An important part of effective conflict resolution is ensuring everyone has a voice. Since 85% of the workforce experiences some form of conflict, practical communication can be a vital tool in resolving workplace conflict, especially in a virtual environment. Listen as Jeremy Pollack, a conflict resolution practitioner, researcher, writer, coach, trainer, and entrepreneur chats with Dr. Stephanie Menefee about how to prevent, navigate, and understand conflict. Jeremy is the president of Pollack Peacebuilding Systems, a nationwide conflict resolution consulting firm, as well as a research fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Conflict and Negotiation. Learn more about Jeremy and his work at www.PollackPeacebuilding.com.
An important part of effective conflict resolution is ensuring everyone has a voice. Since 85% of the workforce experiences some form of conflict, practical communication can be a vital tool in resolving workplace conflict, especially in a virtual environment. Listen as Jeremy Pollack, a conflict resolution practitioner, researcher, writer, coach, trainer, and entrepreneur chats with Dr. Stephanie Menefee about how to prevent, navigate, and understand conflict. Jeremy is the president of Pollack Peacebuilding Systems, a nationwide conflict resolution consulting firm, as well as a research fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Conflict and Negotiation. Learn more about Jeremy and his work at www.PollackPeacebuilding.com.
Welcome to the Center for the advancement of virtual organizations podcast, conflict resolution and virtual teams. I'm Stephanie Menifee. And today we're joined by Jeremy Pollack, founder and CEO of Pollak, peacebuilding and research fellow at Stanford University, where he does interdisciplinary research in social psychology, negotiation and conflict. Jeremy also has a brand new book out titled The conflict resolution playbook, practical communication skills for preventing, managing and solving conflict.
And I have to say it's a really great read. Jeremy, welcome. And thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us about conflict resolution and virtual teams. conflict has been in existence since the beginning of time. And it's often thought of as a negative, especially in the business world. But as we know, really perspective is everything. And conflict can be a really positive thing, which is one of the many reasons I'm really excited, you're here with us today. You know, we know that an estimated 85% of the workforce experiences conflict in some form or another. So today, I'd like to get your thoughts on how we can start being more proactive about conflict resolution in virtual workplace. And just just to get a started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and why this topic is important to you?
01:15
Sure, yeah. So I, you know, I started basically, training as an anthropologist, several years ago, and during me during that time, I had a coaching practice, and sort of simultaneously, I was trained to be an anthropologist, and really, from the evolutionary psychology perspective, and studying cooperation and conflict, the group level that really interested in that. And then I went on to get another graduate degree, a master's in conflict resolution, and peacebuilding, which was more of an applied degree. And during that time, increasingly, you know, sort of growing my coaching practice, and then it kind of merged with the end of my degree into starting a consultancy for conflict resolution.
And that's kind of where I, I started this in this field. And since then, we've, we've grown to about 40 practitioners around the country, and starting in the UK now. So we're, we're working all over the country and overseas, helping organizations deal manage conflict, navigate conflict, prepare for conflict, prevent it, mitigate risks from it, that kind of thing. So that's sort of a short version. To me, my, my sort of personal mission has has been to help people find peace both within themselves and between each other. And this has been a great mechanism to further that purpose.
And I yeah, so I'm just super passionate about helping people both both discover ways of being at peace within themselves, because I do think that peace starts within and that's kind of a that's a common euphemism. I think that's, that's used in the in this in the ADR field of the conflict resolution field. And, but but that, but I think it's true that it does start within and if you're at peace with yourself, it's much easier to be at peace with others. And if you're in conflict in some way, with yourself, it's it's easier to be in conflict with others. And that in that merges into the trickle, especially in organizations, it trickles down and trickles around into other other team members and, and can put you in a bad and you know, sort of a, a not so happy space in the organization.
