The Graduate's Workplace Conflict Survival Guide: Skills and Mindset Shifts

In this episode, Simon Goode explores practical strategies and mindset shifts for new graduates navigating workplace conflict, emphasizing the inevitability and complexity of such challenges. He breaks down five types of conflict—data, value, structure, relationship, and interest—and offers actionable advice on responding effectively while maintaining self-care and composure. Throughout, Simon normalizes the discomfort of conflict and highlights the importance of self-improvement as a core skill for professional growth

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Simon Goode is a professional mediator and the host of the Conflict Skills Podcast, where he provides free resources and practical tools for handling conflict. With a passion for helping others navigate disagreements, Simon launched his podcast to guide listeners—especially new graduates—on managing workplace challenges. Recognizing that many people misunderstand the nature of workplace conflict, Simon offers expert insights to dispel common misconceptions and empower individuals to thrive in their careers. Through his engaging podcast, Simon continues to support and educate anyone seeking to develop their conflict resolution skills.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 "Preparing for Conflict Effectively"

05:35 Outdated Stress Response System

07:09 "Navigating Discomfort with Change"

10:27 "Mastering Workplace Conflict Resolution"

15:14 "Seeking Clarity Through Dialogue"

17:03 Defining Respect and Conflict Resolution

21:30 Improving Meeting Structure

25:38 Navigating Work Relationships Wisely

28:58 Overcoming Imposter Syndrome Calmly

33:06 Assertiveness, Compromise, and Clarity

35:27 "Managing Conflict and Assertiveness"

