Unmanaged Conflict

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Conflict is like the unwelcome guest at every workplace Christmas party – inevitable but manageable! When ignored, it can turn a celebration into a disaster.

Here’s a quick guide on how to keep the peace and avoid workplace drama:

  1. Face the Music: Dodging conflict is like procrastinating on paying your bills – it only gets worse with time. Tackle issues head-on instead of letting them simmer.
  2. Don’t Tolerate Bad Behaviour: If your workplace feels like a drama-filled reality show, it’s time for a change. Stamp out bad behaviours, encourage open talk, and watch the drama fade away.
  3. Leader to the Rescue: Leaders, don’t be MIA when conflicts arise. Jump in, sort things out, and show your team you’ve got their backs. Superheroes wear capes; leaders solve conflicts!
  4. Team > Me: Solo success is great, but team victories are better. Encourage a culture where everyone cheers for the team, not just themselves. It’s a win-win situation!
  5. Learn, Adapt, Thrive: If you’ve ever stumbled and learnt from it, you know what’s needed here. Reflect on past conflicts, learn from them, and gear up for a drama-free future.

Leaders, turn conflict management into your secret weapon! Invest in training programs that teach your team effective communication and negotiation skills. It’s not just about surviving conflicts; it’s about thriving in the midst of them. Let’s transform workplace clashes into opportunities for growth and success!

Mulch and Muhammad Ali

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What does Muhammad Ali have in common with road tunnels?

If you read the newspapers in Sydney at all, you’ll know there has been an awful lot of talk about mulch recently. Yes, mulch. Garden variety mulch!

Mulch containing asbestos has been found in the brand-new parklands that are located above the giant underground spaghetti junction that forms a critical part of an enormous WestConnex road tunnel network.

Imagine being the project managers on the WestConnex project. They had a budget of $16.8B and employed a total of 65,000 highly skilled people over the life of the construction.

And now all they can talk about is mulch.

Muhammad Ali said: “It isn’t the mountains ahead that wear you out; it’s the mulch in your shoe”.

Actually, he said ‘pebble’ not ‘mulch’ but humour me.

Seemingly minor issues can have a cumulative effect on the overall success of activities like negotiation and conflict management.

In negotiations, minor obstacles can take on a life of their own and have an impact far more significant than other larger challenges. I have seen countless times, when working through conflict with individuals and teams, that the root causes of disagreements are often quite minor things that have festered.

To conquer the mountains, leaders should be addressing the mulch in the shoes of their people.

Seneca

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Some people are known mononymously – Madonna, Pele, Zendaya, Sting.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger lived from 4 BC to AD 65 and is usually known mononymously as Seneca.

He was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature (thanks Wikipedia).

This quote is from Seneca: A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

The same is true for organisations. We think friction in organisations is bad, but it isn’t. It just needs managing.

Without friction:

  • we couldn’t negotiate (a fundamental skill for everyone in my opinion)
  • we wouldn’t be able to explore different perspective and understand risks
  • we would be stuck in groupthink
  • we would be less creative
  • we couldn’t work through issues and emerge with better relationships

Seneca’s wisdom extends to organisations. We need positive friction to negotiate, manage conflict and search for alignment.

Go get that gem polished!

Tribology

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Here’s a word you never thought you’d need to know: TRIBOLOGY.

A tribologist studies the friction between interacting surfaces and, surprisingly, it’s quite a broad field. Tribology is needed for maintaining machinery, replacing human joints, designing basketball shoes and many more dissimilar fields. Too much friction and the machine / artificial joint / shoes will stick; too little friction and the machine / artificial joint / shoes will slip.

My interest in tribology stems from my belief that leaders need to master friction to get the most out of their people. Sometimes the friction needs to be dialled down through conflict management, sometimes it needs to be dialled up to pursue alignment from different perspectives ,and sometimes, in complex negotiations, we dance with friction to keep it at the right level for the circumstances.

Positive Friction is about knowing when and how leaders should use friction.

And it’s powerful when done well – if leaders could negotiate better, resolve conflict better and be better at harnessing the contributions of their teams, it would fix profit, retention, productivity, alignment, and so much more!

Travelling!

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I am heading overseas tomorrow for a trip with my family.

Travel, especially in foreign countries, can bring out the worst in people so I am planning to try out some new negotiation and conflict management techniques on them.

I might try a bit of “you’re not coming with us today!” or maybe some “you really should be more appreciative of how much this is costing!”.

Kidding …

What I will be doing is asking for honest conversations about how everyone is feeling, acknowledging the things that are hard for each of us, recognising any brewing conflicts and identifying common ground.

As it happens, there are a lot of similarities between travel and negotiation.

