Bloom Your Mind

Ep 140: Resolving Conflict

• Marie McDonald

Share episode

We are all changing. Sometimes we’re doing it on purpose- setting goals that require us to think and feel and act differently, goals that require us to evolve and grow. Sometimes we’re changing in reaction to the world and the people around us. The one thing we know for sure is that change is constant… and sometimes really hard. With change often comes conflict; with ourselves and with others. Since change is guaranteed, and conflict will come with it; why not get really good at navigating our way through it? When we do, conflict becomes incredibly valuable. When we learn that we are not the hero, the good gal, the one in the right, or the virtuous one, we open a whole new capacity for calm, leadership, and love. When we realize many things are true at once, we open up rich, connecting, flourishing relationships and a world where all our ideas can become real.  

That’s what today’s episode is all about. 

Over the past two years I have been approached to be a conflict resolution mediator for couples, families, friends, entrepreneurs, executive teams and CEOs- each  one leading to referrals for more. It’s led me to deep dive into research, and tool finding. Today I’ll share my  favorite tools to help you step out of conflict and into flourishing. 

What you’ll learn in this podcast: 

  • Tools to resolve internal conflict
  • Tools to navigate and resolve external conflict 
  • How different ways of change create conflict and why it can be valuable
  • How to make the problem the problem, instead of making the person the problem
  • The five things that all conflicts are ACTUALLY about, instead of being about the person
  • A three part process to preparing for conflict resolution
  • A five part framework for approaching someone in your life to resolve a conflict
  • Five other quick tips to adopt a mindset that will lead to connection and resolution

Referenced in this podcast:

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Bloom your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified Coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it. Well, hello everybody and welcome to episode number 140 of the Bloom your Mind podcast. I am once again coming to you from the high Sierras and, if you've listened to the last episode and even if you haven't, a little update on my two-week trip, yes, we have done amazing kayaking, played so many cards, done lots of hiking and you know like floating on lakes all kinds of good stuff. But also I've almost finished six books, which is like the most dream-come-true scenario for me. I never have time to read as much as I'd like to. It's sort of like what I tell myself at home. I'm sure there are tweaks I could make to change that, and so it's been so cool to create that time for myself. And what I find to be even more excellent than that is four of these books have been fiction. So stoked, I have so many fictional stories in my head that are delighting me, and two of them were nonfiction, and one of them that was a nonfiction book was so brilliant that it helped me to substantiate some of the things I'll be sharing with you today in research and in the work of a theorist. So before I get into that, I will also say that every year when we come to this cabin in the Sierras sometimes so before I get into that, I will also say that every year when we come to this cabin in the Sierras, sometimes it's for a week. This time it was for two weeks, so fun. We're almost at the end of our trip here. My husband and I take off for a day. My amazing parents take our kids, take care of them for a day and we go off into the mountains. Sometimes we do a 12-mile hike up into the mountains. Other times it's like an eight mile hike. It's always long and we always talk about you know the opposite of our day to day conversations at home. We talk about things like do you believe in God? Do you want to have a third kid? You know we actually made the decision about whether to have a third kid on one of these hikes because we have a full day, uninterrupted, of walking side by side or one in front of the other and talking and talking and just being with each other.

Speaker 1:

This year we drove up to the portal of Yosemite, parked the truck and went on these two hikes that we did not understand what we were getting ourselves into because they weren't fully mapped out on the map that we had. First we did a hike that was straight uphill to a beautiful lake and we were like, okay, that was tough and fun, we got it. That was great. It was like a mile of going up. And then we're like, let's go across to this other hike and do it now, which will be a lot easier is what we thought from the map. Instead, it was like three hours of going straight uphill and the zigzags were like not zigzags, they were like fake zigzags because they were all totally straight up. We did not train for this hike. We do a lot of, you know, like Pilates and strength training and functional movement training at home every morning, but we have not trained for big hikes. And so we did like 2,500 feet in elevation that day and did not have that many discussions because we were breathing too hard. But it was delightful as we huffed and puffed and had a beautiful day together. So that's fun and I highly recommend it. With your partners or your best friends. Hiking is so fun. So on to our topic for today.