Transcript

0:00

Well, hello and welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator Simon Goode. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful for you, please consider pressing subscribe. In the episode today, I'm going to be more or less giving an overview of the kinds of skills and tools that could be helpful for new graduates in dealing with workplace conflict. It's an exciting time, isn't it, when you've finished university or you've finished your trade or whatever the step is in your qualification, and then you're going out into the workplace. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people have not a very nuanced understanding of workplace conflict. And in fact, I think some of the assumptions that people make about what workplace conflict is going to be like are just completely wrong. Often new graduates say things like, I'm just going to avoid the politics in the workplace, or something similar. And what they discover is that almost every workplace team is going to have conflict, and most workplace conflicts bear a little or a lot of resemblance to the Game of Thrones type of political discussions that would happen at the king's table. All of these maneuverings and posturings and people always positioning themselves to get the best out of any potential situation, using relationships, cashing in on favors, all of the same elements that we often would talk about in something like Game of Thrones when we're saying, I just want to avoid workplace conflict. And yet the challenge is that this is what workplace conflict is. It's these reciprocal patterns that go on between people. It's a very complex kind of thing, but really it's normal and inevitable. In every relationship that we've got, actually, there's going to be some type of conflict. It's often a meeting of different expectations. I think this is going to happen, you think something else. And so we should almost prepare for it ahead of time. We can preemptively know what to expect if we understand what goes on when we deal with conflict, how it activates this fight-or-flight nervous system. And that then is very helpful for giving us clues about what kind of things we can do to look after ourselves, for example. So in the episode today, I'm going to be going through a number of different practical tools that could be useful for graduates. And I think there's some of the— this is what you can do, these are the options for dealing with data conflict or value conflict or navigating rights and power, etc. I'll go through some of those on a— like, how should we deal with it in a day-to-day sense, but also thinking about the mindset shifts normalizing maybe some of the discomfort and challenges that you might go through when you're dealing with conflict, and expecting ahead of time to experience that level of stress, which is probably pretty high. So you might need to pay particular attention to self-care or self-regulation or maintaining balance over the short term while you're going through the spikes of conflict, if that makes sense. So you might wonder why I spend such a long time doing this rambling introduction rather than just saying, I'm going to be talking about strategies for managing workplace conflict for new graduates. And it's because I think this is a very complex topic, and workplace conflict really affects us. It's different to deciding which subject to do in university. Workplace conflict is something where we're a part of it. We're swimming in the water of relationships and culture and tension and dramas and all of that kind of stuff constantly. So it's normal when there's workplace conflicts going on for you to feel disgusting, to be honest. Workplace conflict is very, very stressful. It can be very, very exhausting. It's very distracting. It's consuming. It inhibits your sense of comfort. You feel uncomfortable when there's workplace conflict going on. So this is a normal way to feel when there's conflict. These days, people tell themselves things like, I'm overreacting, I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, why am I being so silly getting myself worked up into a fit about something that's relatively a minor issue? It's not really important what my boss thinks of me. But then they're lying awake at night trying to get back to sleep at 2 AM, ruminating and obsessing about what their boss thinks of them. Because this is the way that we're programmed. It has historically been very important what other people thought of you. When we were living in a tribal structure, it really mattered if your tribe thought that you were a valuable tribe member. You they're going to share resources with you, give you opportunities, help you to find a mate— all of the good things that you're probably aiming for to thrive within a tribe. And so if someone's pointing their finger at you or everyone's looking at you at once, that historically hasn't necessarily been a very safe spot to be. So we activate the sympathetic nervous system, this fight-or-flight kind of response. Our heart rate increases, our palms get a bit sweaty, We find that our voice quivers a little bit more than it might normally do. We might find our face getting flushed. All of these are signs that our body is getting us ready for action, physical action. The fight, getting ready to defend ourselves, or flight, get out of here, escape a potentially dangerous situation. The challenge is that we're walking around these days with a very outdated hardware system. The sympathetic nervous system is really good at responding to environments like when a bear's chasing you. It's not particularly well suited for managing environments like a job interview, but that's what happens. We activate, we escalate, we ramp up, so we can't think very clearly. We're looking at situations in more of a black and white kind of way, so we can't answer the question that the interview panel is asking us for the job interview, and we fumble our words. It's not ideal. I don't really want to jump across the table and punch the person in the nose if they ask me a difficult question, but that's what my brain and my body are getting me ready to do. So you're not overreacting, you're just reacting. That reaction largely is about the past, both the long distant past in terms of our evolution, but also the short past of your own experiences. When you feel uncomfortable, it's a sign about the way that your brain is making sense of the situation that you're in. So if your brain is encountering something that's new, well, you probably feel uncomfortable. It's good that you're on edge. It's good that you're on alert for potential dangers. Imagine that this is a place where you're hunting and you don't know this section of the jungle that you're in or something. It's good that your brain is programmed to be vigilant in that kind of a situation. But that's not going to be helpful if it's actually a difficult Excel sheet that you're working on and it's the first time using the software after an update happens