 So I think we're ready to get started. You guys all ready? Talk about some conflict management today. OK, just to warn you, we will have a Q&A session. We're not going to have all the answers, unfortunately, to those Q&A sessions. But I would like it if you could be thinking about your questions and your situations and the things that you want to ask about. Because obviously, we are experts. I'm being very sarcastic for those of you who can't see me right now. I myself am not an expert. But we want to be able to give you the opportunity to ask questions and have people answer those questions. So be thinking about that during the session. So this is, we had a title change, from troubled waters to water under the bridge, conflict management strategies. And it used to be called, oh, no, you didn't, in case you're wondering which room you're in. But we decided that was a working title. We'd like this title better. So we went with it. Here today are my lovely panel mates. You can introduce yourselves. My name is Jen Sramic. I work at Aquia in partner delivery management. I have been in many conflicts in my life, both work and personal conflicts. And in my professional life, many different types of conflicts. I'm hoping that that experience can lend itself to you and your own conflicts. You're next. You're second on the slide. I'm second, OK. I paid attention. My name is Shannon Vates. I work alongside Jen in delivery enablement at Aquia. And I too have had my fair share of conflicts, which led me to propose this session, because I was like, bleh. And I brought these two smart ladies along with me. And I'm Angie Byron. I go by WebChick online. I have basically inadvertently been the chief conflict resolver up until 2014 or so when the community working group got off the ground. And so I have a lot of experience, particularly in the area of community conflicts. And so we'll be talking a little bit about that. Excellent. So Jen is going to start us off after I go through the agenda here. We're each of us going to tell a story, conflict from our lives. We're going to talk about what was in the conflict. We're going to ask you what you would do. And then we are going to talk about some management policies that we either did or should have employed to solve it or resolve it. And then we're going to do some takeaways. And then we're going to throw it to you guys for questions that you want resolved. So here's Jen. Bon faire, c'est l'autre. Hell is other people. This is a famous line from No Exit, a book by Jean Palsart. And it essentially is, hell is three people stuck in a room together forever. And they just basically go around and around and each one offends the other two, and then they resolve it. And another one offends the other two, and they resolve it. It's a very good book. And it sort of captures my story today. So my story begins in a discovery workshop that took a deep, deep dive. The conditions on the site were that there were a lot of new people together in a room. The room was warm, too small. We were there for a week together. So we were starting on day one. Everyone was under a lot of pressure for a new big project that they were building. The agenda was already set, so it didn't have a lot of flexibility. We were just there to just get through this agenda. There was little time for conflict if we had it, if we wanted to complete everything that we needed to complete. And there were a lot of distractions. So people had their laptops for, in some cases, necessity. And they were also checking their emails and instant messages. And there was work that they were neglecting for the week. So there's this anxiety and pressure. And then there's, of course, the need to shine and all their glory, because all those new people are in the room. Also, specific deliverables were expected out of the workshop. And so really, everyone was under a lot of pressure to get this stuff done. So what happened in this deep dive? Because of this larger team was meeting for the first time, I think everyone was kind of like at a high performance level, what I call on it, is when your high performance level goes over the line to 11, and it becomes dysfunctional. So a project manager might get micromanagy and controlling, and everybody's like, whoa, back away. The project manager's gone to 11. So the way that that manifested in the room was just conflict and disagreement the entire day. Individuals versus individuals, groups versus groups. Everybody was butting heads, and it was really slow. They were trying to stop each other. And it was anxiety provoking for the team that was there to do the discovery, because we were like, oh no. The agenda just keeps getting more and more derailed. How can we get on top of this? One example of how this showed up is, and I'm sure any developer or technical architect in this room will recognize this experience, but the testing technical director, when you're doing a discovery and they're playing Stump the Chump, trying to figure out how they can ask you a question that they know the answer to, but you don't. And it was just going on into railing the progress of the conversation. So it was not progressing the way we expected. So just a quick poll. If this were your experience and you had a discovery that went this way at the end of the first day, what would you do? Options are had a meeting with the whole team in the morning just to kind of address the conflicts and get through it. B would be addressing that conflict as they arose in the moment. C would be addressing them privately with individuals, and D being something else. So how many would go for A? How many B? How many C? How many something else? OK. So what actually happened, we can talk about what your decisions were to later. So what actually happened was after the day was done, we tried to get as much done as we could in the daytime. But every hour was booked, so we didn't have a lot of time to kind of pow out and get clear and then retake the day. So at the end of the day, we met over some drinks. We talked about each person who was in the room from the customer, and what exactly what their needs and wants were. What were they trying to get out of this day or the week or whatever portion of the week that they were present. And we talked about each person and how we can move them toward productivity. Like what is going to keep this person on task and get them what they want out of the workshop? And then we tried to call those things out. When we went to the workshop the next day, we just were very explicit, like Fred, I know you need to get this out of this meeting. Let's just make sure you can do that. And then Fred gets really engaged with that meeting, and then he's helping us protect the agenda. So we also address individual issues right when they happened. So if somebody were sniping at someone else because they said something and they disagreed, we just said, it's just brainstorming. There's no attachment to what's right or wrong. Let's just let everyone's ideas out and we'll move forward. And then the third thing we did was with a couple of people, we addressed the issue privately. And then there was one person in particular who was very problematic and we addressed it with their manager