03:17
That's really a wonderful introduction into what we're talking about today. And really interesting career trajectory to thank you for sharing that with us. You know, as we think of peace within and peace with others, communication comes to mind. And for anyone who's working, or who has spent time working in a virtual environment, it's no surprise to hear that picking up on conflict cues is more difficult than in the face to face environment, especially for teams who aren't working in close collaboration. So can you tell us a little bit about the communication challenges, both real and perceived, that are present in the virtual environment?
03:55
Yeah, you know, I mean, one thing that I get asked this question a lot, and one thing that actually surprised me was when we moved from, from in person to remote, a lot of, you know, we expected a lot of, sort of, I guess, extra conflict to to emerge. And what I discovered, at least from some of the clients that I work with, is a lot of the conflicts that they were experiencing with people in person, which means they were they were seeing them every day. They had, they had an issue with someone or challenge and they weren't able to communicate effectively. And but they but it was in there sort of in their face every day.
And it was creating a lot of tension, a lot of stress. And that was crazy. You know, so person goes home and we're talking about peace within a person is super stressed, going home because of the tension they feel at work. Now in the virtual environment, I've seen some of that tension actually be relieved where they're not in front of or next to a person that they that they have trouble with every day. So they're out there at a place of kind of less stress, and a little bit a little bit more balanced and from this space is a good place to start rebuilding Trust, rebuilding communication, rebuilding relationships with the people they are challenged with, so that when they go back in the office, if they ever do, in some companies, they, I guess they don't, they won't.
But if they, if they do that they can, they can have a better relationship going back in and they don't fall into the same old pattern. So that was an interesting finding. For me, just anecdotally, the some of the challenges, though, of course, are, especially when we're doing sort of video, video conferencing and video meetings and that kind of thing. You know, we only see people's faces, so it's hard to read body language, that could be a good thing, or it could be a negative thing. So in some cases, you know, filling in the gaps with your own mind, and imagining what someone is doing may lead to negative effects. But in other cases, if someone's crossing their arms, or they're kind of closed off, or they're slouched over in a live meeting, it's easy to see, this person isn't very engaged or closed off for that kind of thing. Sometimes it's hard to see that in a virtual environment.
So you know, you could fill in the gap with this person is totally open, or this person isn't. So that could, that could actually be a good thing or, or, or a bad thing. Depending on how you perceive the individual's body language in terms of facial expressions. That's something that I found to be a little bit a little bit more, I don't know if it's difficult, but it's just more salient. Because if you're in a virtual meeting, for instance, a lot of times, especially with multiple people, you're not focused on everyone's face all the time, you know, and I see now you're, we're, we've got these boxes with people's faces in them.
And you're sort of constantly reading everyone's face. So if anybody makes sort of a weird face, or there, or who knows, you know, maybe they're looking at something online, while they're in the meeting or something like that. They're just disengaged, or, and you can sort of make up anything you want about what that person's facial expressions. mean. So there's a lot of there's a lot of room for misinterpretation based on the way people are looking into the camera. And the other thing is, if someone comes into a meeting, and they're in there, for instance, their cameras off and what does that mean, if someone's coming in, and everyone else's cameras on but this person's cameras off? And you ask them to and they say why I can't, I can't at the moment or something.
So you feel like maybe they're disengaged. And so that could be read a certain way. So there's so there's interesting little nuances that are different between virtual environments and, and live environments. And I don't think if you look at the sum total, I don't think oh, virtual is worse than in person. I think there's some advantages to it as well. But I think it it really comes down to like, what you're saying is communication, if, if we can communicate well, and if we have any issues with each other, if we're thinking like this person has cameras off, or they're made a weird face, and I don't know if they're engaged or what, like, talk to that person about it, you know, how do we have an effective dialogue about, hey, here's some of the expectations that I have, what do you what kind of expectations do you have about about us working virtually with each other? Here's what I'm reading, here's what I'm interpreting. Is this true? Is that how you feel? Are you engaged or you're not, and and trying to learn whether the person is actually their their intention, or their attitude is actually active?
