Truth and Love

Truth without love can be mean, and love without truth can be a lie.

Today’s post is a review of a skill that I think it is the most important skill needed in West Michigan leaders. It is the willingness and ability to lean into healthy conflict. When I say “conflict,” I’m using the term broadly, referring to any kind of disagreement or difficult issue between two people.

My experience is that people in West Michigan tend to deal with conflict in one of three ways:

1. 1. One group does everything they can to avoid it altogether. My sense is that this group is comprised of just under 80 percent of us.
   2. Another group hits conflict head-on, often with a 2 x 4 in their hands. They blast the person with whom they have an issue, usually in blunt statements that may be slight exaggerations. My sense is that this group is comprised of just under 20 percent of us.
   3. A much smaller group neither avoids the conflict, nor hits it head-on. These people have learned a way to engage the conflict in an honest and healthy way. This involves sharing what is true for them in the most loving and compassionate way possible.

So what is the problem with trying to avoid conflict all together? We can’t! People live by different rules, driven by different core beliefs and different core values. When you don’t live by my rules on how to run a business, or a project, or your family, or any other aspect of life, there will be a natural conflict between us.

Avoiding this conflict sometimes works, but rarely! Most of the time conflict quietly builds when avoided. Over time and with continued installments, the ignored conflict becomes bigger and bigger and finally explodes and causes both parties to behave in unhealthy ways, like the shaken-up bottle of Diet Coke we talked about in the living systems session. You may remember an expression we borrowed from author Trisha Taylor, “Anxiety makes me stupid.” When I am like a shaken bottle of Diet Coke, I lose access to the thinking portion of my brain.

Engaging conflict readily and well is one of the most important traits of any leader. My goal is to become a person who readily engages the conflict that exists, and to do so with compassion; to be straightforward and not beat around the bush, and to lean into conflict with kindness. In short my goal is to share the truth in love.

Now, before you engage another person in a difficult conversation or something that resembles conflict, do two things:

First: Establish a healthy relationship before leaning into conflict, if possible. Research shows that for you to have a healthy relationship you need to show the other person that you respect and appreciate them. This is done by providing positive input to them along the way.  People need to have more positive interactions than negative. Research suggest that the ratio of positive interactions to negative needs to be at least 3 to 1 and preferably as high as 6 to 1. And don’t do the Oreo cookie approach to get the ratio high enough. You know, the approach of saying a nice thing, followed by the negative thing, followed by another nice thing.  Share the positive comments at other times. In this conversation just bring your difficult comment, with love.

Second: Be calm when you engage the conversation. Of course, if the other person initiates the conversation while in a highly anxious state or if you aren’t prepared for the conversation, it will be harder to stay non-anxious. The other person’s emotion will shake you up. If you’re like a can of Diet Coke you’ll get fizzy and explode with emotion. If so, calm yourself before responding. Practice this over time so that you become more like water even when someone shakes you up.

The model for engage healthy conflict that we have taught to hundreds of leaders goes like this:

Step 1: Share your observation or perspective. Put your issue on the table in a straightforward way while also having the humility to understand you might be missing something. Remember the “count the Fs” exercise from our session on Feedback? Maybe you are missing some Fs, so proceed with the humility that maybe you’re missing some key information that the other person could provide. Just clearly state your observation or perception of what is a problem for you.

An example might be, “Tony, I’ve noticed in our staff meetings that you often fall asleep.  This is a problem for me because of the impact it has on the team and on you.  Help me understand your perspective on this.”

How long did that take, maybe fifteen seconds? When you share your issue, don’t beat around the bush; just state it in a calm, confident tone that communicates your humility.

Step 2: Listen! This step should NOT be rushed. Take your time to listen for understanding. Don’t debate, don’t defend, simply listen to understand the other person. Ask clarifying questions so you can best understand the other person’s perspective. Be calm. Work at it until they feel understood. When another person believes that I understand them, when they really feel understood, something positive happens in the relationship. They feel respected, even loved, and they are much better able to understand my view on the topic, even if we disagree.

In the fictional case with Tony, he might say something along the lines of, “Well, the baby hasn’t been sleeping at night, and you don’t know that I have epilepsy and the medication I’m on makes me drowsy, and staff meetings right after lunch can be brutal!”

Step 3: Seek to be be understood. It might go something like this.

“Tony, I had no idea all that is affecting your sleeping in the meeting.  My heart breaks thinking of you not getting enough sleep at night AND THEN having to be on medicine that makes you drowsy, and then me scheduling our meetings after lunch, the toughest hour of the day.

“I also need to say that falling asleep during the meetings is still an issue, and we have to figure something out to make it go away. It hurts the dynamic of the team too much, and it hurts your reputation, which I can’t accept. Can you understand my view on this?”

In this case Tony says “Yes, but what can I do?” That moves us to step 4:

Step 4: Look for agreement. If we can’t agree on the issue, then we need to at least agree to disagree.

Step 5: Look for a solution to the issue, a plan for going forward. In this fictional example, I agree to change the meeting times to 9:00 AM, Tony’s best time of the day. Tony doesn’t want others to know about his medical condition, so rather than tell the team why he might have attention issues, I agree to sit next to Tony and nudge him with my foot if he starts to gloss over.

Step 6: Follow through on the plan. I know this sounds simple but it’s often missed. You must follow through or it says that you don’t care about the person or the issue enough to make the final effort needed to really make things work well.

So that’s the model:

1. 1. Share my initial observation or perspective.
   2. Seek to understand his or her perspective. (Listen!)
   3. Seek to be understood in my informed perspective, which may have changed.
   4. Determine if we agree on the issue or need to agree to disagree.
   5. Come up with a plan for moving forward.
   6. Follow through on the plan.

You’ll find that this creates much stronger relationships and resolves issues. The more you do it, the better you get at it. Imagine if most of West Michigan’s leaders became great at this. West Michigan would be to leadership what Silicon Valley is to technology.

Go make it happen–lead well this week!

Rodg

Image by Chiara Cremaschi. Used under CC by 2.0 license.