Facts on Friction: How We Can Better Manage Our Unhealthy Work Conflicts

Ah, good morning and good afternoon to everyone. Happy Friday. I am outside, obviously, because it's beautiful outside and even though it's super smoggy and gave me a bit of a headache this morning, that is okay. Just sitting out here on my patio with my dog and being in nature. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for joining. Good morning. So if you're unfamiliar with me, I'm Tara Scott. Good morning. So nice to meet you all. I am a coach, I am a teacher. I am a forever learner in the world of anything related to human behavior and connection, especially at work, because mental health affects us all.

And that's kind of what I'm. What I'm here to talk about today. So the title of this is about conflict, right? So what I'd love to talk about today is how we approach conflict at work and how we can kind of start with ourselves because that's really where all the work really begins. And it's interesting because I've been reading this phenomenal book called Brief Flashings in a Phenomenal World. I remember the title by Katie Arnold. She is an ultra runner. She does all of these amazing things, but it's really about Zen practices related to how we show up and how we self reflect.

And that is embedded, not so much the Zen piece, but that is really embedded in most of the work that I do. Hello from Erie. I was born in Boston, so love me some East Coast. But that's really what I want to talk about today is kind of like, how do we internally digest when conflict happens? And in this book, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, which I cannot recommend enough, the intro dedication page says, to Steve, which is her husband, and then she's like, I hope that you still love me or something after you read this.

Because she's very honest about conflict and dealing with kind of relationship stress. Because that happens. Right? So what I want to talk about today is a bit about how we approach these things from a interpersonal level. What's both where we work and how we show up as humans in our relationships. So we've all dealt with folks in our ecosystems who we don't get along with. It's just fact of life. Someone rubs us the wrong way. Someone said something to us, it didn't sit right. Or maybe it's a hangover from former jobs.

Maybe we once had a controlling boss and now we're worried that our new boss is going to be controlling. So we show up with all this baggage and all this behavior that isn't super helpful for Us, we end up kind of dragging others along from the ride unintentionally, and it becomes a vicious cycle. So I guess where I'd like to start today is I want you to think about what physically happens to you. And you just type it in the chat if you want. When you get agitated with someone, just what you. What happens physically.

This could be somebody interrupting you in a meeting. This could be someone asking you to join a meeting three minutes before it happens. When you're in the middle of a thousand things, this could be someone you just don't get along with. Like, what physically happens to you? Well, I'll give you some examples of what physically happens to me. If I am having a rift with someone or someone has frustrated me in some way in a conversation, my pulse starts racing, my neck will get very blotchy. I will start doing things with my hands like this.

I would do it, or I would scream if I get very heated. Yeah. Stomach cramps up, shallow breathing, right? We're all. Our bodies are screaming at us when this happens. They're saying, something's wrong, something's wrong, something's wrong. But then what happens to us when we get frustrated? Like, this is something called amygdala hijack, which I did talk about, I believe in my last live a couple weeks ago. But when our lizard brain is activated, we are in fight flight. Freeze, flop, which is when you're exhausted, or fawn, which is when we just want to make somebody not be angry anymore.

Very Mr. Smithers from the Simpsons energy. But when this happens, we cannot think logically. So we're going to come from a place of frustration, and it's going to be very hard for us to react in a way, number one, that we're proud of because we're frustrated. And number two, that is logical because our frontal lobe cannot compute from a neurological perspective, we cannot have a logical response because we are feeling like we're in danger. So the question is, like, what can we do in these instances?

Well, we can do a few different things. We all have free will, right? So one of the things we can do is blow up. And when we blow up, we usually have regrets about it. We're gonna have to come back and apologize. We're gonna feel super guilty. Maybe we're introverted or timid, and so. Or we're embarrassed. So we. You all can still hear me? Are you all still there? Are you here? Yes. No. Oh, you are still there. Okay. Sorry. It told me that a connection was lost, so I'm not exactly sure. What happened?

I'm on. I'm on fast Wi Fi. Sorry about that. So, moving on. My own amygdala hijack happening. Oh, my gosh. What's going on? When I get extremely mad at my boss, I tell him, I'm going to walk away before you fire me. Yeah. So we come from this place where we kind of don't know what to do with it, and we react in the best way that we can in the moment, and that may look like something we regret, something that we think. I'd really love to be able to handle this in a different way. So something that I would love to introduce, and maybe you're familiar with it, maybe you're not, is something called Gottmans Four Horsemen, which is actually used as a practice in marital counseling.