You're learning whether your perception of their attitude is accurate or not, and being open to learning that actually, you misinterpreted that, you know, it was they're actually not disengaged, they're just, you know, maybe they didn't get their coffee this morning, or they're not having a great morning or something. And it's not about you at all, you know, so I think that I think it really leaves a lot of room for communication to to reinterpret, and be super communicative with each other.
08:29
Yeah, absolutely. This is, this is really great. And I actually want to talk a little bit more about effective dialogue. But first, in your book, The conflict resolution playbook, you talk about what happens to our body and mind during a conflict. And you've talked a little bit about that here, too. And I think it's something that we're traditionally less focused on as a side effect of conflict in general. But it's really important. And so I'm wondering if you can share a bit more about the psychology behind conflict and why it's so important.
Sure. I mean, I think there's also I mean, when we talk about the psychology of conflict, we can we can talk about the purely cognitive realm, mental realm. But one thing that I mentioned in the book, which, which I think is important, is the psycho biology of conflict or the neurobiology of conflict. And, you know, when, the way that I, the way that I frame conflict is probably similar to you know, talking about john Burton or similar to other theorists where they're looking at human needs theories and framing it through that perspective. And the way that I look at conflict is conflict is typically a perception, either a real or a perceived threat to one's basic needs, and those could be basics or you know, sort of physiological needs, food, shelter, clothing, that kind of thing or basic psychological needs, and we're often unaware of our own psychological needs.
But if we feel that our, our, you know, safety is threatened if we feel that our autonomy or freedom is threatened if we feel that our identity is threatened, these are some basic psychological needs that we have and if those are if those are perceived to be Writing or impeded in some way, that's when conflict arises when our needs are, when our needs are perceived as being threatened, you know, things happen, our sympathetic nervous system acts up, we sort of we can, and we're flooded with these neuro chemicals, which leads to a state of a stress response and acute stress response, which most people call the fight or flight response.
And it doesn't matter whether whether we perceive it typically doesn't matter whether we perceive a threat to our physical or physiological being or to our psychological being, they both get registered cognitively or even sub cognitively in the same ways. And they, they activate the sympathetic nervous system so that we go into this fight or flight mode. And that's why people, a lot of times, you feel threatened or you feel someone did something, or they said something about your identity, or they said something and they threatened your freedom or something like that, or at least it's perceived, that way, you'll go into this, this mode where either you will shut down and completely want to avoid the person or you'll blow up and want to lash out and be aggressive or defensive towards the person. And that and sort of, and I think that those reactions are a part of the stress response, they are a response to this, neurochemical, and emotional flood that comes from conflict.
And that and that's something that, you know, especially in training, and that kind of thing, we are, we try to help people recognize where their triggers are, what sort of things they, you know, historically in patterns start to feel triggered by like, some people are very, very sensitive to anything that could be perceived as a threat to their identity. Other people are very sensitive to anything that could be a threat to their, to their safety, you know, and so they over perceive, they're hyper vigilant about threats to certain to just certain areas of themselves or to certain needs based on their history based on things that they've been through in their lives, their experiences.
And now they're, there's some trauma there. And so they they perceive the perceived threats much more much more easily, even when there's not threats, and then they kick into fight or flight mode. And it's very hard if when you're in fight or flight mode is very, very difficult to have effective communication. So I think that's, that's one thing that we we we try to look at in terms of being proactive and preventative is, what are your individual triggers? Where do you get really emotionally triggered? when someone does or says something? Let's talk, let's think about why that's happening, what needs you you perceive are being affected? And how then to mitigate the effects of that stress response, how to soothe yourself how to breathe, how to stay calm, so that you can actually have an effective communication rather than completely shut down or completely blow up?