and it looks and feels very different. And I don't know about you, but I find those situations sometimes quite uncomfortable. And I think that's an indication that my brain is probably like, difference, difference, danger, danger. There's some type of a connection that exists there. We can't change that reaction, can we? I would like to feel less uncomfortable when I'm looking at a new operating system that has a slightly different aesthetic, but that's the way that we react when someone stands a bit closer to us than we expect, when the meeting goes off track and someone interrupts us and begins talking and we feel like we're losing control of a situation. It's a very similar reaction. Like, historically, it's been really important that you're in control of situations, so when something shifts outside your control or when you're dealing with a lot of uncertainty, for example, it's good that that has made you vigilant and on alert and ready to act at potentially quite short notice. It's not good for these other modern work environment situations. So we need to understand that conflict feels terrible, that this is part of our normal reaction to our environment. It feels uncomfortable in the short term, it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to go with that initial reaction. In fact, I think largely the benefit of learning from someone like me in a conflict resolution training workshop is that we become more capable of responding instead of just reacting. So let's think about some of the ways that conflict happens, like in practice, how does it play out? It's almost always a reciprocal pattern that goes on between you and the other person. How you act, how you speak, the tone of voice that you use, the words that you choose, all of that is interpreted by the other person in ways that we're never fully aware of. They certainly don't always understand our intentions. People will never understand exactly what you mean when you're speaking to them, even people that know you very well. And we don't know when there's crossed wires necessarily. They then say something in response and we try to observe the congruence, I suppose, between what we've said and the reaction that we're getting in return. But there's always this imperfect element to communication, so that's something that we should assume is there. So therefore, we can normalize misunderstandings. It means then that it doesn't make much sense when someone misunderstands us to get all worked up and upset about it. Of course, we're going to have crossed wires. We've got different brains, we've got different experiences, we've got different knowledge sets and schemas that our brain uses to interpret the situations that we're in. Of course we're not going to always see eye to eye on these day-to-day kind of issues, so that's normal, that's to be expected. That doesn't mean that either of us are malicious or lazy or, um, you know, deliberately holding on to a vindictive thought even though you've tried to explain to them why you're correct and they just won't listen to you or something. Well, at least in the short term, that's the way that it always plays out. We don't understand each other initially, and all effective long-term strategies for dealing with conflict, in my experience, have two elements. One is that it focuses on this reciprocal pattern. The different ways that we respond to the people that we're dealing with will always get a different result from them. And as I see people improve in their capacity for dealing with workplace conflict, whether it's managers and team leaders and they're really looking to improve their skill set at assertiveness or performance management or giving feedback or whatever else it might be, or the actual people that are dealing with conflict themselves, practitioners, mediators, etc., that I've previously done quite a lot of clinical supervision and training with myself personally, but also the people that are actually dealing with conflict, with difficult workplace relationships. For all of those different categories of people, as they improve in their capacity for dealing with conflict, the one common element that stands out to me is that there's a real focus on self-improvement. Being more calm, being more stable, being more balanced. All of that means that effectively you show up with more capacity tomorrow when you're dealing with that difficult conversation. And I can reflect and think about what I did well, what I could have improved next time around, etc. And that focus on my performance, my behavior, it seems to me that that's really a bit of a superpower that people have when they're able to significantly improve in that capacity for communication and dealing with conflict effectively as well. So as a new graduate, it's It's easy to think that all types of conflict are negative and that all types of conflict are the same, but that's not true. There are always constructive and destructive elements to the conflict. It's a bit like a fire. We can use it to cook our food, or we could use it to burn our house down. There's certainly an element of it that if it gets out of control, it can be very painful, especially if you're up very close. But it can be useful for heat, for light, all of those kind of elements. It's a real superpower for you to be able to get good at managing difficult conversations, to take on board feedback and still stay calm, to seem in control, to maintain your composure. It's a real superpower to be able to listen to people and help them to feel understood and help them to feel heard. In fact, I think it's been the key of why I've often been promoted quickly in teams that I've been a part of. It's a real superpower to be able to think about situations in a problem-solving kind of way when you're feeling overwhelmed and you're butting your head against a brick wall and nothing's working. Well, some people have that capacity just to demonstrate resilience by pushing through, and there are things that we can do today to improve our capacity in all of those different areas. But that self-improvement and that focus on self-improvement is the fundamental layer here How do I get better at communication? It's improving myself. How do I get a better relationship with my partner? Improving myself. How do I want— I want my boss to respect me? It's improving myself. So that is a mindset shift I think that is very helpful the earlier that it can happen in your career. For a lot of people, we learn about workplace conflict through the painful mistakes that we make along the way. And frankly, I wish that I could have avoided some of those over the years, to say the very least. So it can be helpful as a graduate to think about as well, not that conflict is bad or good, but it's probably a mix of both. It's essential in some situations, inevitable really in most relationships. There are also particular different types of conflict that can be helpful to identify because each of them warrants a different response. Like,