Speaker 1:

I've been doing a lot of conflict mediation over the last year and, interestingly, this is a total reactive skill that I've developed because people approach me to help them with a conflict in their lives. This has increased over the past year or two, actually, and it really has increased over the past six months because people will now refer me to others or bring in a different person that they're in conflict with in their life, and I've been doing more and more of this. This is for couples, this is for families, this is for friends and, in business, for CEOs or entrepreneurs who either have an issue with communication with someone on their team or two people on their team that are really in conflict with one another. So it's interesting when people get into these conflict tangles. What I've found is it is incredibly satisfying work to help them out of it, because at the base of us, we do not exist outside of relationships to one another, really unless we're like off in the woods by ourselves, right, we exist in relationship with ourselves and in relationship with others. So helping individuals and any kind of system, any kind of relationship, any kind of group to build conflict resolution skills with one another is very satisfying because you see so much relief and also because these conflicts really build who we are.

Speaker 1:

We evolve so much as we come into the skill of being able to navigate conflict without making ourselves right and someone else wrong. It's straight up like soul evolving stuff, my friends, because you really have to let go of being right. You got to let go of being the good guy. As I've said many times on the podcast and in coaching all the time, if we are the good guy, what does that make everybody else? If we are constantly right, what does that make everybody else? If we always reserve usually subconsciously, we're not conscious of it the role of hero or right one, or the one that's correct, the one that got it right for ourselves, we will never have the flourishing, open-hearted relationships that we truly can get to when we understand that two things are true in the words of Becky Kennedy that we understand that I am right and you are right and there is no right. It's all subjective, but understanding one another from that deep place of sort, of the oneness of being human beings that we have inside our hearts, understanding one another, that we all are having an experience, leads to incredibly flourishing relationships and healing. So I love it.

Speaker 1:

And what I notice is, as you turn your ideas into real things, as you do new things in the Bloom Room, I noticed this with folks in coaching. I noticed this with all my clients. In myself, I noticed this as we turn ideas into reality, we have to change how we are approaching life in order to create different results in our life. Right, no matter what that idea is that we're trying to make real. If we're trying to do something, that's something we've never done before. We have to think differently to do something different. We have to feel differently than our habituated ways of feeling to do something different. We have to feel differently than our habituated ways of feeling to do something different. We definitely have to act differently in order to get different results. And what all that adds up to thinking, feeling and acting differently than we have before adds up to change.

Speaker 1:

Change can be uncomfortable, change can be hard and change can bring conflict. Sometimes that conflict is with ourselves, because we're shifting our ways, and it's hard because we're changing our self-concepts, the way we think about ourselves, maybe as someone who is we're changing, to think about ourselves as someone who is capable of doing the thing we're trying to do right. We're changing our concept of ourselves as someone who has made that idea real, and then eventually we shift to actually thinking from her perspective, the you that has already done the thing you're trying to do, the you that has already made your idea real. We start to think from that perspective and as we do this, conflict with ourselves might arise. And we have lots of tools that I have already recorded on this podcast that I'll acknowledge here before I move into conflict with others around us.

Speaker 1:

So tools to manage that conflict within ourselves is thought management, thought trades, really stepping outside of ourselves and knowing we are not our thoughts, and slowing down that subconscious thinking, unconscious thinking, so that we see some of that 95% that's happening under the surface of our brains. And next week I will record one of my own concepts, which is regenerative thought cycles, to help you a little bit more with that. Another thing we can do is become more aware of thoughts and feelings as data. They are not who we are, they're never shameful, and we use what is recorded on the podcast as the episode, the Practice, to get the data and approach our feelings with curiosity so that the feelings pass and we feel better, but we get the important information that they're trying to give us.