because we figured after talking about it that it seemed like a conflict between two people in the room that were employees with each other and we couldn't work that ourselves and we needed somebody to intervene. So we kind of did a couple of those different options. After going through the second day and kind of figuring out what went right after we made those adjustments, one of the things that we learned was that we didn't, I didn't as the project manager managing the thing, didn't because we had such a packed agenda allow enough time for an ice breaker in the beginning and ice breakers are kind of like, you know, a lot of people think they're lame and whatever but when you're meeting with a lot of different people from different groups, they help each individual show up for their own expertise if you do it right and they don't feel like they have to constantly remind everyone what they're here for and why they're important during the meetings because you've already established that. Yes, we're important Fred. You're the technical director of course. Here's what you need. We know that. And then even after we did that, there were still some ongoing challenges that in particular dealt with specific difficult personality traits. Not like the people are difficult. The choices they were making about their behaviors were difficult. So after that experience, I also actually took a workshop on dealing with difficult personality types because I was so flummoxed by the whole thing and it was really challenging. So a couple of techniques that I learned in that workshop that I want to pass on to you. One is first, if you're dealing with difficult personalities, the first is just identify what are you dealing with? What's the type that you're dealing with? And in the workshop that I took, it was tanks, downers, passives and better thans. And I'll get into those in a second, who those are. But the key thing in identifying is that you're not trying to change the person into a different kind of person. You're just trying to work with what they're already doing and bring it toward a more productive place. So tanks, and again, these are very stereotypy. I'm not trying to be that way. It doesn't mean like if you're a tank, you're always a tank and you're never gonna be anything but a tank, but you're being tanky today. It's more like how I mean it. So tanks are known as being explosive. They can be bossy. They can be a handful. They come into the room very alpha personality and they want everything to go their way and they do anything to get it to go their way. Passives, also known as pushovers, yes men or women, weaklings, people have all kinds of words for people who are passive. They may not contribute as much to conversations or the people around them. And they sometimes can look like they're not doing the hard work because they're just like, oh, you know, let Fred decide. Oh, you know, Ginger can decide. Oh, you know, Susie always does that. And so sometimes it can just be like, you want to put a there there with these people because it's just like you can't get anything to stick. Better thans, also known as nodals and one-uppers are people who tend to, that technical director was one of those people. So just like, how can I quiz you and oh, you know something about that? I know more. It just trying to one-up you and it sort of becomes distracting because you're like, are we here to figure out what you know more than I do or are we here to do discovery for a workshop? And then downers are also known as negative Nancy's, Derek downers, Debbie downers, not to have all them be female. They always have something bad to say, they complain, they critique, they judge, they point fingers at others. They're almost impossible to please. And the important thing to know about all these people, these personality types, is that they're all, they can all be productive people, people who can exhibit these personality types, we all can at times, like I've been a tank, I'll tell you, I've been a downer, is that you don't wanna cast the person as like this is who you are permanently. You wanna just like treat it as a behavior and then help correct the behavior and just move on because people can change and like I said, every day we're a different one of these if we turn it all the way up to 11. So the second thing after you identify the person, the personality type you're dealing with is to try and redirect this energy. So try to understand where they're coming from and then try to direct their energy into a more productive place. This requires curiosity about the people that you're working with because you have to be curious to figure out what's gonna change their behavior. So figuring this out though and figuring out what we call their value language can help you better predict what their likely choices are gonna be if you really understand what's driving them. You can understand why you and other people might be getting triggered by their behaviors in the ways that they act. And you can also, to do that, you find the difference in what people value. So if Jeff and I are triggered, like we just have different values and we just have to figure out what those are and find a shared one and then we won't be triggering each other anymore. And appeal to what they value instead of what you value. Especially if you're there for them, you wanna make sure they're getting what they want. It's not so important that you get what you want in the way you want it necessarily but we wanna make sure that they're getting what they need, that's the ultimate goal. And then third thing is to detoxify. So you wanna make sure that people aren't toxic to you, like sort of having boundaries. What some ways to do that, you ask them specific questions. So for the person who's trying to stump the technical person, you could say, you know, what specific areas are you concerned about our expertise? And we'll just put those out there right now and if we can, tomorrow, we'll bring forward all of our expertise on this and we can just put this issue to bed and you can be with the discovery. You can also find the right situation to include them. So some people do not do well in groups and to include them in groups is gonna be not your best option at any time and so deal with those people in one-on-one situations or in very small groups. Maintain boundaries for yourself. So if someone's just being a downer and they're being mean and saying nasty things, you don't have to tolerate that. Like go to their manager or something, you don't have to just be abused in a situation just because somebody feels like being abusive. So make sure that you're having boundaries for yourself and then escalate or get support if you cannot turn the situation around by yourself. Sometimes people have learned coping mechanisms with certain people and getting their assistance in how do I deal with this person can be really helpful without obviously making it a gossip or a office discussion topic. So just a little couple of hints, I'll go through these really quickly of the different types of personalities and how you can recognize them and diffuse them. So, okay. So tanks, resist discussion, adapting to new ways of doing things and want to make themselves