Culture Focused Practice

Hey. Hey, Dr. Tara Vossenkemper here, and you are listening to the Culture Focused Practice podcast. Welcome, lovely to see you. Thank you for being here. Hope you are having a magical, magical day. This episode, if you are here with us, is called Constructive Conflict, how to Fight Fair in a Group Practice.

Freaking love it. I love conflict. If you are a person where you've ever found yourself rehearsing a confrontation or a potential confrontation or conflict in your head before actually having it, or you know, thinking about all the ways in which they might respond to the thing that you say and then trying to counter attack. I hate saying counter attack, but finding a way to counter the things that they might say, and all of a sudden you're playing 4D chess in your brain and then you end up chickening out after all of it. Or, or maybe actually you get started in the conversation and then you just keep over explaining until it's hella awkward where you just feel super fucking weird and then all of a sudden, like you're groveling to somebody when the reality is that you were trying to engage in a conflict discussion with them to figure out a problem.

If you're any of those types of people or you've had those types of interactions, this episode is for you, my friend. This is for you.

This episode is part of a hard conversations miniseries, so the goal of that miniseries is to tackle the unavoidable shit that comes up with being a boss or being the owner or being on leadership, especially as it relates to people not getting along or where you, you know, you have to step in before something explodes or implodes for that matter. So that's what we're doing here. That's the whole point of this.

We really wanna know what healthy conflict looks like in a team setting, and what you as the owner, as leadership, et cetera, need to normalize and help to create basically.

So there's a couple of key agenda items. I'm just gonna go over 'em quickly to give you frame of reference as we're going through. This. One is reframing conflict. We'll start with that. Two is focusing on what unhealthy conflict looks like in practices. Three, we're gonna talk about your role as the owner or boss or leader.

Four. We're gonna talk about rules of engagement, and then five, we're gonna normalize something called a post-conflict debrief. Ooh, I'm pumped about this.

Okay. Number one, reframing conflict. Conflict is neutral, y'all. It just is neutral. It is something that happens as a byproduct of all of the different variables that are being thrown in one pot of soup together.

There are some ingredients you don't mix or some you have to mix in very key ways for them to really work together. If I knew anything about cooking, I might give you more depth than what I just said, but I don't, so I won't. But my point remains the same. Some things work easily together and other take a little more finesse.

Conflict is like that. There are some ways of engaging that just really flow. And there are some people or temperaments or what have you, that when you mix them, you realize there's a little bit of tension. You realize there's a little bit of something that needs to be addressed or you know, nuanced out.

Conflict is not the enemy. Avoiding the fact that there are differences between people and how they engage with each other and how they relate to one another, that's a problem. Conflict inherently is not bad.

Additionally, this is one of my favorite pieces to all of this, and again, we're thinking about conflict, is basically being neutral. It just exists, just like the rest of us.

If nobody is disagreeing on your team, somebody is fucking hiding. There is no way that you get a group of people together and there is never conflict there. I, I say very few things with absolute certainty. That is one thing I am a thousand percent certain on. 0% chance that you have a team of people and no friction ever. It is happening if nobody is disagreeing, ever, somebody is hiding. Something is hiding. Someone is hiding. Something is left unsaid. Somebody's not speaking up. The absence of it being spoken does not equal it's non existence. So that is very key. If you are seeing no conflict, that doesn't mean everything is honky dory.

Here's another thing that feels very, very important to me. Healthy conflict leads to, and I mean this like directly, this is a direct line. Healthy conflict leads to enhanced intimacy and trust, period. Because when you work through something hard together, if we're doing it in a healthy way, we're having these- in therapy, we call 'em a gentle care confrontation. I fucking hate that language, but regardless, a gentle confrontation or a care confrontation. If you're doing something where you are going head to head or toe to toe, or you're talking and you're in disagreement with somebody, that is distinctly uncomfortable.

I'm not a heathen, I'm not a barbarian. I don't, you know, I understand that that's a very uncomfortable state of being for a lot of people, including me. I also feel uncomfortable doing that. What I also know and I trust very deeply, is that if you can stay toe to toe, if that's the language I use, you might use your own language.

But for me, if I can stay toe to toe with somebody in a kind way and hold my footing and we're trying to figure out a problem, when we get through that and to the other side, we typically see each other more. I see more of this person and I feel more seen, and that is more intimacy. That's a higher level of a relationship. That's a product of us getting through something hard together.

You don't engage in conflict with somebody that is going to bully you or immediately just shit on you or brush you off like you don't exist. We engage in conflict with people who we think, where we have some hope that they're gonna be able to see us and hear us. Also, sometimes we just get physiologically overwhelmed. So that's part of it too.

