takes is a few choice words. Your buttons are pushed and you shuffle yourself off to the land of the Grumps.

Why give other people that kind of power over you?

Be Un-Insultable

You have no control over the behavior of others.  You can't stop them from being annoying.  But you can remove your "Insult" button from easy public access.  Be un-insultable.  

It’s much easier said than done, of course. But it’s a choice you can make and work at achieving.

The Pyramid of Conflict Resolution Skills

What is the connection between interpersonal conflict resolution tools like my Style Matters conflict style inventory or the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument and big conflicts of our world, like ethnic and religious violence or threat of nuclear war?

There is in fact a connection between what happens between human beings at the smallest level every day and what happens between nations.   We can't build a peaceful world until parents, teachers, and leaders see this connection.  We must all act on it and teach others about it.

Below is a Pyramid of Competency to show the many layers of competence - and how they relate to each other - that are required for humans to live together peacefully.   I use it at the beginning of training on almost any conflict resolution topic to locate it on a map of "the big picture" of peace skills.  I also use it with individuals eager to pursue conflict resolution skill development to chart a pathway for learning. 

If you took my Style Matters conflict styles inventory or the Thomas Kilmann, you've already given some attention to the second level, "Interpersonal negotiation and conflict resolution".

Ponder this pyramid and you get some clues about why, despite all the progress humans have made, and all the institutions we've created, we're still barely out of  the Dark Ages with conflict resolution.

Here’s a strategy to improve dynamics in a difficult conversation:  In an argument or tense discussion, replace "but" with “and”.

Lawyer/mediator Susan Ingram describes this in her recent blog. “Typically", she writes, “When you’re having a discussion with another person, both of you are going back and forth with each of your own proposals, and not really listening to what the other person has just said.”

When we begin our comments in a conversation with “but”, Ingram says, "we are essentially negating and dismissing what the other person has just said. We are not valuing that person’s experiences and ideas and are just focusing on the point we want to make.”

Instead, she suggests, start with the word "and". By doing this, say writes, "we are acknowledging that we have heard what the other person has said and allowing that there may be value in his or her words. Thus, we are effectively keeping the channels of communication open, encouraging problem solving, and moving the conversation along to a more likely resolution.”

Replacing “but” with “and” sounds easy, but it's not a simple cut and replace. You have to listen carefully and craft your “and” response in a way that conveys your concerns.     You have to think it through and adjust a sentence or more in order for your "and" response to make sense.

Do you use an angry voice to communicate or give instructions when a firm, even voice would do the job just as well?



I witness this most commonly in sports settings, where it seems to be accepted that coaches and trainers shout angrily at those they are training.  I'm not talking about raising the voice to be heard.  I mean shouting with angry inflections and body language, to convey authority and motivate.  

Sports isn't the only place this happens.  Every parent and teacher - and I speak as a veteran of both roles - gets ticked off at the youngsters in our charge sometimes.   So do team leaders, managers, and supervisors of all sorts, working with all ages.   Frustration comes with the territory of leadership. 

Anger is a powerful tool for many good purposes, when used sparingly.  The volume and intensity of anger say "Listen up...!" and often people do.  When it's exceptional, anger gets attention and underscores a message.

But used frequently, the positive effects of anger diminish.  Anger stresses people.  Eventually they tune out and turn inwards for relief from the bombardment.  Then you have to shout louder for the same effect.  

Worse,  your emotional outbursts trigger similar responses in others.  Drama and disrespect creep into many discussions and become normal.  All communication suffers, frustration spirals, and morale goes down. 

What’s your experience of meetings?

"They're boring.  They're useless. Everyone hates them.  So why can't we stop meetings?"  laments a recent article in the New York Times,  "Meet is Murder."

Research by Fuze, a telecommunications company, finds organizations spend 15% of their staff time in meetings.  For upper level managers, it's 50%!  Yet meeting facilitation methods in most organizations are clumsy and out-of-date.

That needs to change.  As online meetings become more common and participants separated by miles increasingly gather electronically, inept facilitation becomes intolerable.  The digital age raises the priority of skilled meeting facilitation for organizations.

Why? To get things done in remote meetings, with people connected only through the thin linkages of screens and speakers, facilitators have to provide extraordinarily high levels of guidance and control.  Being proactive and assertiveness is paramount.  Facilitators must keep participants who are in multiple locations on the same page, prevent awkward silences and verbal collisions, and guide the group through appropriate and efficient problem-solving and decisionmaking approaches.

[dropshadowbox align="center" effect="horizontal-curve-bottom" width="700px" height="" background_color="#ffffff" border_width="1" border_color="#dddddd"]Research shows that work groups of high power people do not perform nearly as well as groups of low power people. How can high power teams use more relational conflict styles and perform better? Here are seven strategies informed by the research.[/dropshadowbox]

Fact:  High Power Leaders Do Not Play Nicely Together

So Grandma was right: Too many cooks spoil the soup. The title of a new study at Berkeley says it all:"Failure at the Top: How Power Undermines Collaborative Performance.”

The study finds that, although powerful individuals working alone perform tasks and demonstrate creativity at levels well above average, when they are required to work with other powerful individuals on tasks as a group, they perform well below average.

In the research, groups of less powerful people settled down and cooperated in tasks assigned to them.  But high power people fought - over status, over who should be in charge, over who would have more influence over the group’s decisions, and over who should get more respect than others.

High power people also "were less focused on the task and shared information less effectively with each other than did members of other groups.”   In short, the researchers found, “teams with less powerful executives reached consensus far more easily than teams with the high-powered executives.”

You can read the above quote in the NPR News site and hear an audio version below.

Organizational psychologist and podcaster Meisha Rouser has posted an interview, "Exploring Conflict Styles with Ron Kraybill".   In a 25 minute conversation you get an overview of key concepts of conflict styles and why it's important to pay attention to them.