Handling conflict

Key messages on handling conflict from my talk at the Association for Accredited Learning (AAL) Employee Voice conference last week:

• Most of our most difficult conversations and conflict situations happen at work - about pay, promotion, inappropriate behaviour and poor performance

• We treat these difficult situations like the common cold- unavoidable but need to get it over with asap!

• Conflict can (if approached in the right way) bring energy (we care enough about this to feel strongly about it) and creativity (if we listen to each others' views we learn something)

• Words matter, but how we react matters more - before the words come out of our mouths our brains have already engaged

• Even mild conflict can trigger an amygdala hijack and our 'fight or flight' response - once this happens even the most even-tempered of us can over-react

• Affirmation bias (I am good, they are not), poor listening skills (listening to respond or argue rather than understand), and emotional contagion (one person over-reacting triggers the other to do so) are all unhelpful contributors to conflict

• We can take active steps to help ourselves manage our response to conflict by developing our awareness of self and learning to regulate emotions. The STOPP technique is a simple and effective tool for this

Thanks to Marcia Fernandes and Association for Accredited Learning (AAL) for inviting me to speak at the conference.