I've talked about these 5 types of conflict previously: 14:33

data, value, structure, relationship, and interest. The data conflict is the information, it's the facts. So my boss might expect me to do this, and that wasn't actually what they've asked me to do. My client might think that this is included, and actually it's not. So in those kind of situations, we aim for clarity. Either providing our information again or doing it in a different way. Sometimes it's appropriate to take responsibility for that. I'm sorry, I might not have done the best job of explaining myself. It sounds like you're interpreting what I'm saying is this, but actually it's like this. Or we could do it in a curious kind of way. It sounds like this is your take on the situation. Could you walk me through a bit of your thinking there? Has that always been your perspective, or did something happen, or did you learn something in particular that shifted your view? Did something happen, or did you learn something that caused you to believe that? Like, I'm working towards clarity, but we have to tread a little bit careful, especially when the other person's wrong. Sometimes we don't want to rub it in their face, like, as I've told you previously, as you already know, blah blah blah blah blah. That type of— I would call it an adversarial kind of approach, me against you. Often gets a reciprocally adversarial approach. Whereas if we can just be a bit humble, slow down, not be too strong, you know, over-the-top pushy, and just say, I'm sorry, could you help me understand this one? Walk me through your thinking. Is that connected to this email or was it something else? Apologies, was that from a conversation you've had with me or is it someone else within the team that you've spoken with? We look to go to that underlying layer deeper of what's causing this discrepancy here. And sometimes there's no data, you haven't talked about it. So it's like, okay, that's something you look— if you do want us to do that, that's fine. I can talk you through that as an option. If you'd like, I can give you maybe a few different options at different price points, and then you can decide what's the best way forward depending on the amount of budget that's available. So data conflict is the first type of conflict, and it doesn't feel like that at a surface level. It feels like these people are out to get you. It feels like no one's listening to you. It feels like people are being disrespectful or something. But all of those elements are very difficult to talk about. It's very difficult to define what respect actually looks like, etc. I think starting with data conflict is good, but you'll have to steer it that way. Like Okay, it sounds like a few of the things that I've done recently have given you cause for concern. Could we go through just in a bit more detail what you would like me to do differently on a day-to-day level? When you say that you'd like me to keep this more in control, how frequently would you like updates about that? What's going to be the best way to do all of that? When you've got concerns, what's going to be an effective way of you raising that with me rather than it just sitting there and building up and building up so that then by the time you've talked to me about it, unfortunately you've suffered a lot more negative impact and potentially it could have been avoided, in other words. So data conflict is the first area. The next type of conflict that you could consider is value conflict, like how I think things should be. It could be those things like what's respectful communication, but there's a lot of nuance in that, isn't there? Is it okay to swear when I'm talking to a colleague? Well, We're all going to have a different view on that. When is it okay to swear? What about talking about someone else who's not in the room? Is that bitching about them behind their back, or is that appropriate? Some people will say, well, we shouldn't be talking about them without them here to defend themselves. Like, that's a value that they've got. Someone else might think, I'm not having a go at them, I'm just trying to have a pragmatic discussion here. We don't need to do a roll call and make sure that every single person is present whenever anybody talks about any particular issue. That's absurd. But obviously, when we come at this from an 'I'm right and you're wrong' kind of approach, we often get that dug-in defensive response. So if that's not your desired goal, which probably it's not, one option is to normalize those differences. Okay, it sounds like we've got different areas of focus here.'You're thinking about this, and therefore that's underlying the reason why you're requesting this. On our end, given the fact that we've already invested this much in additional expenses, we weren't necessarily prepared to be paying more at this stage. So it sounds like we're starting from different perspectives here. Have I got that right?' So it's just, look, we're different. We've got different ideas about what's normal or not. If your boss yells at you, 'Why are you taking a call during a meeting?' 