12:44
Yeah, that's really great advice. And, actually, I think it's, it's really great for any, any of our listeners who are in a leadership position to kind of take note, because, you know, I know that there are a lot of things we can do in the virtual space to encourage team building a positive conflict resolution, and actually, you know, what, I say leadership, but it could come from anywhere in the organization. You know, Can Can you share a little bit about how someone might navigate, encouraging team building and positive resolution or even just a positive climate in the virtual workspace?
13:21
You know, I think I think encouraging a positive climate of peace, what we call a peaceful culture, is is the same in person as it is virtually the methods may be different. But essentially, the philosophy behind it is pretty much the same because we're human beings, whether we're in person or not. And again, if we look at if we if I stay on this paradigm of the human needs theory, and the way of looking at conflict and peace, through a human's perspective, but I tend to think of human needs. And I tend to think that there's sort of six very core psychological needs. And I go over these in the book, which are autonomy, safety, growth, and stimulation, connection, and identity. And those are the six and so I when I'm looking at peaceful cultures, one of the assessments that i do is i is i look at and I gauge and I take, you actually take measurements of in terms of people's just self reports, how how people are perceiving each of those needs being met, you know, and there's different ways of doing that. But essentially, if I want to give an organization a rating, or if I want to look at an organization, like how peaceful is this culture? How, how set up?
Are they to, to sustain peace versus versus how set up? Are they to have conflicts emerge? I want to look at how people's basic needs are being served, not just their survival needs, in other words, not how much they're getting paid, but how their psychological needs are being served. Do people feel a sufficient level of autonomy? Or are they are they being micromanaged? Do people feel a sufficient level of their identities being recognized and valued Or do they not?
Do people feel psychologically safe to be be themselves authentically and express themselves in ways that and not get punished for it? And so we'll go down these lists and try to figure out is this organization set up to serve their employees in their, in their workforces? And then it there to serve their employees psychological needs properly, and you can also look at the same thing with their customers are they set up to serve their customers psychological needs properly? And if not, there's going to be, you know, conflicts with, with customers and and and I've even looked at this through a product or service perspective is this product or this service set up to serve at least one if not multiple, of human beings, psychological needs, because those are the things that make services and products very valuable is is to, is to service the needs of human beings. So it looking at it through this framework helps me, you know, I think simplify a perspective on a particular culture, you know, are you are, are we properly insufficiently? fulfilling the needs of our workforce?
16:09
Yeah, that's great. And I think that everything you're talking about is really helpful in getting to a place where, you know, maybe we can move past this this comp, you know, conflicts arising, and people not really knowing and taking them, you know, quote unquote, home when they leave their virtual office. But, you know, on on the road to getting there, we, you know, you've talked about how people process conflict differently. But how about, you know, how someone might resolve a conflict? How might someone's approach to resolving differ depending on the parties involved? You know, for example, how about resolving or approaching resolution between co workers or between a supervisor and employee or even between an employee and a customer? You know, how might that look different?
17:06
Yeah, no, I there, there are a lot of differences. I mean, because, you know, when you have two co workers, it doesn't have the same power dynamic, that you have a co worker, a worker and a leader or a direct report a supervisor. And the same thing with you know, it depends on what your customer policy is. And you know, customer's always right, then there's a dynamic there where, you know, customers are also sort of in a higher should be at a higher power position, depending on what the what the culture is.
So I think it does depend a lot. At the end of the day, there's no easy way to answer this, because there's so many different methods for so many different types of contexts. But I think at the end of the day, if we remember that we're all human beings, and that every human being has this, basically the same set of psychological needs, we need to serve those needs we need in and one of those, one of the needs that I focus on a lot is the need for care or connection. If I were just to tell you, I'm going to give you a Steffie, I'm going to give you a job and your job.
And I'm going to point to this other person, we're here and your job is to go to that person, just care for that person. And I want to, I'm going to leave all judgment about that person behind, I'm going to, I'm just going to assume the person is going to accept your care. And let's let's take all the other sort of branches of thoughts out of it. I just want you to go care for the person. I think that I would assume and you can answer this, but I would assume that you would you just intuitively know how to go care for someone if I just said Your mission is to care for that person. Right? Like Yeah, like you can figure out how to care for someone. Right?
