Often, the way we handle our conflict hairballs creates more tensions. Recently I mediated a dispute between two people who had worked together as peers for over 15 years. About a year ago, they began having yelling matches at work. One of them got so frustrated with the situation that he reported the other to their supervisor. What had been a longstanding, productive work relationship was quickly devolving into an organizational problem.
What happened between these once collegial peers? We spent seven hours unraveling their conflict hairball—one strand at a time.
Conflict time
When I mediate, I am often so focused on listening to the parties and learning about their issues that I am not aware of the passing of time. This helps them, I believe. They know we have as much time as needed to talk about what concerns them.
Some people focus on the details of what happened so precisely that I find myself recreating the scene in my imagination, like hearing a good book on tape. Others have a hard time with remembering details and rely on vague recollections and feelings. I ask questions in either case to deepen my understanding of what they remember, what they believe occurred, and how it continues to impact them.
A revolutionary attitute
I get the sense sometimes that people are surprised by the amount of time they can talk, as if it were a scare resource. The first step toward unraveling the hairball is recognizing time is abundant—and acting on that awareness by creating the time for talking and listening. That doesn’t mean you’ll need to set aside seven hours for every conflict. But you might, depending on how long you’ve ignored or avoided talking about the issues. And if you only have five minutes, make the best use of them by following the advice below and then scheduling a next meeting to continue sharing what needs to be said.
Pull apart the hairs
The thing that often gets people in trouble with conflict is the complexity of their hairballs. We assume we have one issue to talk about. Yet overtime, so many issues and feelings and questions get tangled that when we try to talk about one, we tug on the others and share them in one big, overwhelming tirade. Knowing we have enough time allows us to begin pulling the hairs apart and looking at them one at a time.
The process I describe below can be facilitated by someone who is a neutral third party to the conflict, such as a mediator, or by someone enmeshed in the conflict who has the awareness and ability to stop fighting, pull out a piece of paper and a pencil, and start holding the right conversations first.
The List Conversation
If you have a large hairball to explore, hold “the list” conversation to identify the issues from each person’s perspective. Make sure everything gets on the list that each person cares about, whether or not they both agree it’s an issue. Remember, this is a conversation about the list. Don’t begin discussing any of the items on your list yet. If you do, you might find yourselves getting sidetracked in a dispute before you have the opportunity to see all the issues between you.
The Prioritization Conversation
After generating the list, you are ready to prioritize it. From each person’s perspective, which of the items on your list are the most important or compelling to talk about? You can use different criteria to prioritize the list: urgency (there’s a short timeframe within which you need to act); dependencies (you need to talk about one topic before you can talk about another one), meaning (which topic has the most relevance to each of you); frustration level (if you don’t talk about this one first, you can’t talk about anything else) and ease (sometimes a topic might simply be the easiest one to talk about first, and can result in an agreement that facilitates progress and good feelings between the parties).
Is there another, more appropriate criteria you should consider together? Please let me know.
The List and Prioritization Conversations should be separate conversations. Each one could last an hour or more, or just a few minutes, depending on the size of your hairball. By holding distinctly separate conversations, you ensure a full exploration of the issues. And then you can decide together which issues to take on first, and which ones you will get to later as needed.
A good thing happens
By the time you’ve done the work of separating and prioritizing the issues, you’ve achieved an important goal you didn’t know you needed to achieve. You’ve created the context for learning together. Each list-item adds information the other person might not have known; each prioritization is an agreement, a little win, you can share together. These small steps of learning and agreeing begin the process, ever so slightly at first, of transforming the quality of your conversation.
In mediations, when I look at the prioritized list, I know we’ve got a roadmap to follow now. People usually feel more confident and at ease at this point knowing the issues they care most about will be addressed. This helps us move forward together more effectively.
Another way to see
Over time I’ve realized that it almost doesn’t matter which item people start with. What's important is that they start with the issue they belive is most relevant. As we get into the conversation, it goes where it needs to go. I think of the prioritized list metaphorically as a house with many doors. You can choose any door and you’ll end up in the house. You might explore this room or that room first, but eventually you’ll know the whole house.
That doesn’t mean the prioritization isn’t useful. In fact, it’s critical to helping you find the right place to agree on starting the discussion. And if you get lost in strong emotions along the way, you’ve got the list to get you back on track when you cool down.
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