All right, good morning or afternoon, depending on where you are. Welcome back if you joined us this morning for our first session. Before we get started with today's second session, there are a few housekeeping notes I need to cover with you. If you'd like to ask a question of the speaker, please use the Zoom Q&A feature at the bottom of the screen instead of the chat. We also recommend turning off all other apps besides Zoom for an optimal experience. And also, perhaps the most important thing is we recommend having a strong internet connection and you can test your speed at speedtest.net. Now, at this time, I'd like to thank our sponsor for our next session, HBS Systems. Joining us today from HBS Systems is Greg Bennett. Greg, would you like to say a few words today? Thank you, Sean. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. As Sean mentioned, my name is Greg Bennett. I'm the Director of Sales here at HBS Systems. And the first thing I'd like to give you a little bit of background on HBS. We have been servicing equipment dealers for over 35 years. And our company, just like yours, has experienced a tremendous amount of change, especially recently in these very uncertain socioeconomic times. As a business, we need to evolve and adjust to what many people would call the new normal. Now, most people don't like the term new normal, and for good reason, because it represents change, change in our approach, change in our processes, and sometimes even change in our go-to-market philosophy. And that is where HBS Systems helps dealers excel, because for a long time, we've recognized consumers are changing. They're changing the way you want to receive information. They're changing the way they want to communicate with you and your business. And more importantly, they're changing the speed at which business is being conducted. Our software takes your business rules and logic and helps you to adjust in this ever-changing environment. Since we're a 100% SaaS-based software utilizing modern software development methodology, we can help you keep pace with the velocity of change. Now, at the end of the day here at HBS, we do believe a couple of truths. Number one, we don't believe that we have customers. We truly believe that we have partners. And number two, and probably more important, is we believe that we're in the same business as our partners, and that is the service business. We live these two truths out every day by providing the highest level of support in the industry. We not only judge ourselves on our industry, but we look to the world's top software providers, and we strive to achieve a higher level of service, support, and most importantly, innovation. So I guess enough about HBS. As always, the AAD does a fantastic job in providing outstanding educational opportunities. Our next presenter is definitely going to live up to that standard. I have the pleasure of introducing Alexis Gladstone, and for over 25 years she has served many different roles. She served as a trainer, a speaker, a consultant, a workplace diversity champion, and more importantly, a coach. And like all good coaches, she's also a great leader. Today Alexis is going to help give us skills around a skill that all great leaders need to have, and that is the ability to lead through conflict and be successful. HBS is proud to welcome Alexis Gladstone. Thank you so much, Greg. I really appreciate that. Welcome everyone. As we were saying, good morning, good afternoon, depending on where you are listening from. So excited to be here with you. As Greg said, and as you know from the agenda, we are going to talk about managing conflict. So let's go ahead and dive right in, and we will get going so we get through everything. Greg already told you a little bit about me, but just a couple things that he didn't point out that I want to talk about, which is the variety of industries that I work within. I call myself industry agnostic because it's been across all different types of industries. I love helping people increase their success, so I love doing sessions like this. I'm also very passionate about gender and diversity equity, so that's something that's very near and dear to my heart. And finally, I love also, after I've been working and talking with groups like you, I love connecting with you, and at the end I'll show you how you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I do think of myself as a serial connector and love to be able to make introductions for others when I can. So that's me. Let's go ahead and get into what we're going to cover today when we're talking about conflict. We're going to kind of do a little bit of an overview in terms of the cost of conflict and what we're talking about, get all on the same page. I'll talk a little bit about types of conflict and how you might be able to recognize it. Then we'll get into some meat in terms of what are some different conflict management styles and actions you as leaders can take in order to manage conflict, either that you're involved in or that you need to help mediate within the dealership. So why do we want to talk about this? Conflict goes on all the time, and I found this great study. It's a study, and the report is actually called, and I have to read it because I know it's a long name, Workplace Conflict and How Business Can Harness It to Thrive. It was a study that was done. They interviewed 5,000 employees across a variety of industries in nine different