Vedere Consulting
There's a sweet spot where fulfillment and productivity intersect. My blog is dedicated to helping leaders find it for themselves and their employees. --Plum Cluverius,Executive CoachMonday, April 28, 2008
A Small Triumph
I want to share a small triumph with you. I want to share it because it happened when my husband, Mike, and I were fighting. We don’t fight often, but when we do, old patterns from 32 years of marriage and 36 years of knowing each other still can kick in. And they aren’t pretty. We are both oldest children. We know how to manipulate others to get our way. Put us together in that frame of mind—it becomes a contest of wills.
Perhaps you may know what I’m talking about. Perhaps you can imagine yourself in such an exchange. This one started out innocently enough. I had come home around 6:30 from a late meeting. I was tired and hungry. Mike greeted me at the door, “Let’s go out to the Quadrangle for dinner.” Immediately I pictured smoky room, long wait for service, loud music and football on TV. Ugh.
“I don’t want to go out for dinner,” I said. “We have lots of food here. I can fix something.” Mike puts on his most convincing smile. “It’ll be great. No preparation, no clean-up.” I counter, whining, with, “We’ll have to wait for hours to be served. I don’t want to be out late.”
OK. I’m going to stop the action here for a minute. Maybe you can see the spiral and maybe not. But the conversation’s rapidly going down hill. Each of us is trying to convince the other why our solution is the right one. We are getting nowhere. In this scenario, whoever is the most persistent wins. The other person will end up going along resentfully—and neither of us will have a good time.
This conflict spiral is never fun, no matter how much you love each other. But it doesn’t have to be this way. My triumph (and I treasure it) is that the spiral stopped. It stopped because this time I was conscious. By conscious I mean that I started paying attention to the way we were talking, not what we were saying. What I saw then was the spiral, the fact that we would never get anywhere as long as we focused on trying to convince each other our way was the right way.
What I did differently was to start paying attention to what we both needed. I asked Mike what made going out so attractive. He said he really wanted to get out of the house and he really wanted to get some exercise and we could walk to a restaurant. Okay, that made sense. The most important thing for me was to avoid a long wait to be served in a restaurant. I was ready to relax at home.
We now both knew what was important to both of us. That meant we were able to start thinking of solutions that let both of us get what we most wanted. For us, this turned out to be simple. We ordered food from a favorite carry out place, walked there, and came back home to have dinner. We both were happy and we had a great meal. It was a win-win.
Win-win solutions don’t just happen. They happen because someone in the conflict becomes conscious. S/he starts paying attention to the conversation’s process, and then deliberately asks a question or makes a comment that allows the partners to focus on what each of them really wants instead of why their “solutions” make sense. Then, instead of two solutions with a win-lose outcome, it’s possible to generate multiple solutions. The more solutions you generate, the greater the possibility that one of them will satisfy you both.
Let me tell you, it feels awesome when you find a solution that makes both of you happy. You’re connected again, in a little deeper way. You’ve taken care of each other.
Thankfully, we’re not married to the people we work with, but the process is the same. Good solutions to conflicts require that someone pays attention to the process, that someone steers the conversation toward what’s needed by each party, and that someone uses those needs to craft solutions that satisfy you both.
Perhaps you may know what I’m talking about. Perhaps you can imagine yourself in such an exchange. This one started out innocently enough. I had come home around 6:30 from a late meeting. I was tired and hungry. Mike greeted me at the door, “Let’s go out to the Quadrangle for dinner.” Immediately I pictured smoky room, long wait for service, loud music and football on TV. Ugh.
“I don’t want to go out for dinner,” I said. “We have lots of food here. I can fix something.” Mike puts on his most convincing smile. “It’ll be great. No preparation, no clean-up.” I counter, whining, with, “We’ll have to wait for hours to be served. I don’t want to be out late.”
OK. I’m going to stop the action here for a minute. Maybe you can see the spiral and maybe not. But the conversation’s rapidly going down hill. Each of us is trying to convince the other why our solution is the right one. We are getting nowhere. In this scenario, whoever is the most persistent wins. The other person will end up going along resentfully—and neither of us will have a good time.
This conflict spiral is never fun, no matter how much you love each other. But it doesn’t have to be this way. My triumph (and I treasure it) is that the spiral stopped. It stopped because this time I was conscious. By conscious I mean that I started paying attention to the way we were talking, not what we were saying. What I saw then was the spiral, the fact that we would never get anywhere as long as we focused on trying to convince each other our way was the right way.
What I did differently was to start paying attention to what we both needed. I asked Mike what made going out so attractive. He said he really wanted to get out of the house and he really wanted to get some exercise and we could walk to a restaurant. Okay, that made sense. The most important thing for me was to avoid a long wait to be served in a restaurant. I was ready to relax at home.
We now both knew what was important to both of us. That meant we were able to start thinking of solutions that let both of us get what we most wanted. For us, this turned out to be simple. We ordered food from a favorite carry out place, walked there, and came back home to have dinner. We both were happy and we had a great meal. It was a win-win.
Win-win solutions don’t just happen. They happen because someone in the conflict becomes conscious. S/he starts paying attention to the conversation’s process, and then deliberately asks a question or makes a comment that allows the partners to focus on what each of them really wants instead of why their “solutions” make sense. Then, instead of two solutions with a win-lose outcome, it’s possible to generate multiple solutions. The more solutions you generate, the greater the possibility that one of them will satisfy you both.
Let me tell you, it feels awesome when you find a solution that makes both of you happy. You’re connected again, in a little deeper way. You’ve taken care of each other.
Thankfully, we’re not married to the people we work with, but the process is the same. Good solutions to conflicts require that someone pays attention to the process, that someone steers the conversation toward what’s needed by each party, and that someone uses those needs to craft solutions that satisfy you both.
Labels: Crucial Conversations
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