But I have found it to be super impactful when it comes to interpersonal communications of any kind. So the Gottmans are two marriage counselors who can identify relationships, I think, with a 98% accuracy, of whether or not couples will stay together based upon their reactions during times of conflict. So there are four different Horsemen with Gottman's Four Horsemen. Number one is criticism. So that's when we criticize someone, we say, you're not doing this thing. Right. It's all outward pointing.

Right. Number two is contempt. Contempt can often look silent. So let's say we are frustrated in a conversation, and we feel ourselves making that face that we don't want to be making, but we know it's written all over us that we're frustrated. We're judging. Number three is defensiveness. So if we are having conflict with someone, it is often natural for us to feel the need to defend. And you can physically feel it in you when this happens, Right. If you're accused of doing something you didn't do or someone's trying to shift blame onto you that you feel is unjust, we jump into that amygdala hijack, and maybe we're in fight, maybe we're in flight, but either way, we're saying, hey, I deserve to have my truth be known, and you aren't telling it.

And we get defensive, right? And number four, the fourth horseman, is stonewalling. So the Gottmans also say that stonewalling, the most difficult one, because when we stonewall, we shut out. We don't let anyone in. We might not even be able to process ourselves. And so when these things happen and we're in those moments of conflict, we often get caught by one of these Four Horsemen right? Now, there are ways to get out of these things. So I want you to think about, just for a moment, let's say, okay, so you've shared.

You know, you clench your jaw, you get extremely mad at your boss. Maybe you've yelled. I want you to think about what happens when you start to calm down. Just think about it. And how do you get there? If you're feeling really angry, let's say we, you are in criticism, so you're criticizing someone else. Maybe they've made a mistake and you're frustrated. How do you come down from feeling angry? Well, the answer, of course, is not always to get more angry, though sometimes we do that. The way out of these things is to learn some new practices about how to get ourselves organically back to a level where our nervous system is neutral, meaning we're not in fight or flight.

We're also not apathetic. We're not in flop, where we're just disengaging. We're coming from a place that's calmer. We're coming from a place that is going to be logical. So here are a few things that you can do. So with criticism, if you find yourself in that four horsemen of criticism, finding ways to make I statements. So this can look like. If you need to give feedback to someone, there is a very simple strategy called sbi, which is situation, behavior, impact. Bruce is talking about, here's what the situation is.

Here's the behavior that I'm witnessing, and this is the impact on me. Notice I'm not saying feel. This is the impact I'm having. Because if we talk about feelings, what happens, the other person gets defensive. So we want to try and avoid doing that. Right? So we want to come from a place of saying, hey, here is the impact on me. Now, to do that, do you have to come from a place of calm? Okay, so I'm actually going to back up here a moment. In my last live, I talked a bit about box breathing, which is such a simple strategy, but it really helps regulate our nervous system.

So you take four breaths in, hold for four, take four breaths out, hold for four, and you do that. And you can even tell the person you're with, hey, I'm feeling really frustrated right now, so I need a minute. We're going to get to a way to do that in a more structured way in a minute moment. Then we have things like contempt, where we're feeling angry and frustrated with someone. If you've had an argument with this person before, what does your brain do? What happens if you've had an argument with someone before and you're having one again, or they're doing.

They're exhibiting that behavior that's triggered you in the past and you can just type it in chat. But what happens to me is I'm going to start going through my card catalog. For those of you who knew libraries that had card catalogs a million years ago, I'm rifling through the files for the receipt saying, you've done this before, you've done that before. I'm going to speak in finite terms, right? You always do this. You never do this. Right? To come out of this space, I want you to repeat a mantra that is super simple, which actually Pemachodron, who is a Buddhist monk, who is incredible and I've seen and listened to give talks, never in person, but I've read a bunch of her books and really done a ton of research on her, is to look at that person and tell yourself, just like me.

Because at the end of the day, it's just another human being like me. Most people, this is a made up statistic. 9%. Right? Don't wake up in the morning and say, I'm gonna go ruin someone's day. People are not intentionally being harmful. They might not even be aware of it. So when we're filled with contempt, we're gonna start going through those receipts and saying, you do this and you do that, and we can't even do the situation, behavior impact because we're frustrated. We want to think about the positive things and find a way to relate.

So saying things to yourself like, just like me, is a really helpful way to help us kind of ground them on. Be like, all right, let's just chill out for a moment. Defensiveness, defensiveness. The third horseman is a tough one, right? If we're being accused of something we didn't do, or if someone is simply not understanding our perspective, it is really hard for us not to go there. The key here is, right, my brain says, not this again, and I feel overwhelmingly defeated. Yeah, it just feels exhausting.