a linchpin or a gate. So they were like, oh, you know, Fred can't make that decision. I have to be the one to make that decision because I know more or I have information that he doesn't have and I can't share it with him. So they can be argumentative, take control of situations and some ways to diffuse them are working with them to figure out what they can own that makes sense. So like find a place for them to own something, that's what they're looking for and make sure that they do. Ask them actively in discussions like, what do you think Fred? What do you think Sue? So they feel included. So they don't feel like they have to push themselves into conversations, you're just inviting them in and then work with a team member who's worked effectively with them and figure out what techniques worked. Passives, the pushovers, they can be the silent stakeholder, keep their opinions to themselves. That's where it introduces risk for you if you're doing something like a discovery because they have all this information they just won't tell you and then you go home and you're like, I think we have everything and then they come in later and they're like, oh, these 80 things. I know I didn't mention them in the discovery but they were in there. So you have to get those people to talk. They, in terms of diffusing them, interacting them from one on one. So they don't have the pressure. Sometimes passives are being dominated by someone in the room and that has put them into this passive place. It's not how they always are but once you get them out of the room then they're suddenly opened up. I'm gonna have to hurry so I'll let you guys read the rest of those. Better than the ones who are always one-upping. That's that technical director example. They're asking testing questions. They're sort of giving the resume when they're talking. Sometimes they're touting their agile experience or they're, I worked on this big thing and it's like totally off topic but they feel like they constantly have to remind you. So you can find a way for their expertise to shine. So if there's like a thing they can own or a piece of the investigation that needs to be done that they can really do well, better than anyone else, get them to do that and just distract them with it. Sometimes it's like, people are looking at an audience that have this experience where they didn't agree that it was a decision to go to Drupal and so the whole time they're just like lobbing bombs at the technical decision and just can't get them to move forward. Just acknowledge that something did not go their way. We get that and we just need to be productive and let's just figure out a way to be happy about it going forward. And then finally, downers. Very critical even of brainstormed ideas. They just kind of like don't want to get happy. Their interactions can seem to increase anxiety in other people and diffusing them, you can basically discuss their concerns in detail, figure out what's going to get them happy. You can sometimes put people in charge of something that can work if it's something that they're enthusiastic about but if you put them something they're not enthusiastic about, it's going to make it worse. So I will move on to Shannon. Thank you, Shannon. Thank you, Jen. Can you hear me? Yes. No, we're good. Do we need to go woo again? Okay, so today I'm going to tell you a story about a love-hate relationship. And Angie, thank you for doing my side, for your answers. So our story starts like this. Yay! It's a new project. Everyone's happy. We all love each other. We're so excited. We're all going to do this cool new thing. And there's what I have coined after some discussion with Angie, new project energy. It's like new relationship energy. The trust is high and the pressure is low and we're all very great and jazz-handsy. So a few mistakes later. I noticed this started happening. Like people were kind of looking at each other, some side-eye going out of the table. Like I'm not so sure I love you anymore but we're just, we're gonna fill this out. And then a little seed of doubt started to form. I could see it happening. There was maybe like one mistake where the schedule slipped one day in the sprint and then in the next sprint it was two days and the next it was three and then the next, the scope wasn't quite what they were expecting. In the next one it was totally not what they were expecting and pretty much by the end of sprint four it was basically murder. People were not happy. There was a lot of, well I remember and this and this and this and we said that and you said this and there was a lot of back and forth and it pretty much sort of turned into a situation where they were just not communicating. So I sat down and I said, okay, how can I help this situation? So I talked to the vendor first because he was our partner in this situation, the company that I was in. It was not Aquias as many years ago. And they basically said like, oh watch out for these guys. They're just, you know, they're a total jerks and you can't trust them. They're just, they have this bad attitude and they're just not flexible and they don't really want to find solutions and so they were really categorizing the group of people and not the problems. And so I talked to the customer and the customer was like, oh yeah, they just want more money. They're just trying to screw us out of everything. They're just a bunch of crooks. And so that was the story that I was getting on both sides and I found myself in the middle of this. Go ahead, nope. And I'm like, what do I do? Just not compute these two things. Obviously I've talked to them both. I understand both sides. This does not seem to make sense. And what I realized after some time was that it doesn't even matter because nobody's talking to anybody. And regardless of who I believe, nothing is gonna get fixed because nobody was at the negotiating table basically. Nobody wanted to see the problem fixed. They were just trying to prove that the other one was wrong. And so basically the way that I break this down, there was a big old conflict around trust. There's a crisis of trust. Nobody believed anything the other one was saying. We had issues around styles. We had issues around expectations. We had issues around culture. There was tons of things. We also had communication and cultural problems. So people in some one part, the customer part had a way of being and doing. That was very, very French, which did not mash up so well with the very, very British attitudes and the two sizes of the organizations were different. So they had problems adjusting to each other and their methods and the level of professionalism that the one had and the other didn't supposedly. And then finally we had really poor negotiating skills so it was very, very adversarial. I must win and you must lose is what I mean by adversarial. And then understanding really what was supposed to be in the doc, like we had documentation issues that weren't keeping track of what was said and done. So finally, I'm gonna ask you guys now that you understand the problem, what would you do? First, oh, did you have a question? Can you say it till the end? She'd run, run away, it's another option I did not put on here. Would you tell the