countries, and this is what people had to say about conflict. Now, I'm not going to read all of them, but I am going to point out a couple of the statistics that I kind of find interesting. First of all, the fact that 85% of employees, they all said they've dealt with it at some level, and of that, 29% of those say it's always or frequently. So that's a lot. The other statistic I want to point out on here is the fourth one down is that employees say they frequently witness conflict among senior teams or among leaders, and my point of pointing this particular one out is people are watching, and if it's leaders, if we're not modeling working through conflict and being constructive with it, then this thinking can be, so why should I worry about it with me? So with, and we're going a little backwards. With those statistics in mind, I do have a poll for you, so can you pull up the poll? First poll. I'm very curious to find out how much time do you all think you spend each week dealing with conflict, and this could be conflict you're involved in individually or conflict you have to mediate, and we still have a lot of numbers coming in, so we'll give it another minute. It looks, well, five more seconds, and then we're going to go ahead and close it. Here is what you said. There is 24% of you that's saying you're spending five or more hours each week. That is a lot, and everybody, at a minimum, there's 39%, one or two hours, so you all are embroiled in it on a weekly, daily and weekly basis, so if we can go ahead and stop sharing that, and we will go ahead and move on. So that's what you all said. Let me go back to this study of this workplace conflict. They said that leaders spend at least one day a month dealing with conflict, and then there's another study that I've run across and some other information that says up to 20%. So you all were right in line with this, that you all are spending a lot of time. So being able to figure out how you can manage it better and work through it constructively I think will be really helpful. So if you're spending that much time, that means there's a cost associated with it. Here are some of the costs, and these can be turned into hard numbers when you think about it. One of the costs is wasted time. I'm not saying it's wasting of time to deal with conflict and to try to mediate it and try and work through it, but when you're spending time working through conflict, mediating conflict, you're not spending time, nor are the individuals spending time doing the productive work, doing the sales, doing the service, whatever they might be involved in. So that's what it means by wasted time. Employee turnover. People leave jobs. If it gets really bad, people leave, and you all know how hard it is to fill some of your positions, and there's a cost to that, the cost of the role being empty and then the cost of training the new person. Absenteeism. People sometimes opt out and call in sick because they don't want to deal with some ongoing conflict that's going on. So again, that's lost productivity. Grievances and complaints. If you can work with conflict and manage it early, you a lot of times won't go to grievances and complaints, but if you have to bring in a third party, there's a cost to that. And then poor decision-making. Sometimes conflict leads to people not providing timely information or not providing information that people need at all. So decisions that are made are not necessarily the best for the organization or for the customer. So before we go any further, I want to get us all on the same page, at least for right now. There's a lot of definitions for conflict out there. I wanted to make it as simple as possible in terms of defining it for our means today, which is conflict being any situation in which yours or people's concerns or desires differ than someone else's. So we're talking about concerns and desires and differences. So that's the definition. Let's also look at some myths of conflict, because there's some things that people think about conflict that isn't necessarily true. So first we'll talk about some myths, and then we'll go ahead and talk about some truths. First of all, the myths. People think that conflict is always negative and the outcomes are always going to be negative, and that's not the case at all. Sometimes it is, but not if it's handled well, and if it's handled in a timely manner, it doesn't have to be negative. There's also the myth that if people have different values, beliefs, goals, expectations, that there's definitely going to be conflict. And that's also a myth, because if the environment, if the culture of your organization allows for discussion of these types of things and allows for good dialogue, conflict doesn't have to be inevitable. People just will work through it, and people will respect each other. Then there's the old, if I leave it alone, if I ignore it, it's going to go away on its own. And we all know, I think everybody probably on this call has been working enough to know that that just doesn't happen. Usually it does not take care of itself. It festers, and then something else happens. There's a myth that people think it has to be resolved quickly. A lot of times that's the case, but there's some times that that's not going to be the best solution. And finally, another myth is that it's always a win-lose, that somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. And we'll be talking about managing conflict