I want you to find a place that isn't shame, but what's a piece of it that you can own to say it takes two. I have a piece in this, but how can we approach this together to solve for this conflict? And number four is stonewalling. Like I mentioned, the Gottmans often say that stonewalling is the toughest one to recover from, especially for couples and really any interpersonal relationship, because you can't get in if you're stonewalling, that's going to be really hard. The best thing you can do for yourself and this other person in the moment is to ask for a specific amount of time and go take a break.

If you find yourself in that stonewalling state, you're not going to be able to think logically. You're going to say stuff you regret, or maybe you'll be completely silent and then explode. Either way, we're not looking for perfection here. We're looking for progress. So ask this person, hey, I'm gonna need some time to think about this. Can you give me 10 to 15 minutes? I'm gonna go take a walk. I'm gonna come back. I also recognize that for those of us who live in back to back meetings, which is a whole other topic that I'll do some other time.

Maybe I'll do that next week. How to alleviate the constant calendar damage that we seem to never be able to recover from. If you don't have a lot of time, even giving it a couple hours, letting your defenses kind of come down. Because even though this is stonewalling, when we're stonewalling, it's because we're defending something, right? So we need to talk ourselves down from that. But set up some time to reconnect with this person, because if you don't, what happens? You never come back to it.

Now you're left in a damaged state where you were mad, maybe you're not mad anymore, but because you stonewalled, that other person might be frustrated or vice versa. So what we want to do is just take a little bit of time, say, hey, I know how important this is. I want to make sure that I am clear mentally for this and have had some time to digest it. Can we meet together at X, set that time up? Actually, I have a friend who is married and she and her partner go to a marriage counselor who practice Gottman's Four Horsemen, and she does the same thing.

If they get in an argument, she says, I need to take 30 minutes. I'm gonna take a walk around the block with the dog. Then when I come back, then we'll talk. What do you suggest I do when the stonewalling has lasted for weeks? I'm assuming you mean that somebody else has been stonewalling you. The best thing that you can do in those situations, because my guess is having worked with some stonewalling humans in the past, they're gonna jump in and out of it, right? But they might still be stonewalling because they're frustrated and they don't know what to do.

Most important thing to remember is you can't control anyone else's behavior. All you can do is control your reaction. Right. There's a practice that I teach in my workshops and in my coaching called the responsibility process where I talk about what we often think of as responsibility really isn't often that is lay blame, guilt and shame, obligation, right. Denial, things like this. Right. And if we're not coming from a place of responsibility, it's gonna be hard for us to understand. But we can't make anyone else take responsibility for their behavior.

So the best thing that we can do is show up in the best way that we can. So my recommendation, cases like that Speak Wonder is to think about kind of that SBI formula which is situation behavior impact. Go to that person from a place of curiosity and not judgment. This is a huge piece of it. When we come in from a place of curiosity, we're not going to be in that defensive mode. Right. And I'm sure that, okay, so someone else and it's a pattern. It may or may not be a pattern that they recognize, but that really isn't your problem to solve.

Your problem to solve is can I have any impact on what's happening here? So saying look, can we please have a conversation? And then I want you to walk through that situation behavior impact in this situation, being very explicit, what meeting was it, what time of day, like as many details as you can. This was the behavior that I witnessed. And if it was stonewalling, be as specific as you can where I was hoping we could have a conversation and you didn't seem interested in talking or you weren't willing to talk about it.

And the impact is we're stuck and I'm not able you see how hard it is not to say feel because I really encourage you not to say feel. But the impact is we're not able to move forward with X until we have this conversation. So can you help me kind of figure out a way for us to approach this together? Come in with open ended questions, not just yes or no. If we come in with a question like are you mad or you know, why won't you talk about this? People are going to instantly get defensive. So my suggestion is always to do that.

Sbi make sure you're in a calm place when you do it, then at the end ask an open ended question. What can we. Not just you, because you can't own their behavior. Right? And they're stuck. What can we do together to help Move forward. The best thing you can do. Also, when it comes to sbi, give it time to land, especially if this is a stonewalling human, if they get really quiet, just sit with it. This is one of the hardest things that I have had to learn in my life as a coach, as a trainer, putting something out there.

When you have come from a calm place, you were intentional about your messaging, and it was for the greater good. They might squirm in it, and that is okay. My suggestion is to never go and erase what happened and say, oh, no, it's okay. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Now you got to start over and you're gonna be full of resentment. So. Yes, exactly. It's a gentle invitation to say, hey, can we have a conversation about ways to move forward and see what unfolds? Because the thing is, when someone is coming from a place of stonewalling, and most of us have been there at some point in time, I've certainly been frustrated to the point of stonewalling.

