Navigating Awkward Conversations: From Compromise To Collaboration

Recently, a colleague of mine shared an anecdote where he presented for 45 minutes to an online audience before anyone let him know that his slides were not showing up on screen. As it turns out, many people find it difficult to speak up. In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell attributes the crash of Korean Air Flight 801 in 1997 to poor communication between the flight crew suggesting culture can influence what conversations we have, the feedback we share, and the confrontation we avoid.

In the 1970’s, Ralph Kilman and Kenneth Thomas examined Jungian personality types, like thinking and feeling (the basis of the widely used MBTI measure), and mapped them to conflict styles. The Kilman-Thomas Conflict Mode Instrument remains the leading tool used to assess conflict styles in academia and practice and if you went to business school, you likely learned this model from your organizational behaviour textbook. It describes five approaches to conflict that reflect a combination of assertiveness and cooperativeness.

Accommodating, which is unassertive and cooperative, prioritizes the needs and preferences of others over one’s own in order to maintain harmony. Competing, on the other hand, is marked by high assertiveness and low cooperativeness where an individual is comfortable satisfying their own needs, even if it’s at the expense of the needs of others. Avoiding is unassertive and uncooperative, where an individual tends to give up on their own needs and acquiesce to the desires of others by disengaging from the situation altogether. Compromising is moderately assertive and cooperative, resulting in scenarios where both sides give up something they care about to reach an agreement. Compromising sounds ideal but it carries a heavy toll of satisficing – kind of like eating cereal for dinner because it’s “good enough”. Finally, collaborating is both assertive and cooperative, aiming for a “win-win” outcome based on a willingness to understand different perspectives and a commitment to find mutually beneficial solutions. Based on survey results from 41,750 Canadians who completed this assessment, 39% reported a “compromising” conflict style and 33% have an accommodating or avoiding conflict style. This tracks well with the Canadian stereotype of being exceedingly polite and data that suggests Canadians apologize 9-18 times per day. Only 18% of Canadians reported having a collaborating conflict style.

In order to move more people towards collaboration, there are countless resources that have emerged to help leaders navigate and manage conflict and negotiation. Drawing from polyvagal theory, and books like Difficult Conversations, Non-Violent Communication, and Crucial Conversations, here are six things to consider as you move through important conversations.

1. Examine Your Implicit Beliefs: Many people hold beliefs that conflict is bad, scary, and to be avoided at all costs. Perhaps, for example, you don’t want to be a burden, fear offending another, or don’t want to appear needy, annoying, or demanding etc. Others may find that in conflict, they are prone to take no prisoners and defend, blame, attack and criticize their opponent until the battle has been won. If you have experiences where you have believed that no one is listening to you, you may actually find that you dominate conversations at work to overcompensate. Notice, accept, and understand these beliefs that you hold, and then tuck them gently away in your pocket and embrace a new belief that will serve you. Suggestions include “conflict leads to understanding” or “I can handle this”, or “I’m not in trouble”.
2. Find North: Commit to establishing a mutual purpose or desired outcome. You may also want to agree on what you do not want to discuss or topics that are off-limits.
3. Listen More and Then Listen More: Listening requires leaders to manage their own mental chatter, quiet their judgement, and choose to be curious. Listening is not waiting for one’s turn to speak or poking holes in the other’s argument while they’re speaking. In Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have, Mark Nepo writes: “To listen is to lean in softly with the willingness to be changed by what we hear.” Being curious about the words, feelings, and needs of the other is a powerful anti-dote to judgement (and incredibly difficult to do in competitive contexts).
4. Keep it Safe: Watch out for fight/flight/freeze behaviours in yourself and others (e.g., criticism, defensiveness, withdrawal, condescension, repeating oneself, catastrophizing, minimizing, snarling etc.) and if/when they appear, use validating techniques that mirror back what you are seeing and sensing to demonstrate that you care to understand and care for the needs of all parties. If you notice you are unable to do this for others, then you may be in fight/flight/freeze mode and it may serve you to pause and set a time to reconvene.
5. Manage Emotions: a common explanation for why emotions flare up is when our identity gets threatened. According to Difficult Conversations, our identities feel attacked when we worry that others view us as incapable (am I competent?), morally flawed (am I a bad person?), or dislikable (am I worthy of love). When big feelings arise in yourself or others, reflect on what identity threat may be activated and take time to offer words that deescalate that identity threat.
6. Stay on Course: have a list of your favourite intrusive questions or disruptive statements handy so that you can apply them when the conversation begins to go in circles. My personal favourites are “what about this is really important to you?”, “it looks like we’re off track – what do you need from me right now”, and “it seems like I’m not understanding you – what do you need me to hear?”

The Value of Conflict Resolution

Conflict can be stressful. In fact, the more you care, the more stressful it may be making conflict resolution ever more critical of a skill to hone, particularly in contexts where learning to understand each other would be beneficial. In the book Boundaries & Protection, clean relations refers to relationships that have a fair, equitable, and open exchange. In messy relations, on the other hand, there is an abundance of resentments that have accumulated as a result of not expressing one’s needs or expectations. Preserving and pursuing clean relations with those we live and work with is a worthy endeavour not only because clear lines of communication are critical for efficient and effective work outcomes, but because high-quality relationships are a predictor of how long we live.