styles, which show you that's not the case at all. So if those are some of the myths, let's take a look at some truths. Conflict can actually be a relationship builder. If you actually sit down, if people sit down and have dialogue about what's going on and get to the heart of the issue, you can really build relationships, you can build bridges, and things can be working better going forward. It can also be a motivation for change. Again, that's depending on how it's handled, but if people really stop and listen and hear what the other person is thinking, they might find that there's a reason to change in order, if nothing else, to change their point of view, and even better sometimes to change their behavior. Conflict handled well can also lead to really creative solutions, because you start to get people working together, and at the end I'll be giving you some steps of how you can help work through conflict and where the creativity can come in. The other truth is most, not all, and I really do want to emphasize that, most conflict can be managed if you actually try, and if you try to work through it. So those are some of the myths and truths. Now I want to talk about two cycles of conflict. There is the one that I think most of us always think of when we think of conflict, which is it's destructive. So that means that people go in, the conflict cycle is one-sided, and people believe, and it will usually lead to a mutual failure, because you're not going to get to an optimal solution. There's also a different cycle, which is constructive, and that's where the conflict, you actually work through it, and you get to a mutual success, a success for everyone involved. So let's take a look at what those cycles look like, because you have probably lived them and are living them based on the number of hours you said that you're dealing with conflict on a weekly basis. The first is the destructive cycle. So here's a little bit, at a very high level, what it looks like. First of all, conflict comes because there's some type of trigger. Something is said, something is done, something is not said, not done, whatever it is, there's a trigger for conflict, because it usually triggers something within us. And in the destructive cycle, when that trigger is hit, people automatically have this mentality of this is a fight, this has to be win-lose. So once you have that mentality in your mind and in your brain, what happens is it leads to negative attitudes about the individual, because you stop thinking of the conflict of the issue, and you start thinking of the conflict with the individual. So your attitude is negative, your attitude is the person is bad, your attitude is dislike. So what can that lead to is you might, if it doesn't lead to down-and-out verbal or physical conflict, it will lead to things like avoiding one another, having minimal contact, people might become very formal with each other. It's a lot of those things that you'll see, and it's just, again, it's a cycle that perpetuates itself because the trigger is always going to be there and there's always going to be that reaction to it. Now, what does the constructive cycle look like? Same thing, there's some type of trigger that happens, but people, the attitude that goes in, at least one of the individuals, hopefully both of the individuals or both of the groups decide that we're actually going to look at this collaboratively, and we're actually going to have a discussion and a dialogue around it. If people have and go in with that attitude, people will go in and really be concentrating on the issue and not necessarily the individual or the individuals. And so there'll be a positive feeling about the individual. They may turn out to be able to become friendly, but at the least, I always say, you know, people don't all have to be friends at work, but be respectful of each other. If you're in this constructive cycle, it can lead to respect of the individual. So what does that do for the individuals and the organizations? That leads to better working relationships. People actually communicate, people are less formal with each other, and they're willing to provide and listen to each other's points of view. So this is the cycle that we all want to be in, obviously. And so again, as we get further into this, I'll be giving you some ideas of how you can make that happen. By the way, just I didn't say at the beginning, about halfway through this presentation, we're going to stop if there's any questions and answer some of the questions, get through some of the questions earlier. So if you do have them, as Sean said, continue to use the Q&A. So what leads to conflict? We've talked about the definition, we've talked about the cycle of conflicts, and we talked about how you use the word differs in issues. Here are some of the things, and there's other things, and you probably have all seen them. A lot of times it's differences in communication styles. Some of us like to talk and get information in bullet points, because that's how we hear, it's very efficient for us. And others of us like to talk and tell stories. If you've been in those situations, you'll see sometimes that sometimes those communication styles can really clash, and over time it can lead to conflict. So that's what I mean when I say it can be communication styles. It can be differences in goals and objectives. It might be individual goals that somebody has, or objectives that they've been given for the