Hi Worklifers,
Having been in a leadership role for several years, it is no surprise to me that conflicts and leadership go hand-in-hand. They say leadership is a full-contact sport, like American football: You are allowed to have full contact with other players when the game is going on. Avoiding conflicts, or not being prepared to handle them in a healthy and productive way, is like saying you don't quite enjoy being a leader. To best sum the ethos of a leadership role: Don't fear conflict; embrace it. It's your job. If you are with me so far, then let's dive deep into how to get unstuck when it comes to conflicts.
Leaders have many tools at their disposal that allow them to handle conflicts successfully. Today I want to add one more to your toolbox using the analogy of forks and spoons. Forks and spoons are the two most versatile tools in any household. However, each one has its own unique strengths. There have been real-life debates over the years about which one is the superior tool. Just for fun, check out this thread on Quora: Which is the superior utensil: the spoon or the fork?
The job of both forks and spoons is to get the food from position A to position B. What’s different are the forms that they take. A fork has prongs, and is adept for difficult situations like picking up that last olive from your plate, piercing into cheese cube, efficiently twirling pasta, or holding a steak in place while a knife works to cut it. A spoon on the other hand is great at accumulating and mixing, but not as adept at separating the macro outcomes that we are about to look into. When in conflict, think in terms of using a fork instead of a spoon, as the fork is more adept and versatile. I call this technique the “Fork Method.” It consists of three prongs all working in harmony to solve a problem. This method can feel intense at first, but it is worth the time and effort for the results it yields when resolving conflicts.
If you find yourself struggling to implement the Fork Method, start by spreading these three prongs across three separate meetings. As your mastery grows, you will soon learn to apply them in conjunction with one another in the same meeting.
Prong 1: Establish common ground (separate facts from feelings).
All well-known conflict management experts and therapists will tell you that two of the big reasons conflict happens in the first place are power and control. Who is right? Whose priorities matter? Who is working harder? Who is putting in the resources?
To illustrate this point, here are some different flavors [2] of conflict that I have run into as a leader in the tech space. Notice how power and control factor into each one.
An Engineering lead and Product Management lead are having a disagreement about the execution strategy for a product or feature. The product manager wants to drive the outcome without compromising the user experience. The engineer cannot deliver the product in time while also providing that same user experience. Different priorities are at stake, and decisions become an issue of time and resources vs. what's right for the customer.
A partner team complains about how much load other partners are putting on their service and who is paying for what. When a power struggle boils over, who gets to make the decision becomes more important than the decision itself.
The Marketing and Product teams are arguing about when to release the product. Marketing is pushing for time to market, while engineering feels it needs more product work to be viable. The attitude of, “I can do this without you, but you can't do this without me” pervades discussions.
Blame and defense are the language of power and control. Instead of validating the other person’s point of view, we become locked in a struggle where we don’t want to give the other person a leg up. This stems from a perceived need to be right or know it all.
The first thing to do in a conflict, rather than give in to the desire for control, is to establish common ground by being curious and getting into a learning mindset. Enter the conversation without the need to be right. Give yourself permission to be wrong. You might not be, but by allowing for that possibility without getting defensive, you leave less room for offense. You are essentially modifying the play and opening up an opportunity for progress.
You might start the conversation by telling the other party that you are willing to be wrong about your opinion. Before discussing your opinions, however, suggest building common ground. The benefits of doing this are twofold: Firstly, it allows you to immediately establish something everyone can agree on. Even if it sounds simple, this is a huge step and a good starting point for problem-solving.
Secondly, finding common ground allows you to separate facts and emotions, which becomes crucial when you’re having difficult conversations (Prong 2). As humans, we have a tendency to mix facts with emotions and constantly bounce between them, occasionally even confusing them. We tend to think that facts are what cause conflicts, but in reality, our thoughts and opinions do. During a conflict, it becomes easier to conflate facts with feelings and more difficult to sort them out. Being able to separate them is a real skill, and the more you practice it, the better you’ll get.