Speaker 1:

And then, as I said, sometimes the conflict that arises from these changes we're making in ourselves and in the world, as we turn our ideas into reality, as we do new things that we've never done before. Sometimes the conflict that arises is with others around us, things that we've never done before. Sometimes the conflict that arises is with others around us, maybe because we are changing and we're not okay with what we used to be okay with. Maybe because the people around us are changing and we're not changing. Maybe because we're changing in different directions than the people around us. Maybe because we're changing and we're asking more of others or different things from others around us. Change can be hard and uncomfortable, but it's also the only guaranteed thing in life. Right, this is what the whole concept of Buddhist non-attachment is about that true joy and freedom and release, and the true joy of life comes when we release our attachment to the things we most attach to. And so, if we know that change is constant and it will happen and it will bring conflict, why not get really good at it, shall we? So I'm going to talk about this one component of conflict, of change, which is managing conflict between ourselves and others.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to share three tools for managing conflict from a lot of research that I've done and most recently, a book by Betty Prize which is called the Space Between Us Conversations About Transforming Conflict. Now, betty Prize has multiple books on conflict. This is the one that was recently recommended to me by a dear friend and client, carmen Lansdowne, who I have led retreats for her. She's in the Bloom Room. I've coached her in many different ways over the years and she is an incredible leader who leads 2,500 congregations for the United Church of Canada across Canada and is also the first indigenous person to hold that role of moderator. So it's really she's really a brilliant, brilliant human being that I adore, and she recommended this book. She's so brilliant. I always read what she recommends and I am grateful for this recommendation.

Speaker 1:

So today I'm going to share three tools for managing conflict that came from this book, but many, many others as well, many other concepts as well, and I'll say that you know, as is often the case, these tools are not 100% unique to this book, to this, to this person, this thought leader. They are tools that I've read and concepts that I've read in many other places as well, in many other places as well, and that I've talked about to therapists and psychologists. You know, learned over time. But, as is often the case, what I find is that this author has articulated them in a very clear and concise and helpful way, and so that's why I chose her book as the one to have some real fundamental tools, because I always like to give you a book to be able to go research and read more deeply in my concepts on your own. So there's so much more to say about conflict than what I will say today, and I highly recommend this book because it has layers and layers of research and beautiful concepts Again, the Space Between Us by Betty Price, and beautiful concepts Again, the Space Between Us by Betty Price. But I'm putting what I experienced to be the three most brilliant concepts, game-changing concepts, here.

Speaker 1:

Right before I do that, I want to say on this podcast the other tools you can use to prepare yourself for conflict management and resolution with people in your life, or episodes, and I will say I do not have the episode numbers because I have no Wi-Fi right now at this cabin in the woods, so I'm just going to tell you the titles. You're going to have to look them up on your own or have AI look them up for you. The episode Listen to this. The episode Listening is Sexy. Those are two episodes that give you the fundamental tools of active listening and partnership with others that take you out of your ego. The episode, two episodes the model and the practice. Those are two. One is thought management, one is feelings tolerance. Those can help you. The episode feelings are a superpower for this fundamental sort of emotional adulthood skill that we all practice and become as we become adults. And then the episode more recently, and it's titled something like it's happening for you and if you're interested in that, reach out to me. If I got the title wrong, I do not have access to it in front of me, all right. So top three tools here we go, all right.

Speaker 1:

The first tool is to focus on the problem as the problem that's how Betty Price says it Instead of the person as the problem. My mom, who practiced as a therapist for many, many for a few decades, and I have had many conversations about this how we often, when we see ourselves as right, we see the other person as the problem, see ourselves as right, we see the other person as the problem. When we want to get out of conflict, we can take the perspective that we are not going to focus on the person as the problem neither the other or ourselves but we're going to identify what problem we're solving together. When we do that, in the words of Brene Brown, we can sit on the same side of the table and focus on solving the problem together instead of being good guys and bad guys, instead of being right and wrong. So the first tool is taking our perspective out of that person is the problem and into the problem is the problem. Now, to support that, the first tool that I read, as I said this, focusing on the problem as a problem is something that is a concept that I've heard for decades. It's an incredibly helpful concept to shift your mindset. Now the second tool from Betty Price book that I thought was just phenomenal and I haven't heard articulated in this way before, is that all conflicts between people boil down in her thinking to five different things. So let's say maybe that's. You got to decide where to move with a partner, roommates, a family, your workplace. That's an example. We got to decide where we're going to move, what we're going to do about something. A decision must be made.