With travel, it’s tempting to daydream about the exciting destination, but we can’t go anywhere without lots of groundwork, planning and getting everything in place for those travelling (did I mention we got our visas approved with only two business days to spare?!)

In negotiations, we can get too focused on the outcomes we are looking for (an agreed contract, the new job, the sale) and overlook the need to plan the strategy and do the emotional prep required to perform well.

To prove the point, these questions work just as well for a holiday as they do for a negotiation:

  • Where are you heading?
  • What do you want to achieve?
  • How will you get there?
  • Who is involved?
  • What needs arranging?
  • Are you ready?

What other questions fit both categories?

It’s almost that time of year

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Some of our most fraught negotiations are not in the boardroom or during a mediation, but with family and friends in the lead-up to the holiday season.

Some of these holiday season negotiations rival the biggest corporate deals for complexity, number of parties, a protracted history of dealings and ever-changing power dynamics.

Simply planning a family get-together at Christmas time involves a negotiation about whose place it will be at, who is bringing what, who is driving home and what gifts to buy. There will planning needed for how to avoid the clash of personalities that arose last year and where to seat “that uncle” that everyone seems to have.

Here are my top three tips for negotiating the holiday season:

  1. Anchoring. In negotiation, the anchoring bias is the tendency to rely too much on the first piece of data. For holiday plans, anchor your desired outcome by being the first to suggest the plans. It is harder for others to adjust from the starting point and suggest alternatives if you’ve already named an offer.

A polite “We’d like to have everyone over to our place this year” saves you the dreaded annual trek to Goodooga.

  1. Scenario Planning. If you suspect you will receive the same boring present or you’ll have guests offer to cook the same dated recipe, plan ahead for this. Work out how you’ll react in these circumstances. Good negotiators plan responses for all sorts of scenarios.

Try “I have always appreciated the effort you put into the Ham and Banana Hollandaise and this Christmas I’d love to honour you with a year off”.

  1. Pick your battles. Christmas time with your family is probably the wrong time to negotiate competitively. Simply put, sometimes the outcome is not as important as the relationship, and you should accommodate the other party’s desires.

Instead of “why do we have to go your family’s house every year?”, try “I’ll happily tag along because I know it is important to you”.

The biggest negotiation of their lives

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This is my wonderful son and his beautiful bride. They have been married for almost a week.

Yes, this post is probably more suited to Facebook or Instagram, but here’s the thing, they have just entered the biggest negotiation of their lives!

They are entering the negotiation having spent a year planning for it. They have dressed up for the kick-off meeting (a.k.a. the wedding day), and they have made concessions on menus, guest lists and the gift registry.

Hopefully it’s a long and fruitful negotiation but it’s not guaranteed to always be easy.

It’s an expensive negotiation too and they are both very invested in the outcome. There are external stakeholders to satisfy as well – the sponsors of the kick-off meeting (like me), for instance!

Many of us have already entered into negotiations such as this one. Some have progressed extremely well, and others have ended badly.

For those wanting to be in the former category, I’d suggest a heavy reliance on an accommodating style, a focus on building trust and investment in communication skills.

Calling all wordsmiths

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Okay, all you clever wordsmiths out there, I need some help!

I am looking for a new word to describe what I do.

I teach negotiation skills to government and industry, I consult on client-led negotiations, I coach leaders in conflict resolution, and I help boards and leadership teams stop paying lip-service to collaboration and actually agree things and commit to action.

I am all about negotiation, mediation and facilitation – I do it and I teach it.

So here is the problem … for years I have been using the word consensus as a defining word for my expertise. My strapline is “because consensus doesn’t just happen”.

But sometimes the word consensus isn’t quite right because it can be confused with unanimity. Where unanimity requires complete agreement without dissent, consensus involves finding common ground and reaching agreement even if there are lingering reservations.

So, help me out. Do I go on a crusade educating people that consensus does not mean unanimity? Or do I find a new word?

If the latter, I am playing with confluence (which I love it but it’s a bit highbrow) and alignment (which I think might be a bit meh but is more relatable). Any ideas?

I am also about to start a series of free webinars (more about that later) that I had titled “Conversations on Consensus” – if I ditch consensus, I’ll need rename the webinar series!

What do you think? All suggestions welcome.

Good manners?

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Good manners in a negotiation? Of course.

Your counterparty is more likely to make concessions to you if they like you.

Moreover, a study by Robert Bies and Joseph Moag found that negotiators are more likely to accept terrible outcomes in a negotiation if the news is communicated in a fair and polite manner.

Sometimes it’s more about the “How” than the “What”. Respect, honesty and rapport go a long way in all types of consensus-building – in negotiations, conflict resolution and facilitation.

 

https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/leaders/my-best-career-advice-develop-good-manners-20230918-p5e5gd