Establishing common ground is about writing down the facts. A write-up of the facts, when done well, can greatly drive outcomes, especially if you share it. Remember, facts are things that are true and that can be proven objectively or corroborated by a third party. They often take the form of data (usage data, customer data, research data), or numbers (revenue targets, engineering options). Get creative here and try to agree on as many facts as you can as a group. As you list them, it’s important not to lace them with emotions. Sentences beginning with "I feel" and "I think" are tempting, but must be either left out entirely or qualified with a fact[3] . Keep assuring the group that there will be an opportunity to address the opinions, but that right now the goal is to take a learning mindset and try to agree on the facts. During a recent conflict with the engineering team, I realized how the entire group was stating a lot of opinions and it was hard to pull out the facts. One way to get to the group to qualify the facts was opening the virtual whiteboard. On the top I wrote “I think”, “I feel” and asked everyone to add one fact after that statement. When you qualify an opinion with a fact, you help establish common ground as it is hard to debate the fact even if you disagree on the opinion.
Prong 2: Talk about the tough stuff (thoughts and feelings)
This is where emotions get to be at the forefront. After establishing the facts, each party gets to share their thoughts, opinions and feelings. The idea is to acknowledge, validate and empathize. You can do it in a circle. To diffuse the tension, consider going first. Begin with your opinions about the way things should be done. You could say something like, “In my opinion, based on the data, we should take this direction” or, "Here is my experience based on similar things I've done in the past".
Next, if you feel confident enough to do so, move on to your feelings. Take accountability for your humanity and how the experience made you feel using sentences that begin with, “I”. You might say, "I felt hard assumptions were made about the data” or, "I felt ignored when the data was presented without my approval.” In order to build long-term trust, it’s important to be vulnerable and share candidly. By stating your opinions and expressing how you feel, you are building a stronger foundation. Encourage the other person (or people) to use "I" as well in order to fully understand where they’re coming from. Note that for this prong, you are not discussing facts.
When you take the time to truly focus on opinions and feelings, you are giving those opinions and feelings room to breathe. This is similar to allowing wine to breathe by exposing it to the air for a period of time before serving it. This allows it to oxidize, which can help soften its flavors and release its aromas. Similarly, allowing thoughts and feelings to breathe helps soften them for the next stage, which is starting the process of repair and fixing the conflict.
Note that sometimes there are other, harder conflict situations, ones where your self-worth is at stake and the conflict is rooted in a lack of respect and recognition. These are situations where you feel credit was not given or that your work was not appropriately acknowledged. They can directly affect our sense of self-worth, and as a result, this process can be especially painful. If this is the case, try going back to riding solo for a while and playing your favorite track, as I discussed in one of my last posts.
Prong 3: Focus on small wins (agree on a shared action plan)
Small wins are progress points on the path towards resolving a conflict. Once you, as a group, have outlined the facts, established common ground, and spoken about the tough stuff, you are ready to make real progress.
A great way of doing this is to build a shared action plan: As a group, write down the things each of you will do and the things each of you will stop doing as you move forward. Small wins don’t have to be big—even agreeing to do one task[8] as a group counts—but they go a very long way. We are all tempted to stick to our perfectionist tendencies. No doubt, the pressure to achieve a resolution can be high at times. However, one small win can set the tone for the big win. Achieving that first small win might take the group anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour to a day. But reaching it and thanking everyone for having taken that step can be a game changer.
A very recent conflict with my engineering team involved going through all the three of these steps. For us, the small win was meeting up for virtual coffee as a group. It had absolutely nothing to do with resolving the issue at hand. But simply agreeing that we had not had coffee in a while and we missed having that connection outside of work led us to reconnect and eventually resolve the bigger conflict. Never, ever underestimate the power of a small win.
By using forks instead of spoons, you are enabling yourself to tackle three important aspects of a conflict while creating a space for constructive, candid problem-solving. Feel free to get creative with it. Establish common ground with facts, don't be afraid to embrace the conflict by talking about the tough stuff, and take the small wins together where you can. This is the key to successful conflict resolution.
Maithili Vijay Dandige