Speaker 1:

The second is expectations around how communication should happen. Happen Now. Some examples of this are you might expect that people will not be attached to their story about what's happened more than they are attached to understanding the facts about what happened. Maybe that's one expectation you might have. Another expectation that you might have is that people use I statements and own their own emotional reaction rather than blame their emotional reactions on you. Another expectation that you might have is that everyone will have a turn to talk about their experience and everyone will practice listening without invalidating each other. Maybe one more is that you'll focus on one problem at a time, so when one person brings something up, the other won't respond with a different topic. You'll focus on one topic at a time.

Speaker 1:

You can tell I'm passionate about communications because I have like 50 examples for this. Okay, but that's a second. One is expectations around how communication should happen. Number three maybe there's an incident that needs discussion. Maybe someone spoke to someone else in a harsh way that felt disrespectful and there's a conflict now that needs to be negotiated.

Speaker 1:

The fourth is expectations about process. So an example might be how a decision is going to be made. Maybe everybody needs to decide about a financial decision within a community or a partnership and one person thinks they're the decision maker and another person thinks it's a democratic decision that everybody gets to weigh in on. That can be another form of conflict. And, lastly, is differences in values. So this one probably doesn't feel quite as obvious but can be really clarifying when we realize it's not about good person, bad person, it's about differences in values. Maybe someone values freedom and someone else values communal processes, right. Maybe someone values openness about their life with the people around them and the other person values privacy. So when we put this into the context of a problem, oh, my value is this, your value is that there's no better or worse, there's no disrespect here, it's just a differences in values. It can really open up a partnership in negotiating whatever that conflict specifically is All right. So those are the five things specifically is All right.

Speaker 1:

So those are the five things and they were very helpful for me to see outlined in that way and maybe, if you'd like to, you can run through any conflicts that you have had, have seen or are experiencing right now, and my exercise for you, if you'd like to apply this material would be to ask yourself if this isn't about the people. What is the problem here that we're trying to solve, and which of the five categories does it fall into? A decision that needs to be made? Expectations around how communication should happen, an incident that needs discussion, expectations about process or differences in values? All right, so those are the first two of the three fabulous conflict resolution tools, and the last one that I'm going to share is the framework that Betty Price shared in her book for conflict resolution. Now, again, she's pulling from you know all of her studies around conflict resolution. So this is built off of lots of research and, again, I have seen many different conflict resolution models, many of which are great. I really like this one and that's why I chose it.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing, I'm going to share both the overall concept of this, and then I'm going to share with you the actual process and an example about it. So, in this process, I'm going to talk about how you or me, when we're going into resolving a conflict, can approach it, and this is based fundamentally on the idea that when we really embrace full responsibility for anything that we contribute to a situation, that's when we can solve it. That's when we can have freedom. And I know how much our brains resist that. The other person did something. The other person is wrong. The other person needs to apologize. I hear you, I hear you, we. Other person is wrong, the other person needs to apologize. I hear you, I hear you right, we've all been there. And no matter how the other person has acted, when we can find the part that we contributed, that's where our freedom is, that's where forgiveness is and forgiveness is a gift to ourselves. That's when we can find that love for the other person and boundaries, even if we feel like they are not accepting responsibility for theirs.

Speaker 1:

Really, conflict resolution can be one person Not ideally, but it can, all right. So the concept here is number one we recognize, accept, heal or transform our own underlying emotional process, and this is straight from the book. Okay, so we're recognizing our emotional experience and we're going to recognize it, accept it, heal it or transform it. And those are all those other episodes that I gave you as reference tools. The second step is take responsibility for the actions each person has done to take harm or to create harm. And again, this might just be one-sided to start. It might just be one-sided. In general, that can be enough if one person can really transform their need to be right and really aim for the goal of resolution and peace. And the last thing is, once we do those two steps, we can refocus on the problem as the problem. Okay.