'Whereas you're thinking, I don't know, I'm just trying to be responsive to clients. Like, isn't that the right thing to do?' We can normalize that difference.'Sorry, uh, the place where I worked previously, that was actually something my boss asked me to do. Sounds like you've got different expectations here. That's fine with me moving forward.' It's like, of course we're going to have differences in perspective. You can choose just to be very deferential if it's your boss telling you to do something. Maybe it makes some strategic sense from a career perspective just to do what your boss tells you. Other times you might decide to stick to your guns. If you're 5 minutes late to work, do you let your boss know? If you're calling in sick, can you send them a message? Does it have to be a phone call? How much notice should you give about this or that? When something happens that affects staff, should they have input over that? What is the line between autonomy and being a micromanager? Like, as a graduate, these things might seem like they're common sense, and of course these expectations should be clear, but they never are. It's always an ongoing process of clarifying these elements. And if you can do that in a way that's not such a big deal— let's just have a business-like conversation here, sounds like this and this might work better, or we've been butting heads about this and this, maybe we could change this, what do you think— that really does build, I think, people's respect and the esteem with which they hold you in. They think that you're capable, they think that you're reasonable. And then when there's an issue, there's conflict, or there's tension in another area, you've often laid the foundation for this give-and-take kind of dynamic where both people's perspectives are valued. So that's value conflict, normalizing the differences. So that's different to the data, different to the facts. You've misunderstood me. That's different to me saying, you shouldn't talk to me like that. So the third type of conflict is structural conflict. This is the way that we're communicating or the way that decisions get made. So this could be driving a lot of workplace conflict that you come across in your role. Maybe updates aren't given frequently enough, or this particular team meeting always goes pear-shaped because these particular people are in the room butting heads, or there's no agenda, or no one's doing the pre-reading. Or no, uh, like a list of action items or whatever you would call it is sent after the meeting. And maybe that's something that's very annoying to you. So we can just propose changes in structure here. If we're in a leadership role, we might just change it. After these meetings, could you please make sure that you circulate minutes with action items clearly marked? If there's an item on the agenda which doesn't have someone's name to it, then we're not going to discuss that. Or you might need to advocate for a change in structure. If you're a junior person and you're aware that you're not meeting with your boss frequently enough, or there's not enough time, or whatever it is, you might think about, well, how can I change this? Maybe I'd propose more time, or maybe I can do a bit of preliminary work and prepare information for my boss so it doesn't take as long for me to talk it through with them or something. Or maybe we could have a recurring structure that we use so so we're not sort of trying to figure everything out off the top of our head when we meet. There are all sorts of ways that we could use structure to often prevent conflict from erupting at all, or mitigate some of the negative impacts of workplace conflict if it is something that we need to manage. So data, value, and structure. The fourth type of conflict that it's important to understand as a graduate is what I call relationship conflict. This is the real reciprocal pattern that goes on between you and the other person, including your thoughts, your feelings and emotions, your mood, your perception, what you're noticing, what you're remembering, what you're observing, your physical body, how much sleep you've had, whether you're busting to go to the toilet. And so it's thoughts, feelings, behavior, physical body, and perception. Behavior is the other one. So what I'm doing, that's also going to influence my impression of you. My experience of you is going to be influenced by my thoughts, my feelings, my perception, my action, and my physical body. And that builds up relationship conflict of those elements, like the need to say, I told you so, you should have listened to me. Oh great, another problem to deal with. This is just what I want at the end of my shift. This is just, just what I wanted at the beginning of the day. Thanks a lot, boss. Wonderful. Or that feeling when you just want to say, like, I'm so sick of the way that they do this. And these could be smaller things. You might be surprised, but you're going to run into people that rub you the wrong way. It might just be the way that they hold themselves or the way that they speak or this repeated expression that they use or the way that they begin their emails. Instead of saying, hi, Simon, they just write Simon. You might be surprised at the kind of things that can get under your skin, and these build up. You then don't interpret the information that you're getting in the email in the same way. You're bristling a little bit, you know what I mean? Bristling in the, the very animalistic kind of sense, like my dog bristles when it thinks that there's a threat and there's a dangerous cat that might be in the environment or something similar. What happens when we bristle? It's the beginning of this fight or flight kind of response. What happens in our brain as we go into that fight or flight kind of response. The executive function section of our brain, this prefrontal cortex, isn't working to full capacity. Is that what you really want, to accurately interpret the email from this person? So the relationship conflict is the build-up. It's often about the reaction. It's the smaller things stacking on top of the bigger things. And it's a bit like the frog that gets boiled. It often creeps up on us, the way that this tension or this drama or You know, are they in this kind of mood type of thing? Over a long period of time, we begin to identify the patterns and the changes that go on with the people around us. Now, this relationship conflict is going to be there even in the good relationships that you've got. Even if you've got a really good boss, a really good team leader, they might be like a really stable, kind person, but they