team, this is too effed. I'm just gonna walk away. Tell them that you're gonna help the customer because they're the one paying the bills at the end of the day. Help the partner because the partner's gonna bring you a bunch more projects and they're gonna pay more bills. Or would you try to stay impartial and mediate? So A, walk away, who would do it? Raise your hand. Okay, nobody, good. B, some people, couple people, customer. C, partner, couple people with the partners. D, oh, that's almost everybody. Okay, well you're all very smart people. And I will tell you how I should have handled it. Didn't have all these skills at the time. But screwed it up, no I'm just kidding. I fixed it, it was fabulous. What are you talking about? Basically, first of all, try and get your head on right. Try and understand what is in the conflict and why you're feeling this way about it or why these parties are feeling about it. But don't go straight into it like, we got a problem, we're gonna fix it right now when I'm all mad at you. Like, don't do that. Walk around the block and don't sit there ruminating while you're thinking about this, all the things that they did wrong and why you're so mad. You just make yourself madder, so don't do that. Find your calm down strategy, basically. Your happy place, you know, like in Happy Gilmore, the little guy. Find that, and it came out of nowhere. Just try to find the place where you feel good and better about yourself so you can work on this. First step, next step, work on the trust issues. So there's lots of exercises you can do to generate empathy, to try and understand motives of the other people, to understand why something is an issue. But one of my favorite pieces of advice came from a book called Conflict, no, I put it in the resources, it's like tough challenges or something like that, having the conflict conversation. And basically what they said was find the third story, and I really liked that. So I was like, your story is this and my story is that, and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. That's a really good way to sort of diffuse that adversarial situation. And then the Harvard Negotiation Project also says separate the person from the problem. So the whole, I mean, you're a difficult group thing is not the best way to go because you can't change an entire person, you're a difficult person is much more difficult to manage than, as Jen said, changing a behavior that was leading to a problem. So separate the person from the problem, I thought was really good advice in this whole trust situation. You change your mindset. Finally, you gotta focus on the goals. You gotta try to have a sort of mind meld with the people at the table, which is extremely difficult to do when you're in the middle of conflict, it's very heated. But if you can do those first two steps, those first two barriers will get you closer to this because you can say, look, we all are here for a reason. Let's try and get back to that reason. What are we trying to accomplish and where are we aligning and where are we not is also another interesting one to try and work through that. You gotta try and find what they call the win-win strategy. Finally, one of the problems that we had was in the communication styles. So I would say using nonviolent communication is really useful. That whole I message thing. I know it sounds really lame when you say like that. Well, you saw my messages. But really it works well because what it does is it takes the other person or the other group out of the equation and lets you focus on what you're the expert on. You are the expert of your own feelings. You know nothing about anyone else in their feelings. Don't try and talk about that. And also do as I say and not as I do because I have work to do on that one. But nonviolent communication is when you do or when this happens, I feel blank, I feel in the blank and try not to use expletives. And I would like blank to happen. Give them a roadmap of where you want to see this go or how you want to see it change. And be ready to listen to their statements because listening is really big part of this. Finally, be ready to listen the right way. That was my little segue. So there's a few things that you could look for when you're listening. The meaning obviously is the key one but also the way they're saying it, what they're saying, like the words, the tone, the intention. But meaning I think is key, trying to get to what is the actual message and its urgency and what are they trying to get at sometimes behind the words and behind the tone. I've do this a lot with people that I work with, not at AQUI again, where they'll say something and be like, what does that mean exactly? That's a good question to ask yourself when you feel yourself feeling annoyed by something. Just pause, what does that mean? What are they actually intending to say? That's another good tip, separate the intention from the way they're saying it. And finally, once you've done all those things and you understand the goals and you've listened to each other and you've found some common ground, then you want to do it. You got to actually follow through. One of the first slides had that trust is earned when the actions align with the words. And I really feel like this is a key step here that we all kind of sometimes gloss over. Like we'll find solutions and we'll figure out later. You've got to have some quick wins, especially in a trust crisis situation like this one that I was in. When there's no resolution, you can't see the stress level drop. It just kind of hovers. And the longer it hovers, the worse it's going to get. And so I really like to see this happen early on in the resolution process. When you find something that is aligned that you can work on together and that is feasible in the near future, that's a sign that you should be going and doing something. So that's my story and I will pass it over to Angie. All right. I'm gonna go boop. And if someone could align my size when I go boop, that'd be great. All right. So I'm here to talk about community conflicts where you take all of the average conflicts that you have with loved ones or with coworkers, then ramp them up to 11. Boop because there's all kinds of specific challenges with community stuff. So you know how Shannon was talking about, get their sense, get their feeling, get their tone. You don't have any of that. It's all text-based communication. Most of it's in short little snippets, a lot of ESL or English as a second language or cultural barriers that make that communication even tougher to do. And then you also have the added benefit of one-on-one conflicts can quickly snowball to many-on-many conflicts. And then some jerk posts about on Twitter and suddenly all these weirdos who have nothing to do with the conflict have opinions about it. And it's really easy to forget that that little blue nickname on the screen is a real person with real feelings. So yeah, we have a lot of stuff. Boop. I like to lay out the quadrant of community participation in something like this. I borrowed this from Dries a few years back. I call it the Quadrant Graph of Awesomeness. And everybody in this room fits somewhere on this quadrant. You might move around to