year. It might be departmental. I know in working with some of the dealerships, as I've done, that I've seen some of them have different goals for parts and services. They're different measures to get maybe bonuses. So if those two aren't necessarily in sync, that can sometimes lead to conflict, because they're trying to accomplish different things. Even though it might be the best thing for the customer, they're getting rewarded on some different things. So that could lead to conflict. Attitudes and expectations. This might be as simple as not doing what you say you're going to do. People have expectations, and if you put something out there, and time and time again, somebody doesn't follow through, that can lead to conflict. Values and beliefs. In this day and age, I think back earlier in my career, we didn't talk about things. We didn't talk politics. We were told you don't talk politics, religion, social issues. But now with social media, a lot of that is out in the open, and we know about that. We know where people stand. So some different values and beliefs about those different things can lead to conflict, because it's more open and people are aware of it. And then finally, differences in culture. If you don't have an organizational culture that is open to talking about some of the different cultures and different ways people operate and different beliefs, then that can lead to conflict. And there's other things too, but these are many of the large things that lead to conflict. So what I want to do before we kind of break for the first possible sets of questions is talk about some behaviors that you might see. A lot of times, you're going to recognize conflict when you see it. But there are some subtle things that sometimes happen that you may or may not recognize. You recognize it as probably not good within the organization, but you're not necessarily recognizing it as conflict. So I want to talk about some of them that I know I've seen before. First of all, if you have that individual who I call kind of the person, the piece of dynamite or the firecracker, it's somebody who, out of the blue, tends to blow up in sudden anger, and it seems really out of character for them, they'll usually apologize afterwards, but then it starts happening time and time again. Again, not on a regular basis, but it does happen. What that might be showing is there might be some trigger. Remember, I said those destructive cycles, there's a trigger. Something could be triggering them to do that, and you might want to pay attention to see if you can pick up what it is, so then you can open it up to have the dialogue about it. Then there's the person or persons that take pride in really not communicating with everyone or with a particular individual. They might be very formal in their communication. They might only use email or text. They might avoid talking with the individual or with the group. They might delay in responding, and it slows down a decision or it slows down the process. If both people or both parties are in it, there's a lot of times in doing the same behavior, a lot of times there's a contest to see who can hold out the longest, so that's not productive for anybody, obviously, because you're not going to be able to move forward. You're not going to be able to resolve things that need to be resolved in the dealership, and it's probably going to start impacting the customers, so this is somebody, if you start to see that people aren't really communicating face-to-face, there could be some conflict going on. Then there's this person I call the backstabber. This individual, if you've ever noticed that somebody's, if you've maybe in meetings, that they're very agreeable in meetings, but then you either notice or you get wind of, you might not actually even see it as a leader, but you get wind of they're not providing information, or they're talking behind somebody's back, or they leave the meeting agreeing that, yes, this is a great idea, we're all going to do it, and then they go and they try and undermine it in the end after the meeting. That's usually there's some conflict between the individual or the groups that's going on. My favorite person, the person who uses the zinger, that's the person who in a meeting or in a group of you, always there's some kind of a joke at someone else's expense or a zinger, as I like to call it, and then a lot of times, the person will turn around and say, I'm really just kidding. But if it happens a lot, if somebody feels that they need to always, especially with another individual or with another group, that they always need to be the one to kind of say something funny, there could be some underlying conflict that is going on with them. Sorry, if you see a tail, that is my little helper, my leader in training cat that loves to come into the picture. And finally, sometimes, especially this usually happens between two people that you find that somebody really needs to have the last word. So whatever is going on, they can't leave it alone. They always have to say the final thing, and they always have to add, say and also, and it's a perpetuating thing that also continues to go on. As leaders, you might have recognized some of those, some of those might have been new to you, and you might be sitting there thinking, hmm, what, you know, am I seeing something in some of this, you know, is it something that I need to be aware of and look into handling? We make two mistakes