are also going to have their ups and downs in the same way that you are, or Everybody else that you work with as well. Good managers are going to come in some mornings and they haven't had enough sleep, or they've seen a sick relative that they're worried about, or their partner's left them, or for whatever reason they'll be more fragile. There are going to be times of tension, and that's normal. It's like we can ride the waves. The— I think, is it a Jung Pueblo quote that says Maturity is when we can ride the ups and downs of life without getting tossed about by the waves. So you can be aware of this, that there's going to be this wave back and forth of relationship conflict and bracing yourself for impact almost. But there are particular things that you can do to set relationships off on the right foot. Like, I never appreciated when I was a new graduate The importance of when you walk into a room, look each person in the eye, like take up a bit of space, act confident, say g'day, see if you can make eye contact with people, speak loudly. Good morning, Jim, how are you? Nice to see you again. Be positive, smile a little bit. We're seeming like a capable, switched-on, engaged kind of person. And those subtle differences, like walking in with your shoulders down and back and standing up straight, or pausing before you speak when a very senior person asks you a question, it makes you seem fantastically capable. People are drawn to other people with composure. People are drawn to stability. And especially when you're able to just take what someone else is telling you, like, tell me a bit more about that, actually, I hadn't thought about it in that way. It's like an other-oriented perspective that we can have when we're very calm. But people love that. People really appreciate it when you can actually show a bit of interest in them. And it's those micro little cues, the, the slight smile, and you're, you know, acting a little bit cheeky when you first see someone. G'day, Jim, how are you, mate? I'm glad to see you're here again. Nice to see you. I think it's been a couple of months, hasn't it? My goodness. Did you have any trouble getting here? Did you fly or drive? Like those little short closed-ended questions, the very non-threatening way we can build a bit of early rapport with these people. There's a real skill to that. So, don't overestimate the importance of just getting good at that kind of thing. I used to loathe those moments when I was a new manager and like we'd been away for a meeting together as a group of managers. So, we'd be all checking out of the hotel on the third day or something. We've all got our little suitcases and stuff downstairs heading off for a day before traveling home. Typically this is when I was in Newcastle, so we would often meet in Sydney or some other places depending on which organization it was. And I thought these were terrible times of ordeal. I never felt capable of making small talk with people. Everyone else seemed so comfortable in those situations, whereas I was always on edge, worrying that other people were judging me, etc. And in hindsight, I should have just smiled and said, 'G'day, good morning, how you going? Isn't it a beautiful day?' Just act— acted a little bit more chilled out instead of thinking that I needed to impress the people around me. I think in hindsight that would have just removed a lot of the tension and pressure, probably, that people picked up on as I seemed on edge and uncomfortable. And that then meant that they trod on eggshells as they were interacting with me. And then I would tell myself a story like, oh, nobody likes me, I'm the new graduate, I don't fit in here, etc., etc. You might be surprised at how common those types of— sometimes it's called imposter syndrome— type of experiences are for people. And I think a lot of the way that we overcome them is just to realize that it's not important. It's not your job necessarily to impress people at every potential moment. And in fact, if you can just be calm and be present in the moment, that's actually a very impressive quality to develop. So we've got relationship conflict, managing those ups and downs, beginning on a positive note, and expecting any relationship that we have not always to be perfect. The final type of conflict is interest conflict. So we've got data— this is the facts, this is the previous agreement. We've got value, what I thought should happen, my worldviews, my beliefs. We've got structure, the way that this is all playing out. We've got the relationship, the way we're feeling about each other, the way we're thinking about each other. And then interest is about what I want versus what you want. And it's probably the most important part of a lot of workplace conflict situations to consider. And yet I think often we need to have thought through those other four factors first. The challenge with interest conflict is that there's no magic wand that we can wave. I might be asking for next Friday off and my boss doesn't want me to do it. Well, one of us is not going to be happy here. I might want a raise and my boss is resisting. Well, that's going to be a situation where we can't both have 100% of what we want. Sometimes there's no magic wand that you can wave. So when it comes to interest conflict, as I've gone through the years and gradually matured in the way I think about this, I now consider it more a fact, more a process of deciding who you want to disappoint and who you want to keep happy. Want's probably the wrong word. I should say who you're prepared to disappoint and who you decide to keep happy. Like, if my boss really wants me to come in next Friday, I might just say yes. If it's a really good relationship with my boss and I don't really have any specific plans for that day, kind of who cares? If it's a give and take relationship, I'm not going to be overly