“Conflict resolution can be defined as the informal or formal process that two or more parties use to find a peaceful solution to their dispute.”
~ HBR
When I was a portfolio manager…of a national bank portfolio…that was FDIC insured…with a stock that was traded on the NYSE…with very conservative management…that also had a trading floor of brokers we managed…we were highly regulated. It felt like some kind of auditor, examiner, or regulator, was looking through every detail of the things we did in the investment division.
Initially, I thought we had the same objective. We were working hard to navigate the complexity of the financial markets and the vagaries of so many different auditing bodies. They were there to help us. Or so I thought.
We were always trying to do the right things for the right reasons and rightly as possible. And that is a lot of “right” in my book. For the most part, they were not collaborative, or helpful, and didn’t seem interested in helping us to get better in any obvious ways. They seemed to have a single rallying cry that divided us, made us adversarial, and stoked the level of distrust.
They might as well have worn t-shirts of bright colors with a big “GOTCHA” emblazoned on the front.
They seemed interested in manufacturing drama where it didn’t exist and curating motives and intent that weren’t true. We knew they wouldn’t say they were done until they found something, no matter how minute, that would allow them to proclaim “gotcha” and signal victory. So we shifted our relationships with them. We made sure they found something. We made sure some minute but obvious oversight lay waiting for them.
What a waste of energy and opportunity to collaborate. They could have shared their expertise to help us be more accurate and apprised of changing regulations. So much lost opportunity for us to share our experience of navigating the treacherous and tumultuous financial markets to find safe and good.
It is the same in every conflict with a spouse, a child, or an employee. If our objective is how to protect our sense of “right” while revealing their “wrong”, no wonder this almost never goes well. And it would be really helpful if our educational, spiritual, and governmental institutions modeled this for us. But sadly, they seem to show us the opposite.
There has never been a time when all those folks have doubled down more on clinging to the right to be right. Almost as if their lives depended on it and maybe, because of this established objective, they do.
But so much wasted energy and opportunity to collaborate. Can you imagine sitting down with an employee, a friend, a spouse, or even a child and saying:
“Before we get started, I want you to know that I am here to listen and understand. I want us to leave this table with a better understanding of each other’s position and some established common ground that we can both feel good about.”
It could change everything. It will change everything.
The leaders we work with say they are sitting down for a crucial conversation and pulling out our content and working through the steps to get to a much healthier outcome. We all have to get better at this…and we can!
Consider
What is the last really difficult conversation you had?
How did it go?
Do you think you are in a healthy enough place to surrender your “right” in order to find a “better”?