 Hi I'm Jeff Watts and welcome to another of my top 10 tips videos. This video is all about the subject of conflict management. Yes welcome back and I've had a few people ask me about conflict and not the least because in one of my previous videos I talked about a retrospective tip being to encourage healthy conflict and Igor Kachinov specifically asked me to do a video about this so here we go Igor this one's for you. Conflict is a big topic it's a big touchy subject a lot of people are scared of conflict and will sort of put themselves down label themselves as somebody who avoids conflict. It's uncomfortable but it's inevitable and actually in many many cases it's a source of team growth. If you can get through conflict and be able to learn to manage it in a healthy way then you can use conflict to get better decisions to get stronger teamwork, a greater sense of trust, risk management, there are all sorts of benefits to being able to for a team to be able to actually challenge itself and challenge each other rather than just go along and keep everything nice and calm and smooth. So there are a number of things that you can do that will help a team get through conflict in a healthier way. So here they are 10 to 1. Well at 10 now in many ways this could well be my number one tip but it's so fundamental that without it the rest of the tips that I'm going to go through are kind of irrelevant so I'm putting it at 10 because it's one of the first things you need to do and that is to seek permission to be the conflict facilitator. If you're going to get people to open up to open up their minds and new possibilities to resolve differences and feel safe enough to air their concerns then you having permission to to facilitate that discussion and the resolution is paramount and part of that being an effective facilitator is being respected by all parties and perceived to be neutral and fair and impartial. Now I do know some people that will actually deliberately facilitate a tricky situation badly in order to effectively create a common enemy for all the conflicting parties. So if everybody dislikes your facilitation then they've got something in common and they're starting to bond. I can see the logic in that and there's some truth to it but it's a relatively risky strategy and one that I wouldn't recommend unless you were say desperate. So first of all just get permission that these people would like to see the conflict resolved and that they will accept you as a party to help them resolve that. Tip nine is to agree some ground rules. Now it doesn't really matter what those ground rules are as long as everyone involved is happy with them. So facilitating the discussion about what kind of ground rules we want for this discussion whether it's the type of language that we will and won't find acceptable, whether it's a certain amount of time that people will have to speak without being interrupted, whether there's a kind of format and agenda to this. Whatever it is, agree some ground rules so that people are all comfortable and they know how this is going to play out and where the lines are, where the boundaries are. Perhaps some training in nonviolent communication for example could be a good way to start off a more respectful dialogue and if you're interested I can do another video specifically on nonviolent communication if you like. Let me know in the comments. Tip eight, tone and pace. Now a lot of people will underestimate and find it hard to believe how influential your tone and pace can be for other people. So the quicker you talk, the quicker other people will talk, the more stressed you seem, the more stressed they will become. But equally the slower and calmer you talk, the slower and calmer everybody else will talk. It's kind of a human instinct to fit in and be like everybody else, to not stand down and it's not a it's not a malevolent manipulation. Simply a tactic to keep everything calm because when everybody's calm we're more likely to achieve a resolution. Tip seven, acknowledge perspectives. Being able to acknowledge somebody else's perspective even if you don't agree with it is a huge sign of respect and nobody's going to agree to any kind of reconciliation or compromise or any agreement really if they don't feel that their perspective has been acknowledged. So it's critical that everybody has the opportunity to put that perspective forward. Whether we and the other parties agree with that perspective is not necessarily the point here. The point is that everybody has their perspective. There's always more than one view and how a situation can be interpreted. We're going to get those out there, we're going to acknowledge them and then we can move forward. Now my next two tips are actually techniques. There are actually things that you could do exercises that you could run with a team or with a couple of aggrieved parties. So use them if you think they will be useful but be careful with them. Tip six is a technique called the high school debate and not a particularly mysterious title. It is what it is. Generally getting the group into two teams where they will argue either for or against a particular statement. So for example the statement could be this team believes that test room development would be a good thing to do. One team would then have to argue in favour of that statement and one team would have to argue against that statement. Regardless of their personal opinions they would have to debate for their side. Then depending again on how well you think this team will cope with it you could involve a round of cross-examination. Just to explore the the depths of it. Tip five now this is