as leaders when it comes to conflict, and I'm really talking here, it could be conflict that you're involved in, but also conflict that's just going on within the branch, within the dealership, is we either ignore it, because a lot of times it's easier, and you all are running, I know, at 150 miles an hour. So sometimes it's very hard to handle it and to start working through it. But ignoring it, it's not going to go away. Or as leaders, sometimes if it's not conflict that we're directly involved in, we get involved in the middle of it. And I'm not saying that in terms of we get involved to try and resolve it, but we actually take a side, and sometimes that's inadvertent, but it does happen. So those are some of our biggest mistakes that we have, that we can make. Before I get into the second half of this, which is talking about conflict styles and talking about ways to work through it, I want to see, open it up and see, Sean, if we have any questions. It is our lucky day. We have three questions as of right now that we can address. Okay. So the first one is, do you predict a rise in conflict with remote work slash relationships? You know, I think conflict from a remote, us working remotely or those who are working remotely, I think it might be different types of conflict, and it might be sometimes inadvertent, because a lot of times there's a delay in people getting the information, there's a delay in being able to respond, and that might be somewhat inadvertent on somebody's part, but it can lead to conflict, because it's, you're not getting the information you need to do your job. So I don't know if it's a rise in conflict. I think it might just start looking differently, and it might arise because of the differences in some people working remotely and some not. Great. Jessica, I hope that answered your question. The next one is, it says, I'm four cycles down into a conflict cycle with a coworker. It feels nearly impossible to get back on a level playing field. What suggestions do you have? And who is it? What's the name of who sent this in? It's an anonymous. Okay. So whoever it is, here's what I'm going to ask you to do. If you will hold tight and wait until the second half and see if some of the tips I gave you in working through it are helpful. And if not, bring it up again, and we'll see, bring it up, because we'll do questions again at the end. All right. It looks like we have one more question for this round of questions. It says, what are some tools you can utilize to test during the interview process to become aware of different personalities? On the interview process? Yes, ma'am. There are a number of different tools you can use. There's different personality style things. I don't want to get into that here. But I would encourage, at the end, I'm going to tell you how you can reach out to me. And I'll encourage you to go ahead and reach out to me during that time. And I can give you some ideas of some things to do. Because some of those will talk about how people like to handle conflict. And I'm actually going to talk a little bit about a tool now in terms of an assessment for your conflict style. Thank you for those questions. And we'll have time for some at the end, too, because I'm going to make sure we get through this. Let's talk about styles. And let's talk about one of the models that I like to use. There are different models out there. They all have similar types of style. They're called different things. But the styles that it talks about are all very similar. I like to use one called Thomas Killman. It's an assessment that's been out there for quite some time. I find it to be really true in being able to capture people's style. If anybody is interested in actually learning about this assessment tool, you can reach out to me afterwards. Because at Chatfield Global, we actually do administer it. But I just want to talk to you about what their model is. And we'll talk about the five different styles. The Thomas Killman model is based on – you see a lot of these little four and five axis box things. It's based on two different things that they look at. They look at individuals across the bottom, how cooperative they are when it comes to managing conflict. And then up on the other axis, it's how assertive they are in managing conflict. And between those two, you get five different styles. If you start at the upper left, first you have those who are competing. So you're at odds with each other. Then in the middle, we have the compromiser. So I'm going to talk about all of these in a little bit more detail. But those are the people that you try and – you don't get to the best solution, but you try and move forward together. The collaborator, those are the ones that get to those creative solutions. Down on the bottom right, we have the accommodator. In the accommodator, that means somebody's needs are going to be met a little bit better than the other person's. And then you have the avoider, which I think a lot of us have – if we are not avoiders ourselves, we've seen avoiders. So let me tell you a little bit more about each of the five styles. Some of you may have already know what your style is because you maybe have done this Thomas Killman before. First of all, the competing. That's where somebody is very assertive but not cooperative. And what it is is you're really satisfying your own concerns at the other person's expense. And here's – some examples are when you have to impose or