It doesn't feel good, right? Like, people don't want to stay stuck there. They want to move forward, but they can't see a way out. So this is a bit of an olive branch, right? Like, hey, let's have a conversation about this. So Gottman's Four Horsemen, I have found to be really helpful when it comes to just addressing those things that I'm frustrated with. Right. And finding ways to navigate it. Now, if this is someone who you have a long history of conflict with, it's a different situation. Right.

It's not going to be as simple as an sbi. Something that I also teach is something called Cycles of Mistrust. And it is. It comes from a book that I'm actually not crazy about. The title, Driving Fear out of the Workplace, I don't think fear is always a bad thing. Again, that's going to be a talk for a different day. But a cycle of mistrust is when we simply go round and round in circles because we're defensive, they're defensive. Someone does something that upsets you, so you say, fine, I'm going to retaliate and I'm going to do this thing.

And they see you doing it and they say, oh, they're going to do that? Fine, I'm going to go ahead and do this thing. Right. Not super helpful. And then we're stuck in this cycle. So what can we do to get out of a cycle when we're stuck in these cycles of mistrust? There are times where the ownership volleys back to us. Maybe we witness something happening in that cycle. It's our opportunity to say, I'm gonna stop this and I'm gonna stop it now. So what you can do, and I encourage you to do, and I do this in my workshops as well, is try and identify a cycle of mistrust yourself where someone has said and done something.

You observed it. I'm picturing the circle in my head that I teach. You observed it and you retaliate. They see that you've done the thing, and then they retaliate and it goes again and again and again, right? So if you write this out, you're going to identify some cycles of mistrust that you have where you have opportunities to break them. It means, yes, you have to be the bigger person. But this is not like a hero badge, right? This is for the betterment of both of you. It's not like I'm. I'm the bigger person.

So. So I'm better. It's. I don't want to do this anymore because it's not helpful. But again, coming from that place of calm, I'm going to give you an example. Years ago, I was teaching a workshop with someone who I had had a long working relationship with, and they witnessed me doing something that, that now I know. They. They misunderstood my intent, but they didn't like what I did. So they, passive aggressively, to their admittance, did something in return. I observe them doing that. And I'm a direct person.

I'm not rude, I am direct. But when I see passive aggressiveness and we live in the state of Minnesota, for though not everyone lives here, but I live in Minnesota, passive aggressiveness is everywhere. I was born in Boston. I don't come from that blood. So it made me defensive and it started the cycle. And this didn't happen in front of clients. It happened when we were working together on content. And so eventually I kind of had to say, all right, you know what? I'm going to identify a pattern myself.

I have to eat my own dog food and have a conversation about this. I did the approach with the situation, behavior impact, and it led to a really great conversation. I will not say that there were no tears because there were some, I think probably on both of our ends. But at the end of the day, we solved the issue and also said, and this is really important with these last few minutes as I'm wrapping up here, you make amends and then what do we want to do going forward? How do we ensure that this doesn't happen again, okay?

Number one, we can't ensure it. We're humans, we're messy, we make mistakes. But what can we do to encourage that it won't happen again? Let's come back together. If either of us witness us falling back into old patterns. I know this is easier said than done. These conversations are awkward. People don't like confrontation. But something I will remind you of. I didn't know this until a colleague pointed it out to me years ago. The definition of confront is to face. That's it. It sounds more scary than it is, but until we face something, it becomes buried.

Right? So I want you to think for a moment. Is there a relationship where you have conflict? Are any of these methods things that you could do to try and approach a different way? So just want you to think about it. Maybe jot down some opportunities where you might be able to speak with someone where things are not great, or maybe they could be better, or maybe they're a mess and you haven't spoken in a long time, which might be more challenging. But who doesn't love a challenge, right? Coming from the behavioral human, I mean, yeah, I don't think behavioral conflicts and challenges are fun, but I look at them always as opportunities to grow, for both of us to grow.

And I'm also not an expert. Nobody is an expert on human beings. I make mistakes. Whoever the person I'm having conflicts with makes mistakes. So I want you to kind of go into this recognizing a couple of things just to wrap up. Number one, the Gottman's Four Horsemen. You can read all about it on the Internet. If you could Google it, you will find it. But the four are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. There's also a lovely little PDF on the Gottman's website about ways to approach those things as kind of the antidote for it.

Secondly, making sure you're coming from a place of calm always when we do these things right. And number three, looking for cycles of mistrust and where we can break them. Because some of these things have gone on maybe our whole lives. I've certainly had them with my parents, with lifelong friends, with people I've worked with for years. Right. And it's really up to us at the end of the day to self reflect enough to know what those patterns are. I hope this has been helpful. I hope you have a fabulous Friday and a wonderful weekend.

Thank you so much for joining, joining me, and I'll see you next week. Thank you.