only really going to be useful if the level of trust is quite high. It is a technique called ritual descent and it was devised by Dave Snowden of Cognitive Edge and I'm going to put a link underneath here so you can actually read a little bit more about it in depth in your own time. But the general gist of it is somebody who puts a proposal forward somebody puts an argument forward and goes to another group where that group will listen without interrupting without questioning. And then the person who went to that group would then turn around so they have their back to the people who are going to discuss the idea the suggestion the proposal and they will rip that idea to shreds. They will come up with all reasons why it's the worst idea in the world it'll never work while the person who suggests the word sits there and makes notes if they want to and they will go back to their group and and feedback what they heard. They can then choose to incorporate some all or none of that feedback and iterate on their idea and go back perhaps to another group if we've got more than two groups involved. It's a way of providing feedback in a structure that is deliberately negative so that we depersonalize it and it's almost funny. It's a game almost to be as unhelpful and as unproductive and as critical as possible which makes it gives it a different dynamic but like I said requires a lot of trust requires a lot of safety in the team. Tip four is to remember that you are a part of this. Now you as a neutral facilitator you might think you're outside of this debate you don't really have strong opinions either way you're neutral you're impartial but you're still affected by this. Anybody in the situation of conflict is going to have it's going to have an impact on them so make sure that your needs are being taken account of that you're looking after yourself as they say on the aeroplane fit your oxygen mask before fitting other peoples. You're not going to be of any use as a facilitator if this situation is affecting you too much so take care of yourself. Tip three is to create a mutual goal so if we've got two parties that are disagreeing about something they've got conflict about something is there something perhaps at a higher level that they can agree on. Now it might be that we would like ideally to create a situation where we are a harmonious team and we would all like to be part of that harmonious team if we can agree on that we've got a mutual goal to aim for and that this disagreement this conflict is just one obstacle that's in our way of getting there we can agree that we're aiming for that and we're a team working towards that to get past this obstacle in the way. Tip two is look to the future as much as possible now I'm not saying what's happened in the past is irrelevant it's not irrelevant that's a source of a lot of angst anxiety frustration anger perhaps and and looking at that and resolving it is a good thing if we can however it's gone okay we can't do anything about it now what we can affect really is the future so if we can as much as possible as facilitator bring people back to looking forward rather than continuously looking back looking to the future rather than continuously going back to the past that's going to increase the chances of a positive and healthy result and tip one is to make agreements as many agreements as you can whenever there is any hint of something that the the conflicting parties do agree on capture it write it on a post-it note write it on the white board whatever capture these are the things that create a list of all the things that we do have agreement on because at the moment those parties are focused only on what they disagree on all right and that's how they're defining their relationship but if we can switch that perception of the relationship we can start creating and capturing lots of data points that re-emphasize what we what we do agree on and actually make visible how much we do agree on then we're starting to change the perception of the dynamic of our relationship into we agree on a lot but we disagree on one thing now can we use the fact that we do agree on a lot and we do have a lot in common to help us get past this one part of disagreement so a quick recap seek permission to resolve the conflict agree some ground rules monitor your tone and pace acknowledge perspectives perhaps try a high school debate or ritual descent remember to take care of you create a mutual goal look to the future as much as possible and make agreements wherever you can now if we take the two techniques that i gave you out of the tips then we can pull together a helpful acronym stay calm if you can stay calm and everybody can stay calm in a conflict we're much more likely to see it resolve it in a helpful and healthy way so even though we might not be able to get to a point where a team can can look forward to or embrace conflict that might be a little bit weird at least we can if we can stay calm and follow some of these tips and these principles we might get to a point where teams can actually use conflict to get better and grow and develop and that's got to be a good thing if you've got any other tips for encouraging healthy conflict or helping to resolve conflict in a healthy and helpful and constructive way i'd love to hear them in the comments and if the place is the same old thing like and subscribe like the video and subscribe to the channel that'd be fantastic and and if you've got anything that you would like some tips on in the future again add it to the comments and you never know the next video could be looking at a problem with yours until then take care i'll see you soon