different quadrants, but the two axes are basically, on this side we have awesome people to work with. So people who are near the top are really funny and nice and enthusiastic and good communicators, good listeners, all that kind of stuff, right? And then people are awesome at what they do. And the people who are awesome at what they do are very smart, intelligent, they're very effective, all these kinds of great adjectives, right? And in a community like ours, usually the people who are really awesome at what they do, this also correlates to a power imbalance. So people who are better at what they do tend to have more power in the community than people who are less awesome at what they do in general. So, boop, people in this quadrant who are both awesome people to work with and also awesome at what they do, they're awesome. And we love them and we want everybody to kind of be like that because that's the holy grail, right? It's like we're getting stuff done, we're really good at it and we're nice to each other and nobody's getting their feelings stomped on, it's wonderful. Boop, people in this quadrant are people who are really awesome people, but they don't know enough yet to be really effective, so we have a great solution for them as well. We mentor them, we mentor them at DrupalCon, we mentor them at user group meetings, we mentor them online, we have many different ways to get people who are already awesome people over the skills gap to make them really effective contributors as well. Boop, people in this quadrant, we don't really care about people in this quadrant. Honestly, if you are both a horrible person and you don't contribute much, then either you're gonna leave of your own volition because this is not the right community for you or you're going to get kicked out forcefully because you hurt enough people's feelings or you step on enough toes that finally you just kind of, okay, that's the code of conduct, you're gone, bye-bye. This quadrant, boop, there's dragons there. And pretty much any really nasty community conflict you can think of falls into this quadrant because these people are both really awesome contributors like amazing contributors probably contributed entire huge swaths of core or contrib or given hours or days or years or millennia of their life away to the Drupal project and yet there's a body trail associated with their participation in the community. And often the people who leave the community because of people like this are people in those first two quadrants who we want to keep and that is not good. So there's probably many different community scenarios we could think of that fall into this thing. There's probably one particular one people are thinking of that may have happened this year earlier. However, boop, I wanted to consult the Drupal archives to find a really, really, really old community conflict with people no longer part of the community to kind of like pick something we can analyze without adversely impacting anyone. So boop, I dreaded from the vaults of Drupal the jQuery teaser splitter issue. Does anyone remember this thing? A couple of people, okay. So this issue was right when we were trying to get Drupal 5 out the door. And the idea was before we had the teaser splitter, the JavaScript driven teaser splitter, you used to have to copy and paste a HTML comment that said break, which totally made sense to anyone with HTML experience, but your content officers would be like, what is that weird thing and why does it have an exclamation point there but not on the other side and just like very confusing. So we were like, hey, let's make it more usable. Boop, so Khaled is in here and he's leaving what looks like a fine review. He's saying, oh, this looks pretty good, but you know, I'm concerned. I have a couple of concerns about it being really late in the release cycle. You know, what if JavaScript is disabled and what if I have a third-party WYSIWYG editor, how is that going to affect it, right? These seem like fairly reasonable questions, correct? Yes, we're allowing. Okay, boop, here's how he was responded to. Boop, one more time for people in the back. So Stephen, sorry, could you boop me once? There we go. Stephen said, don't hesitate to stick your head in a microwave oven and grill until satisfied. So that's kind of funny, right? Ha, except boop, remember, this guy is a core committer. Ooh, and a hush falls over the crowd. Right, why is that a problem? Because this is one of four people at the time who could get your change into core. That's the first problem. Boop, the second problem is, pretend you're new to this community and you see this interaction take place. What are gonna be your takeaways? Well, your takeaways are, since leadership is setting the tone for everyone else. Oh, well, this community obviously condones insulting other people who are asking perfectly reasonable questions. Number one, number two, I am now terrified to participate in this community because someone's gonna yell at me and probably someone who is a core committer is gonna yell at me and that's gonna be really super bad. Or, the flip side of that, if I am a complete asshole and I think it's fun to yell at people, I would be like, this is a community for me, okay? None of those are good outcomes. Boop, and the really, really bad thing here is that this dynamic is not a meritocracy, okay, at all. This is basically a collection of people who are willing to put up with other people's shit. That's what you have left in your community at this point. You don't have the best, you don't have the brightest, you literally have people who either have the patience, the lack of empathy to understand or whatever, that they just stick around and wait for whatever, and you drive away everyone who does not fit that mold and you don't wanna do that. So, boop, what do we do? Who's for A, do nothing at all in this conflict? Their adults let them sort it out themselves, okay? Who's for B, reach out to the victim privately and show support? Okay? Couple people. Don't care about the victim? What the hell, you guys? C, call the attacker out, either privately or publicly. Few more people, yep. And D, report to the community working group, which you did not have at the time and to ask them to mediate. Nice, so most people think that that is probably a good idea, and that probably would have been a good idea at the time. I wanna talk real quick, reaching out to the victim privately, never a bad idea. Never a bad idea to reach out to them publicly as well and say, wow, that seemed over the top, not really cool, hey, Khaled, you're fine, don't worry about it. But the problem is that if you reach out to them privately, the kind of men is still in the public sphere and nothing is done to counteract it. When you call the attacker out, either privately or publicly, it puts them on the defense and I'll talk about why that results in all kinds of stuff, but people tend not to listen very well when they're super, super defensive, so just factor that in. The community working group is a good option because they're, well, they're not trained in this, but they are people who have the personality type that they're good at this kind of situation, so they're able to look at the