fussed with it. But if it's a different kind of boss that's constantly trying to take advantage of me, every single time I've said yes in the past, it's always been you give them an inch and they take a mile. Well, that be— that might be the kind of situation that it makes sense to stand your ground and say, no, I gave you sufficient notice. It was originally approved in HR, in the system. I've already got plans of what I'm doing that day. That's not something that I can agree to. So you might choose sometimes strategically when to just say no. I don't think though that this means that you have to be harsh or act emotionally. I think sometimes it can be helpful to describe your emotions. The frustrating part for me is that when I get the original approval, I never know whether or not I can trust it, given the fact that pretty often you'll come back and renege on that original approval when things change with other members of the team. So I could just say, look, this isn't working for me. I really like the language of, that's not something that I can agree to, that's not something that I can organize, uh, that's not something that I can live with, or just that's not going to be possible. Like, we need to say no. Sometimes though, we don't want to add lots and lots of other reasons why. If we say to my boss, I've already got plans, I've paid for this concert, then your boss might say, I'll give you the money for the concert, or, oh, come on, you don't even like them. And then all of a sudden we're in a debate about the reasons why. Whereas I'd prefer just to make my point very clear, especially in those situations where I'm aiming for assertiveness. So sometimes we're accommodating, sometimes we're very assertive, sometimes we split the difference, which is called compromising. I can't come in for the full day, but I can come in in the morning, or I can come in this Friday, but then what does that mean for the other requests that I've got for leave? Are they all going to be okay? At least like split the difference. That's a good option sometimes because it gets to a quick outcome. At least you can get a decision and move on with it. But nobody gets 100% of what they want. You're still in in the morning and your boss still would prefer you to be there for the whole day. Sometimes it makes sense to sit down and go through options and see if you can come up with a win-win solution. That's called collaborating. Like, you might say to your boss, look, I can't come in on Friday, but maybe I could do some work the day before to get things ready so that even if you've got a more junior staff member on deck, they'll be able to manage things better. What do you reckon? Like, that might be an option that we could consider or propose, but not always. Sometimes it makes better sense just to split the difference and just get on with it, or just to say yes and agree, or just to say no and stick to our guns. And then the final option that we've got for dealing with conflict is just avoid it. An interest conflict is no different here. Sometimes they ask for something and we just let it go. We don't even bother responding. We know that they'll probably just do it anyway, so what's the big deal? Or we've got other priorities that we need to deal with, so I can see them doing something they shouldn't be. Like, I'm the team leader and it's in my interest that this staff member does this every day and they're not. Well, for now, I might just do it myself or ask someone else to cover for them. Even though longer term I'm planning to discuss it with them and be more specific about the change in behavior that's required. So sometimes we're firm and assertive, sometimes we're accommodating, sometimes it's compromise, sometimes we collaborate and go through a win-win, and sometimes we avoid conflict altogether, even when someone's trying to push our buttons and have a go at us. And that can be a very helpful way of thinking about that interest conflict. Instead of becoming a people pleaser and impossibly really trying to constantly keep everybody else happy, impress everybody, make sure everybody thinks that you're perfect, maybe there are some situations where compromise makes more sense, or maybe you should just say no and find those opportunities to be assertive when there's enough at stake for you. But what do you think as a new graduate hearing me explain some of that and probably not having been through some of these experiences yourself, does that resonate with you? I wonder if there's some parallels with other types of conflict, like your friends group conflict, for example, conflict at school, conflict with your family. And if you have got some experience under your belt, I know some people listening to this episode aren't necessarily new graduates, what helped you? What kinds of mindset shifts made the difference in you not taking conflict personally, for example? Or was it something to do with habits and routines and healthy practices, like learning how to take a few deep breaths to calm yourself down, or learning what's an effective way of beginning a day when I'm feeling stressed and I'm all over the shop in terms of my thinking? I'd love to hear from you. If you want to leave a comment down below, that would always be incredibly appreciated. If it's been useful for you, I would be very grateful if you would consider pressing like or giving a positive review. That makes a massive difference for little podcasts like this. If you've got feedback, question about something I've talked about, an idea for a future episode of the podcast, you can shoot me an email. It's podcasts@simongood.com. And if you'd like to learn me a bit more about my services, you can check out my website, simongood.com. Thank you very much as always for listening, and I hopefully see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast. Bye for now.