dictate a decision, that's a competing style. If you're arguing and you argue so you want the data to fit your conclusion, you're competing. If you – hard bargaining, that's a competing style. That's when you're not making any concessions. Those are people who are competing. Now, let me also say this before I go further. None of these styles are right or wrong or better or worse. We all have a natural style that's just the way we are. We also have the ability, once we learn what our natural style is and what the other ones are, we have the ability to use the other styles. But just like any other assessment, any other profile, there's things we do naturally. And again, all of these have their place at the right – in the right situation. The collaborator – so you're being both assertive and cooperative. And so this is the people, you know, you hear win-win all the time. So you're trying to satisfy everybody's concerns as best you can. So as I said, it's that win-win. This is where you're combining insights. So you're taking each person's – or each group's insights, and you're really trying to provide – to get to the best solution for the situation. That's the collaborator. The compromising is somebody usually – that's kind of intermediate assertiveness and cooperative. Somebody is usually going to give or take more in compromising. Or at least you're going to give and take the same amount. So everybody's needs are not going to be met to the greatest good, but you're still going to get to a solution where everybody usually walks out feeling good about it. And it's kind of that whole – as I said, the exchange of concessions. Taking turns in terms of giving up and taking in what the – your different pieces that need to go into the solution. And then this is the person who – a compromiser, they're really moderating kind of how they feel about the – about the solutions and about the conclusions. The avoider – that's the person who sidesteps, who pushes it aside, who just won't walk into it, won't do anything with it, won't mediate it. And those are the examples. This is where you avoid people that you clash with, that you find that you can't work well with. You avoid them. This is where you don't engage if something seems either trivial to you or too complex. The thing you have to remember, though, it might be trivial to you, but it isn't necessarily trivial to the other person or the other group. And this is also avoiding. Avoiding can actually be – work well if it's a – something that doesn't have to be handled immediately, but you – and you need to make sure that you can spend the amount of – appropriate amount of time to get to it. So it's not avoiding forever. It's avoiding for the time being. Finally, the accommodating style. This person is unassertive, but they're very cooperative. If you are using an accommodating style, you're probably going to give up something that you really want, but sometimes there's a good reason to do it. Sometimes you need to do a favor for somebody. You're trying to maintain the relationship. You let yourself be persuaded, and that's okay. Or sometimes accommodating is somebody has better expertise or better knowledge, and you're deferring to that. So those are the five styles. I know I went through them very, very quickly, but what I'd like to do is do another poll because we want to make this as interactive as we can. And this is – I would love to know, and I know some of you might be sitting in rooms together, so that's okay, but if we can pull this poll up. This is – what style do you think you are? What do you think your natural style is when it comes to managing conflict? They are pouring in. I'll give it another few seconds. Still coming in. Okay, let's share the results. So, most of you said you think you're collaborators, which is great because that is sometimes the hardest one to do because you have to do a lot of communication and we'll talk about that in a lot of listening. We've got some compromisers. Very few avoiders. That's awesome. So, yeah, and obviously you some of you might already know that this is your natural style and some of you you're just guessing based on the bit of information. If anybody wants to find out more about it, you can again reach out to me afterwards. Okay, we can take that down and we will move on. Because what I want to talk about and spend time talking about and then answering more questions, so please continue to send them to Sean, is what are actions that you can take as a leader when it comes to managing conflict? Because that's what this is all about, is being able to take action. As leaders, just like everything else, and I talk about this a lot and those of you who, if I don't know if there's any AED or LDI folks on here, communication as a leader is our biggest and best skill we can use. And that's true with everything in leadership, and that's especially true with managing conflict. Communication is really the key. Whether you're mediating it or whether you're involved in it, it's direct conflict yourself. So what do I mean when I say communication and which particular communication styles, communication skills, am I talking about? Well, the first one I'm talking about is learning to ask questions. When you are mediating conflict, when you are involved in conflict, the best thing you can do is in a calm, appropriate time, start to ask questions. And I'll tell you why when we get into where this comes in in terms of the steps