Conflict Zen

We all know the value of taking a break when things get a bit hot under the collar during conflict. Research on brain function during heightened emotion backs up this practice—and suggests that how we use that time during the “break” makes all the difference in the world.

Simply taking a breather is much less effective if we use that time to replay the conflict in our mind. Such replay and rehearsal, when we’re already angry, extends the state of strong emotion.

To truly cool off, studies suggest, we should engage our brains in activity that isn’t about replaying the conflict. So next time you decide to go for a walk after a disagreement, find something else to think about.

After my post Women and Conflict: Have You Lost Your Voice? earlier this week, several women wrote and asked variations of this question:

Are there good books or courses for learning better conflict management techniques so that I can find my “right voice”?

The short answer: Yes. The longer and more thorough answer: Maybe not.

I’ve been a trainer, teacher and coach for quite a while now. And the longer I do this work, the more convinced I become that the answer does not rest in learning new techniques for anger management, new recipes for dealing with difficult people, or new formulas for negotiating better, though these approaches do provide some respite. This dawning belief has certainly changed how I train and coach.

The real path to doing conflict better and creating a little more peace in our lives lies in learning how to access and use the real voice that is ours and ours alone. When we use our voices well, we sing.

A couple of months ago I wrote about Using Your “Right Voice” in Conflict. I promised that I’d write more on this topic and a number of you have been asking when. I’ll start right now.

In 1982 Carol Gilligan published “In a Different Voice.” It was required reading in grad school in the mid-eighties and touched a chord for me and many of my women friends and classmates. Here, we thought, is someone who’s speaking to us, to what we bring to our work and relationships. Here’s someone who’s acknowledging women’s ways of being and asking the world to acknowledge them, too.

Over two decades after Gilligan first challenged us, the world is still unsure quite what to do with women’s voices. I talk daily with women who second-guess themselves. With women who’ve been speaking with an adopted voice for so long—adopted for a work world that still, by and large, places high value on male ways of knowing and doing—that they’re no longer sure what their own authentic voice sounds like. With women who are realizing that they’re not heard well or enough and have gotten into conflict behavior patterns that, at minimum, aren’t serving them well and may be leaving debris in their wake.

Women, we don’t trust our own voices enough. And it shows. [Read more...]

When I was little, a summer evening often meant sitting in an outdoor rocker with my grandmother, making necklaces out of dandelion stems, and listening to her stories about Scotland. I can still recall her lovely Scottish burr as she quoted one of her favorite Robert Burns poems, To a Louse (On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church). The phrase I most remember from the poem is,

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

My mother was also fond of quoting those lines, perhaps a bit too frequently during my teenage years. Today, I find myself quoting them in conflict management workshops, carrying on a multi-generational tradition of wisdom from Burns’ words.

It’s the poem that came to mind when I heard about an online Johari window. [Read more...]

A month or two ago I had a long drive ahead of me as I traveled north to visit a client. So I downloaded some podcasts to digest during the trek. In one, Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman interviewed a marketing professional about why people dislike marketing and promotional activities in business. The marketing professional, CJ Hayden, shared a list of what she called the seven fears of self-promotion:

1. Rejection
2. Ridicule
3. Embarrassment
4. The Unknown
5. Failure
6. Success
7. Disapproval

From the perspective of a mediator and conflict management coach, this is a pretty interesting list. [Read more...]

What do you do if you want to have a difficult conversation about a matter that’s important to you but the other person doesn’t? I recently conducted a workshop for women business owners and this question came up for a number of the participants.

When you want to talk and the other person doesn’t, it may be tempting to cajole them into talking. Too often, this approach has mixed success because you may be missing important subtext in the other person’s “I don’t want to talk about it” response.

So, let go of convincing, begging, whining, arm-twisting and other assorted techniques designed to essentially wear the other person into talking about the problem with you. When you use these tactics, you add a layer of difficulty to whatever difficult situation you already face together. Instead, [Read more...]