Speaker 1:

So next I'm going to give you this five-part process that Betty outlines in her book to support us in actually doing this taking responsibility for our side and preparing ourselves to approach a person or people that we are in conflict with in a way that will really minimize the possibility that they will take a defensive stance because we are owning our side of the problem. So this framework sounds like this First I'm going to share an example and then I'm going to break it down into the steps that she gives, which I think are wonderful. So when we last met, I experienced you as speaking in a way that was harsh and was criticizing my character. I felt embarrassed and I experienced that as something that was hard for me to connect with you and I felt defensive. I'm not saying it was your intention to disparage my character. I'm not saying it was your intention to speak loudly or to make me feel defensive. And my request, moving forward, is that when we do talk about things that we're going through, that we really focus on our own experience and don't make comments about the other person's character. So that is the framework.

Speaker 1:

Let me break it down. Step one is we're bringing whatever happened into the public is how Betty Price says it which is like we're moving it out of all the assumptions we're all making in our head and we're bringing it into the light so that we can say what our experience is and the other person can say what their experience is. That way, any assumptions that anybody's making can actually be challenged and talked through together. So first, here is the experience that I had and I'm bringing it into the light. The second step is to own the impact that the other person had on us. So we're not assuming that their intention was to hurt us. We're not saying anything about their intention at all. If we own the impact that what someone else did or said had on us, we can do something about what we've experienced.

Speaker 1:

Step three we make sure we're not blaming the other person for the impact their words or actions had on us. This can feel hard and it's the truest thing, because we will all have a different experience to different things. What might be offensive and hard for us, someone else, it might roll off their shoulders and they might ignore it. So we're owning. This is what I experienced myself, not this is what you did to me. Now, step four if we feel safe enough, we can provide more information or context. This is why it felt that way. This is maybe the history that I have with this type of thing that makes it feel extra hard. But if it doesn't feel safe, we can keep it shorter.

Speaker 1:

And number five we're specific about the action that brought us into conflict with each other. So we're not using generalizations. We're not saying you always, we're not saying this is how you are. We're saying this specific moment where the words felt to me like they were disparaging against my character in this specific conversation. That's the problem. The person isn't the problem. That conversation and those words were the problem. And person isn't the problem. That conversation and those words were the problem. And then, lastly and so importantly, there's just a super clear request about what we would like to see happen next. So in this one, it's like an actionable statement that says my request is in the future, when we're in conflict. We're not talking about the character of one another and using statements that are disparaging to each other's character. Instead, we are talking about our own feelings and our own experiences. So that is the five-step process that I have seen be so incredibly healing for individuals, along with active listening practice. That's the start of the conversation and then, if possible, we get into active listening. All right, that's what I've got for you today, but I'm going to end with five other quick tips for conflict resolution that I practice and find incredibly helpful.

Speaker 1:

Number one we practice what's called unconditional positive regard for one another. You can look that up. I won't go deeply into it, but what that means basically, on a basic level, is that a human being is separate from the actions they take. A human being is worthy and lovable, and they are a different entity than their actions. Their actions are separate, and so are we, than their actions. Their actions are separate, and so are we. That allows us to practice empathy and compassion with ourselves and with others, because we know we are not our actions. Our actions are based on a whole lifetime of all different kinds of things that maybe we chose and maybe we didn't. Secondly, from E&M, which is the practice of ethical non-monogamy, we put the relationship first and we don't do or say anything that would harm the relationship. I love that practice.

Speaker 1:

Third, going into a conflict resolution conversation expect less, expect less from the other person. If I'm expecting someone to be a perfect communicator, I'm going to be disappointed, but if I go in expecting less, we actually might get somewhere. Number four go in to learn, not to teach. Go into the conversation to learn about their experience and everything that you can learn not to teach them and, lastly and most importantly, take 100% responsibility for our own emotional reactions and perspective on a situation. This is what I experienced. This is what the impact was that I experienced, because we will all experience something different.

Speaker 1:

All right, my friends, I hope this was helpful to you. As always, reach out if you have questions or if you have experiences based on this stuff that you wanna share. I'm all ears. That's what I've got for you this week and I will see you next week. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you gotta come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time. I'll see you in the Bloom Room.