for helping work through conflict. The questions I'm talking about are what I call your open-ended questions. Those are your who, what, how, when, where, sometimes why. Those are questions, open-ended questions, are questions that elicit more than just a yes, no, or an ABC answer. You're really, because by asking open-ended questions, you're starting to allow the other person to share their point of view, or the other group to share their point of view, and really get to the heart at what the issue is. So being able to ask really good questions is a great communication skill to be using when you're trying to deal or manage conflict. On the flip side of that, if you are going to be asking questions, you need to be actively listening. So what does that involve? Well, first of all, my first suggestion when it comes to any of this is make sure that whenever you're first trying to deal with conflict, you're doing it when it's out of the heat of the moment, and when you can really sit down and have and spend the time to actually have the conversation or facilitate the conversation between the individuals. And then you need to actively listen when you start asking the questions. So, as Stephen Covey says, you need to first seek to understand, and that's what this is all about. So use your active listening skills. Besides putting away all your electronics and listening and really concentrating, you know, use your pausing. Make sure you reflect what somebody has said back to them. Reflect how their demeanor. Use your nonverbal cues, your nodding of your head, making sure, because that keeps you in the engagement phase if you're actually using and listening better when you're using your nonverbals. Paraphrase. Make sure you understand what somebody is saying. Paraphrase things. Summarize things before you move on to the next question. Summarizing sounds something like, What I think, Sean, I hear you saying is, and then you say it in your own words. So those are your active listening skills that you can use. So the two skills, again, asking questions and active listening. So what do you do with those? You use those in the steps that I have outlined here that can help you resolve conflict. And again, there's some other models out there. You can always Google this. This is what I tend to use, and we'll talk about each of these in a little bit more detail. First, we're going to clarify the issue. Remember, I said earlier that sometimes the issue, when conflict gets bad, people stop talking about the issue and the conflict turns into between the two people. You need to get the issue back on the table, and that's what we're going to talk about here today. You need to get the issue back on the table. You need to generate options, then you're going to all together choose a solution and then commit to action. So let's take a look at each one of the steps. Clarifying the issue. The first thing you want to do when you're, like I said, either facilitating this or managing it between you and somebody else is go and remember that those two cycles I talked about, the destructive cycle and and the constructive cycle of conflict. This constructive cycle looks at things as a shared problem. So let me give you an example of what that means. Years ago, when I was working inside an organization and I was part of a leadership team, there was an individual who, he was one of those individuals who spoke with authority, even when he didn't know necessarily about the topic at hand. But the way he presented himself, he always spoke with authority, and a lot of people would defer to his opinion because he always thought sounded like he knew what was going on. I could see what was going on behind the scenes and I tried different ways to manage around that. And finally, one day I pulled him aside because we had gotten a little bit of a heated argument in a leadership team meeting. And so I took him, pulled him aside and we had a conversation and we talked about his style and what it was doing to the rest of the leadership team and how it was being perceived. So once I opened it up and talked about it as a shared problem that we wanted the best for the leadership team, because we wanted the best for the organization, it became a shared problem that we worked to resolve, to solve together. So that's what I mean when creating it as a shared problem. You want to get to the heart of the issue. The way you get to the heart of the issue is asking those open ended questions. So your what, when, how questions. Then one of the other things in clarifying the issues is being clear and concise about what things are. And the way to, the hardest part sometimes, especially if this is conflict that's been going on, is removing emotion from the situation. It's really hard because a lot of times it's been going on and we're very vested in it. And we've decided in that destructive cycle, we have decided that there's animosity between the two of us versus the two individuals versus animosity, a difference of opinion on the issue. But you have to do what you can to remove the emotion. Make sure everybody is heard, and using those open ended questions, and then talk about, make sure everybody is clear when you're clarifying the issue, what the issue is and what the issue isn't.

conflict management

HBS Systems

Alexis Gladstone

destructive and constructive cycles

communication skills

Thomas Kilman model

common triggers

resolving conflict

creative solutions