facts objectively, they're able to get both sides to talk to each other and that's generally speaking the best thing. Boop, what actually happened was Khaled used humor in this case to defuse the situation. So we said, you have a point for the microwave, should I use form alter to turn it on before I stick my head in? Or, and it was funny because it was cool in a number of ways. One, it empowered him, the person who was attacked, to take control over how he wanted the situation dealt with. Two, it kind of called out the ridiculousness of what Steven had done in a way that wasn't directly attacking him, but it was like, come on, dude, that was over the line. And then Boop later on, other people, sorry, Boop again, were able to kind of play off of that, so this guy at number 112 says, you know what the risk of being forced to stick my head in the microwave oven and then he goes on with his patch review and stuff. So anyway, I thought that was a pretty decent way to handle it. I don't think that works in every situation, but it can be a nice trick to add to your books if it is not a case of an actual abuse situation, but someone who is just like completely over the line trying to rein it in and get everyone on the same page again. Boop, so what we're trying to avoid is getting into the dreaded drama triangle. Have people, are people familiar with this? Couple, yeah. So this plays out all of the time. Pretty much any issue you can think of where people got really messed around and stuff like that is because of this dreaded drama triangle. So it requires at least two roles, often three. There's gotta be someone who thinks they're a victim, either rightly or wrongly, feel a victim. There's gotta be someone to persecute them, that's the persecutor who's attacking them. And then there's often a rescuer who jumps in and says, I'm going to save the day because I'm the only one who can possibly do that. And then very quickly these people shift around and rolls and it gets very messy, so boop. So here you have the persecutor. These changed since the last time we looked at it. So here you have the persecutor yelling at the victim and the victim's all like, ah, oh my God, and then boop, then you have the rescuer saying, I'll save you, you know. But then what happens is that the boop, the, oh shoot, I didn't do that. Okay, well anyway, what'll happen here is once the rescuer enters the play, the persecutor suddenly feels ganged up on so they become the victim, right? Or the victim says, hey dude, I didn't ask for your help anyway and now all of a sudden the victim's the persecutor and the rescuer is the victim and it's just, it's an awful little cycle and it just goes around and around and around and you want to get out of that as quickly as possible. Boop, you can see one of these transitions happen when you see Stephen actually explain where he was coming from with that comment and where he was coming from is he's like, you know, I very clearly laid out in the issue summary all of these different concerns. It was right there for anyone to read. So I feel slighted that you didn't bother to read what I took the time to wrote and then secondly, when people bloat an issue with a lot of repeated comments and repeated questions, it makes the issue bigger and bigger and bigger and people get more and more intimidated to walk in and he's not wrong about any of that. It's just the way that he went about it was not the best way to do it. So boop, what you want to do is you want to change the game. You do not want to get stuck in the dreaded drama triangle, you want to get out of that game entirely and instead boop, switch to the empowerment dynamic which makes you want to throw up in my mouth a little bit but the idea of the roles is that it flips the triangle around on its head. So instead of being a victim, you are a creator. You are someone taking accountability and ownership for the outcome that you're trying to achieve. The persecutor becomes the challenger. So there's someone who does not just let you get away with whatever you're trying to do, they're there though to question you in a way that builds you up rather than tears you down. So a patch review is a good example of someone being a challenger. They're not trying to tear your code down but they are trying to make your code better by pointing out what's wrong and then giving you some good next steps to work from. And then the rescuer transitions to a coach. So you don't jump in and try to save people from themselves, instead you give them advice. You point out how they might do things differently or whatever but it's ultimately in the creator's hands how they behave and this keeps their agency and it removes you from having the responsibility to fix this problem you didn't cause in the first place. Boop, so one way that this could have gone a little bit better is, you know, Steven saying something like, hi Kaled, you should be able to find answers to those questions in the issue summary. If it's unclear, feel free to edit based on the previous responses. I'd really like to keep this issue focused on architectural reviews because that communicates the outcome that he's trying to achieve, okay? It also is a coaching in a way, it's pointing out to Kaled that both A, there is an issue summary and that's an adequate thing of a thing and also, hey, if you didn't know this, you can edit that yourself if it's not clear. And so this allows someone who, like Steven himself, saw himself as a victim in the previous interaction. It allows him to become a creator, it allows him to play the role of both a challenger and a coach to help make the entire situation better. So try to look for opportunities like that where instead of jumping in, because it's really easy to jump into one of those roles because they set themselves up so nicely, but if you jump in and just change it, flip it on its head, turn it into something productive so you're, I think, like Shannon said, you'd be really, really hard on the problem but very, very soft on the person, that's definitely the way to go, so. I think that's all I've got. So we're wrapping up, I think I'll pass it over to Jen. Okay. So we all took a little bit of a different focus on the part of our talk, so me dealing with individual conflicts, Shannon more like a team, and Nanji more like the whole community. So some of the key takeaways that we wanted to have you guys take away is using the right value language for each personality type. So finding what drives that person, what they need, diagnosing it, and then putting something in front of them that's gonna be more toward what they value. Using nonviolent communication, I feel when you do X or when something happens and I would like Y. Joint goal setting is key to getting a win-win, so when things are in conflict, figure out what the shared goal is, you're both trying to get something accomplished, that's why you're there together, so remind yourself of that and figure out what happens next. Conflict is both inevitable and natural, so it's almost like you should check yourself if you have no conflict, that maybe you're just being blind to it but it's really there because it is natural part of being human and being in relationship with other