Five Steps to Resolving Conflict on Your Team

Hello everyone, my name is Dave Wood and I wanted to welcome you to today's Daily Shortcut episode where I'm excited to share practical knowledge on the art and the science of conflict resolution. As you allow the content of today's episode to be absorbed into your mind, I want you to remember the last time that you found yourself faced with a conflict. Was it internal or was it external? Could you recognize the source of the conflict? Is it still a mystery to you?

And most importantly, did you resolve it? One of the most brilliant physicists in world history, Albert Einstein, said this. He said, in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. When a conflict is not resolved, it doesn't go away. It only actually goes underground.

One of the things that I've had to deal with on a massive scale because I deal with massive groups of people is conflict that arises between people in the teams that I've been building. I have a unique perspective from dealing with both teams of affiliates and also corporate teams with employees and contractors because each group thinks about everything just a little bit differently. I find it useful to organize kinds of teams into two main core groups. Group number one is volunteer teams. Volunteer teams are groups of people who aren't required to show up, such as affiliate teams, maybe a church congregation, guests at a party, event attendees, and all other groups of people who you have to inspire to be there and you don't have any sort of obligation that you give to them to show up.

For example, someone is a volunteer when they join the armed forces, but after they join, they're obligated for the term of their contract to be in the armed forces. Employees are obligated to follow assignments from their employer until they terminate their employment or they get fired. Group number two is actually contract teams. I use the term contract teams to cast a wide net into any group of people that's obligated to show up to fulfill duties or assignments. This would be maybe an employee, a contractor, a service provider, or another group of people who are fulfilling on a contract or getting paid for completing an assignment that they've agreed to.

The motivational structure of each of the people in the different groups is actually different and there are certain things that you would have to have appear in one group that you wouldn't have appear in another group. For example, in a volunteer team, there's not really any kind of enforceable punishment for not doing something other than maybe you won't ask them to do it again. Because they didn't do it, right? With employees or with contractors and with service providers, there are specific defined negative consequences for doing something wrong or maybe not filling out an assignment. There are also different kinds of conflicts that arise in each kind of group.

In a Christian church, for example, if someone doesn't like the pastor, they might just go to a different church. If you don't like an employer and you still want to get paid, you can't exactly do that. If you do the same thing, you can, but it's a little bit more complex. In my profession, people stay because they want to be here. And if they want, they can go too.

There are certain rules and there are social structures that are in place to protect the organization from malicious behaviors. But ultimately, the choice of how someone behaves is their own. Ultimately, I want to work with Volunteer Army because people are with us because they're in love with the vision of what we do and they'll stick around and they'll work through problems with us. But problems will arise that are actually really difficult to deal with. I learned a lot about the importance of conflict in this book that I was reading today.

The reason why it's important, especially if you're a volunteer leader to resolve conflicts, is that when there's social problems there are problems that arise that can affect a lot of other people and their belief in what you're doing and all of your other followers. Here are some important concepts that will actually help you resolve conflicts and create better, more thriving teams. First, people are not what they do. It's the person who decides how they act and behave, not a behavior that decides to be a person. I've learned that the majority of human beings have good intentions.

It's their being, which is oftentimes kind of disguised by the pain they're in when they're engaged in behavior that actually is hurting other people. Assuming that people are always doing their best when they can with their current emotional resources is a presupposition that implies forgiveness no matter what somebody else has done. Remember that people are not perfect. Oren says this, he says, Even when leaders are operating with character, conflicts will still arise. Assuming forgiveness in relationships allows you to move past the past and create a new future with the people that you actually care about, if you're willing to change and grow together, anything is possible at all.

Anything. Second, there are certain relationship patterns that destroy even great friendships and you can't allow. Oren calls them bombs, which includes violence, silence, and abuse. Everyone should make it a rule that if a person thinks about a hurt more than once, not being able to forgive the other party, he should actually address that issue really fast, he should address it promptly. Silence is not dealing with something directly and you avoid it instead.

A behavior Oren calls cowardice. His description of violence is not limited to physical. It also refers to abusive language like threats, name-calling, belittling, and other psychologically damaging relationship patterns. Third, communication triangulation. This is something that I've always referred to as the victim triangle.

The victim triangle is a pattern that's ran by everyone at one point or another in their life. None of us are perfect and we have to learn our way out of some point of this pattern. The victim triangle kind of looks like this. You've got the victim right at the top and you've always got somebody hurting them and always got somebody saving them. In other words, they're never responsible for their own behavior.

Triangulation is a little different than just the victim triangle. Triangulation is when someone running this pattern actually pulls you into it. A pattern of communication called gossip that eats its way through organizations, relationships, and destroys them from rumors. The picture that I described is a way of thinking that's actually rooted in not taking responsibility for your own actions and is not helpful for creating anything good in your life. The victim goes around dumping on the unknown points and the poor victim listener dragging them into a conflict that's actually not theirs.

Oren has a no-gossip policy in his organization that I'm adopting and it's called the, can I quote you, anti-triangulation rule. Here's how it works. When someone comes up and they start a gossip pattern and they say, oh this person did this or that, putting a blame on a third party that's not present, you just ask this, can I quote you when I'm talking to Jim? Usually someone won't dump or gossip on you because they don't have your permission to tell the other person exactly what they said in order to listen. They'll be like, oh no, no, you can't quote me on that, right?

Then you say, well then go talk to Jim, right? You then ask the person if they'd like to solve the problem and have a face-to-face meeting with the other person who's the assumed source of the conflict. Now there's five steps to healthy conflict resolution and they work like this. Step number one, you want to affirm the relationship. Come together with a desire to maintain and improve the relationship, affirming why it's important to resolve the conflict.

Number two, you actually want to seek to understand. Oren emphasizes listening without the intention of proving yourself right, seeking to truly connect with and understand the other person's point of view. Number three, seek to be understood. Only after you've completely understood and affirmed the problem, seek to help then the other person understand why you did what you did for your part, which you have, of the conflict. Number four, own responsibility by apologizing.

If there's an action that you took that you can apologize for while maintaining honesty and integrity, apologizing for your part of the conflict will move worlds. This demonstrates humility and willingness to receive feedback from the other party. Number five, you want to seek agreement. After both parties have listened and understood each other, come to an agreement to resolve the conflict in an amicable way. It's great stuff.

I want you to tell me what you want to apply in the comments and what you're going to change from this information that I've given you today. I know for me that I need to work on my listening skills. What about you? What do you need to work on? I want you to focus on what you need to work on in your life.

And each day, as you're paying attention, you want to change just a little bit more. And you'll learn a little bit more how to do that in the free PDF and audio that you're going to get on the next page. Leave me your thought in the comments and I'll see you in the next episode.