18:39
Yes. Yeah, like, you know, you've got me ask them how they're doing. I'm here for you let them like talk to me for a while, you know, whatever it is just there's most people intuitively know how to care for someone. So if we make this very simple, and we just say, Okay, how do we equalize equalized, in terms of human beings, he co workers or a leader and a supervisor and a director Porter, something like that? How do we make you both just human for a moment? And how do we help you both care for each other for the moment?
And if one person is the one who has the conflict, the other person is the one who's listening or who's, who's kind of managing the conflict, then? How does that person learn to care for the other, whether it's through perspective, taking an empathy, whether it's fought through just listening skills, whether it's through a proper Conflict Management Protocol, I mean, whatever the method is, the bottom line is that individual needs to feel cared for in that moment, because they're having an issue they're in, you know, breaking it down even further. They're in a state of pain. And if we can look at someone going, instead of this person is attacking me, they're, I'm on the defense, I need to defend myself instead of going into that mode set. Just focus on this individual coming to me right now.
The conflict is in a place of pain, and I need to stay compassionate. How do I stay compassionate? How do I care for this person in pain? That that's a great starting point. And the same thing with customers, I think customers call up and they're upset or something. And if you could just put care first before policy, put care first, and just care for the individual put policy second doesn't mean you have to get rid of the policy just means you need you put that second in terms of the priority list. Put care first, this person is in a state of pain, they're in conflict, they're having a problem there. They need something, how do I just care for the person? And so I think, you know, I think that that sort of is the great equalizer, just caring, humanizing and caring for each other.
20:33
I think that if our listeners take one thing away from this entire conversation, it should absolutely be what you're talking about now about caring, you know, strip everything away all of our titles, all of the things, you know, at the end of the day, we are all humans, and we need care. And you're right. And I think that's beautiful, it shows that a need to be mindful and present. And I think all of that can go a really long way in resolving conflict and even preventing future conflict. And I think that kind of rolls into something that's on a lot of minds these days. And that's diversity. And so can you kind of expand on that on, you know, what you're talking about and care to include how to honor diversity?
21:28
Yeah, diversity based for identity based conflicts there, they're very much about the need for an identity for pot, you know, what I call it a positive coherent identity. And when people that have when when people perceive their identities to be impeded, or threatened in some way, when they don't, and when they don't feel safe, to be themselves or to express themselves, safely in a system, whether it's an organization or a societal system, or any kind of system, they will that same fight or flight mechanism, you know, gets triggered, and they that basic psychological need is perceived to be threatened.
And that's, that creates conflict. And we call that, you know, we call the solution right now, we're calling the solution to that conflict, diversity or diversity inclusion, like how do we, how do we create diverse workforces a diverse system and make everybody feel included? Well, I think really what we're talking about is, how do we recognize and respect and care for each other's identities. And when we have very, when we have very non diverse systems, it doesn't feel very respectful or caring for people who are in the minority. And so that's why we want to increase diversity, we want to increase the level of inclusion so that everyone feels like hey, you know, my pieces of my identity that I perceive are maybe threatened or also are also now being recognized and cared for.
So again, I think it comes back to care and recognition is, you know, we create diverse workforces. But what do we do with those workforces? How do we have, how do we have inclusivity in the diversity because you could create a diverse workforce, but people might still not feel like they're, you know, they're they're being cared for. So we really need to have mechanisms, whatever those methods are, in every organization is different in different cultures, and, you know, in terms of in terms of organization, but whatever the methods are, we need to have ways of making people feel like they have a voice to, that their particular groups they identify with are also cared about.