people. Having empathy for yourself and others, so not all of us have a best day every day, all day every day, and so making sure that we are recognizing that people might have stuff going on at home that's causing this behavior or causing this conflict and not that it's you or it's the particular situation that's at hand. Seeking the third story in any conflict, so there's your version, there's my version and there's the reality in the middle somewhere. Breaking out of the drama triangle and dynamics and moving toward the empowerment triangle. Dynamic, empowerment dynamic, the ED, and then be hard on the problem and soft on the people. We have some references and we'll share the deck so that people can get those. These are just the various resources that we use to draw from in this presentation and now if anyone has any questions, we will take those. I don't think we have a Q and A mic. We might not. Can we get a mic for Q and A? You can just scream from your seat. I don't have a question. Or else you can shout it out and we'll repeat it. That's maybe the way we'll do it. Who's got a problem? You've got a problem and you've got to know just kidding. All right, so the question was, what if you're dealing with someone higher up than you in an organization like your director or a VP? Okay, so I have a couple of ideas around that and I'm guessing. I have one short idea but could be yours first. You go first then. I was in the Peace Corps and I dealt with a lot of military people and one of the tactics they use is this quote, permission to speak freely. And so for me, that is really disarming and when you're dealing with a manager, you can kind of like, it's sort of a way of recognizing you're superior to me and I have something to share with you which might put the friendly way that we work together in Jeopardy and asking permission to do that so that they're not just blindsided by this mallet. But just saying, hey, permission to speak freely? Can I just say how I really feel here? Are you open to that? And then if they say no, then you know what to do. But if they say yes, then you're open to it and you can deal with it from there. The thing that's funny about power dynamics and there's a lot of things to read on this, so go check it out. One thing that I found very useful was the idea that the further the distance in power between the two parties, they did studies and they found the less likely they are to come to a win-win because of that power dynamic disillusionment. So the advice that I heard most often in this topic was try to find a way to balance the power. And maybe that means that you can reiterate your domain. So because you asked me to do blah, you're the one with the power but you asked me to do it. Remember, I'm in charge of this mission. That's one way that you can sort of address that power dynamic and try and balance the table. And you can also just sort of humanize your situation. I know you've got people to talk to but I have people that I'm accountable to as well and make them realize that the impact on you is such that you should be in control. So those are a couple of suggestions that I would give to try and balance that power dynamic and get them to recognize that you need to be on equal ground, on equal footing in order to find that solution. Also trying to understand where they're coming from like you're a director so like politically who do you actually have to respond to? Like why are you pushing this? To understand the power dynamics that are in play for them is key to helping you try and find the win-win solution. So that's what I would say. Nice. Any other problems, questions, challenges? Yeah. So let me reiterate your question which you understood. I heard when you hear, when you see a project, a problem forming, not a project. When the problem is forming, how do you address it early on before it becomes a huge thing? Your spidey sense is tingling. I guess some things that I try to do are, again I look for that drama triangle dynamic and when I see that starting to form, I'll actually use some of the tips that Jen suggested. So usually the person in the victim mentality is, and the challenger as well. The challenger can sometimes be the tanks and they can sometimes be, what they're honestly usually trying to do is control the situation because they don't wanna end up the victim. So that come across as overly harsh and then the victim might be a passive or might be a downer. You know, like, oh, this is all horrible and it's all out of my control and I hate life and whatever. So trying to employ some of Jen's strategies for those personality types early on because if the person's obviously getting defensive because they feel like they're not valued then you say something that shows that their work is valid. Suddenly that can diffuse the problem. So a lot of those kind of tips are actually really good. Another thing I try to keep in mind is that even when someone is really, really frustrated and they're coming at you with rage or whatever, they normally are that way for a reason, like a rational reason. If you can try and figure out what that reason is and show, you know, it's a Shannon's point that you're gonna do action and your actions are matching your words, that can often diffuse the situation as well. So like if someone's really ticked off that module X isn't ported yet or something like that and they're starting a mouth off to the contributor, you know, rather than dog piling on this person who has a legitimate frustration say, well, if you're frustrated about that, here's some legitimate things you can do. You can donate to their Patreon. You can try and get rid of all these duplicate support requests. You can do, you know what I mean? And I've done that before with people and it's actually turned it completely around because once you give them power to control their own destinies, they often are like, oh, oh, well, great then. You know what I mean? Because they just think that they have to ask permission from someone or wait for someone else to do a thing and that's often a source of their frustration. So yeah, so I'd say it differs by the conflict that's starting to brew, but in general, the tips that were shared earlier of like trying to meet people where they are, figure out what their needs are and meet those can preemptively cut off a lot of stuff before it becomes a whole thing. For me, I utilize my spidey sense and I would actually just call it out. If I'm in a room and it starts feeling like off, I'm like, it's starting to feel really tense in here. Is there something that's unsaid that I should know about? That's a good idea too. And if people are like, oh, maybe we're getting tense, I didn't realize and they feel like down a little bit, but sometimes it's like, oh, you know, Fred just broke up with Ginger and they're having to work in the same room together. So it's tense, you know. So it's nice to hear those things. And when I work with customers a lot and doing discoveries and we're sort of like, there's a lot of new personalities and we don't know each other. We will eventually, but we don't yet. And that kind of stuff is, it can be pretty important to know if you're like, oh, I'm navigating this like personal conflict between these two people and there's nothing to do with why I'm here, but yet I'm still dealing with it. So for me, I just, I'm just open about it. And I say, it's starting to feel tense or emotional or upsetting, like are people upset? How are you guys doing? And see how they act and respond from that. I'm just gonna tack on one last thing to that because I think those are great and I'm not gonna elaborate for 10 minutes, but just one thing about the approach in that situation, because if you're not sure that there is an actual conflict, like it might just be your perception of something seems off or whatever and you don't know, I would, here's what I don't want to happen because I am not a fan of this. Hey, I need to talk to you. Let's go. Please don't do that. Cause immediately the other person is like, oh, what the hell did I do? All right, let's go. They almost, they wanna run away and then that just completely closes down the conversation. But what I do like is when you approach the person you say, I think there's something that we should work on. I'm not sure if it's a problem or a challenge, but like, do you have time, whenever, to talk about it? I'd really like to have your perspective. And that opens the door to listening straight off the bat and doesn't create a sort of, what are you gonna accuse me of or like sort of situation? I've had that happen a ton of times. You sit on their elderly pads. Yeah, right. Ready to have a conversation with you. You turn into a football player before it even begins. Where's my shield? And then they get very defensive and then it's all about, I'm not even listening to you. I'm just gonna find out, what can I say to combat what you're saying? And I know I didn't. Yes, you did. And then it goes, yeah. Self, so. Did I answer your question? Yeah, cool. Yeah. Okay, so do you wanna? To get your rational. So like you're starting to kind of like go with it? Oh, I'll repeat the question. So if you feel yourself getting pissed off, what do you do? Or you're captured in the conflict yourself and you're running with it and how do you get yourself out of it? Is it that you need to get yourself out of it so that you can mediate it from the outside? Or are you the person with whom the conflict is? And you're trying to figure out how to take some space. Okay, what I typically do, and I kind of learned this from my son's elementary school, he's in Montessori school and they use this really cool system of nonviolent communication. First of all, take some space and say that you need to take some space. So if kids are getting in a playground, tussle or whatever, they're like, you know, I just need some time. That's the expression they use, I need some time. And they go and have to separate physically. If they've gotten a fight and they're sort of not ready to come back together and like apologize to each other, they're just like, I just need some time. And then when they actually are ready, when they've taken some time, just to some distance from the problem so they can get their head straight, one of the tips that Shannon offered, they can get a little perspective. So let me observe this from the outside now that I'm not all heated and upset and challenged and see what's really going on. Maybe I can get a different rational perspective. And then when they come together, they have this little table. It's like the conflict table in his school and they put their hand on the table when they're talking and then when they're done, they take it off. So it's really easy signal for elementary school kids to understand whose turn it is. And what they say is, are you ready to check in? It's such a simple question, but if you are in conflict and you're agitated and upset, the last thing you wanna do is someone to just come with the mall and just be like, bam, I have to solve this now. If you're not ready for it and you're still polluted in the headspace, it's not fair to do that to somebody and you're gonna get a bad result period because they're not ready. So you just say, are you ready to check in? And if they say, no, okay, I'm gonna go play for another hour and then I'll come back and check in later. And if they say yes, they say they use the model of I statements that Shannon was saying. I felt this when this happened. Can you not do that again or you could do this differently next time? I feel this, I would feel better if you did it this way. And then they have to reiterate to the other person that they said it to said, I think I heard you say that when I hit you, I'd hurt and you prefer that I don't hit you. And then the person can say they agree and then they thank each other and then it's over. And so it seems very formulaic and easy, but there's those key pieces of asking permission, listening to each other and confirming that you've each heard what you're saying because that's like co-communication. It's gotta go both ways or else you're still in the same situation you were before you started. And then you thank each other because it's generous to come forward and be willing to resolve a conflict with somebody. And so thanking them can make a really big difference and make them more willing to resolve it with you next time. So basically what you're saying is six-year-olds can handle their conflicts much better than adults. If they're trained, they can. And I'm hoping that he carries that forward and do his adult life because it works really well. It was all complicated. I have a couple of, sorry, can I get the microphone? Oh, okay, good. So I had a couple of thoughts on that too. I'll just go through them really quick. If you're having trouble, if you're like me when you get mad and you kinda just wanna take time, I mentioned the thing, be careful not to ruminate. That's a problem that I have. Because I'll go, I'll be like, I need a walk. And then I'm walking and I'm like, and this happened, and then it. Now I was right about that and whatever. Just don't do that because that's only going to make it worse. I have personal experience in this domain. And so what helps me is to do a method that I read about called field theory. It's like basically imagine you're in a field with this person and the problem is sitting in the middle. Like what could each of you bring together? Like you're either gonna stop that person from solving their problem in some way. Like your goals are here and you're gonna stop. You're gonna defend your goal. Or you're going to help them get to their goal. Like you have a choice to make. And so when I'm in that position, I try and utilize empathy strategies, but I also try and think like, how am I behaving in this field right now? Am I just trying to stop them from doing what they want? Or am I really being a team player and trying to help achieve a goal that will advance both of us? And I just examine my own perspectives and I think of, I just check myself before I wreck someone else. And try and do that basically because it helps me get out of my own head of how I was wronged or how I was upset and get back into a productive mode. And we're out of time. All right. So thank you very much. So thank you everyone for coming. Yay. Thank you. We hope what you learned can help resolve these two conflicts while you're here this week.