And that are also they're also important, and they can have an impact in decision making, and the recognize and they're respected. And so, you know, I think this is kind of preaching to the, you know, preaching the choir, I think, I think everybody kind of knows this intellectually. But the good thing about what's happening now, in terms of diversity, is I think a lot of people are getting off their butts and starting to go, this is this is some real stuff, we need to really figure this out. And so organizations are getting a little bit more serious about Okay, you know, we have diversity initiatives, but house, you know, what are we doing to make sure that our workforce, our workplaces are inclusive, we need to have some actual like mechanisms, we need to hire some people to think about this, we need to hire Dei, you know, practitioners that can come in and run these programs.
So that so that someone is just leading the charge in terms of making sure not only are we diverse, but we're inclusive, that we were given, we have equal opportunities, and equitable opportunities for everyone here. So that you know, so that we can so that we can remain diverse and remain inclusive. So again, I think it's just like taking initiative, caring for people's like caring for people on an identity level, making sure they feel cared for they feel recognize they feel respected. And, and then there's that balance, you know, there's the balance of Okay, like, is what we're doing, working? How do we measure that? How do we know it's working, if it's not working, let's change up method. Because sometimes you can do everything you want.
And people still feel like oh, there's, you know, we're still being marginalized or we're still being, we're still not being recognized or respected or something. And so like, Okay, so what what can we do differently? And bringing pink bringing people into the conversation? who are who are feeling marginalized and asking them, what would you need to see from us to start feeling like, you know, we're recognizing you more. And so creating those mechanisms and methods of inclusion, by way of including people in the actual building of the mechanisms. If that makes sense.
25:34
It does, it makes perfect sense.
25:36
No, no, it makes perfect sense. And, you know, when at the end of the day, when we talk about conflict, there are so many things that lead up to it, and so many ways to prevent it. And you know, that's exactly what you're talking about here. And I, you know, I have to tell anyone who is interested in what you're saying, which I hope everyone is, and I'm sure they are. In your book, you have actual actionable tools, then there are called strategy sessions. I'm actually looking at your book right now.
And so anybody who is interested in what Jeremy is saying, and wants to learn more about it, pick up this book, because there are lots of great examples and action items. And, you know, I can't say enough great things about it. And there's actually an entire section on honoring diversity, which, you know, I haven't seen a lot lately when, you know, in terms of conflict resolution, especially in organizations. And so I have to, you know, ask you just one more, one more question. Is there anything else? Any additional pieces of advice or bits of wisdom you could leave with us today?
26:46
You know, what one thing I guess, that I will, I will piggyback on, I think you're right, I think learning to care for one another is really important. It's very difficult when we feel that our needs are being threatened when we feel someone is threatening our identity or autonomy or safety or something, it's very difficult to care for the person. So, you know, care goes both ways. Can you care for yourself, as well.
When you start feeling in conflict with someone to make sure that you're doing your best practices, taking time off, if you need to taking a breather, taking a walk, getting some good food, getting sleep, whatever, whatever the practices are, to make sure you care for yourself, so that you're in a state steady balance state of mind is important. I think the only way you can care for others is if you care for yourself. So a lot of times what I see people in conflict, there's a lack, there's a large lack of self care.
So I think I would focus on this idea of care if just you know, sort of, as a parting words is like, can you care for yourself so that you can be in a good in a peaceful state of mind, and show up as the peaceful individual that you want to be. And so when people come to you, and you have a problem with them, or you're or they're in conflict with you or something, you can be in a steady peaceful state of balance state, because you've cared for yourself. And then you have some room to care for others, you got to fill your cup, so that you have something to give to others. So be so and that. So that's what i would i would part with care for yourself so that you can be in a state where you can care for others.
28:18
That's really fantastic advice. Thank you so much. You know, Jeremy, you have given us wonderful things to think about and move forward with and just thanks so much for joining us in support of the Center for the advancement of virtual organizations. We truly appreciate your insights and we know our listeners will benefit from your experience.
28:41
Thanks, Stephanie. I appreciate it. I'm just happy to be here.
28:43
Thank you.