But my point remains the same. If we can engage in healthy conflict, we increase our levels of trust and safety and that, that is one of the most beautiful things. So it's something not a lot of people, I think really appreciate or grasp about conflict period.

Okay, let's keep going. So this is helping you, the attempt anyways, is to help you reflame, "reflame" (hahaha), reframe, conflict as neutral or good. I would say good, but we can stick with neutral if good is a stretch.

Second agenda item. What unhealthy conflict looks like in practices? Man, unhealthy conflict. I could just. Talk all damn day about this, but let's be very, very, um, perfunctory for the purpose of this episode. First, and this is more like, I'm gonna say almost like a toxic external behavior, gossip, triangulation, passive aggressiveness.

That is unhealthy conflict. So if I'm gossiping, if I'm triangulating, and if you don't know what that means, it basically means drawing somebody else into the conflict. So if I have an issue with Joe and I go over and I'm like, "Cindy, can you believe that Joe did this? Oh my God, he's such a tool." That is triangulation.

I'm now bringing Cindy into the mix with my conflict with Joe, where we had a straight line. Now it's become a triangle because we have a third. Person that's in there. That's a whole different conversation about that impact on Cindy and how she might feel about things. But you know, we'll just avoid that conversation for right now. So that's triangulation for those who don't know.

And then passive aggressiveness, I think you know what this is, but I always think of it as like snark. So if, um, let me think of an example. Somebody says something like, "well, that's a first." That's like a passive aggressive statement. Where it's like, "no, I'm really happy you're doing this. I mean, that's the first time that's, that's a first, but you know, I'm happy you're doing it." That's a first, like that literally those say, first I had to count the number of words, those three words together, technically four, but we're squishing that and is, so that's a first, that is a passive aggressive statement is there's a, there's a hidden barb, there's a hidden message encoded, not subtle, I would say, but there's a "subtle," implied message in this thing. So those are more external, meaning they're, they're sort of outward in their expression and they might draw on other people. So unhealthy conflict can look like gossip, triangulation, passive aggressiveness.

It can also look like more internal sort of defensive postures, like withholding information or withholding engagement or withholding, I hate saying affection. I don't mean physical necessarily, but even like verbal, like, um, affirmation. Maybe that's a better, better way of saying it. Withholding affirmation from somebody, it can look like stonewalling. So if you don't know, stonewalling is where a person just sort of goes blank in front of you and you can't, you can't get them to engage at all.

True stonewalling from a Gottman perspective is. Physiological overwhelm to the extent that your body puts you in a, basically like a fight flight, freeze. It's more of like a freeze response, what people will do. So true stonewalling is a result of just excess physiological arousal. We'll just say that.

I'm not gonna get into that hardcore right now, but stonewalling when it's weaponized is something like, and this is what unhealthy, in my opinion, unhealthy conflict is weaponizing. Something like stonewalling, for example, is where a person just shuts down and just refuses to engage. That's a problem. That's called stonewalling. That's a problem.

And then also something and, and again, that's more of a defensive posture, stonewalling in this context, it's more of a defensive posture.

Another is, "I'll just do it myself." That is, I mean, it's martyrdom in a nutshell, but it's also, um, you are now saying, I don't trust anyone around me. I'm not willing to take a chance. I don't wanna engage with them. I'm just gonna do it myself. Whatever. I'm just gonna do it myself. And it's a little pissy. You know? So that's, that's, those are all examples of unhealthy conflicts.

I think another that's really more owner leadership specific for me is micromanaging or avoiding a confrontation until it has just reached very heightened states and it like becomes entirely unavoidable. Specifically the micromanaging piece though, that is, I mean, I think reflective of conflict because if you are micromanaging in person, there's probably a conversation that needs to take place with that person.

So unless you tend to be that hyper controlling, in general- that's a different issue that I would say, Hey, you might need to go reflect on that. Like why is your tendency to be hella micromanaging? But if it's not your tendency, that's not your default and you start micromanaging a person, I would say that's largely because there's a conversation you need, you need to have with that person that you are somehow you're avoiding for some reason. So, unhealthy conflict in a nutshell. There you go.

Agenda item number three, your role as the owner or the leader or the boss. The short version of this is that you need to model and you need to mediate. So modeling respectful directness. I really like Kim Scott's version of Radical Candor. Her podcast is fucking awesome. If you haven't listened, you should, and there's something about the notion of radical candor, where you are being honest with somebody and you're being empathic and you're being kind, but you're also being direct.

So there's something about modeling how this happens. Our role as leaders, owners, whatever, is to be respectful and direct, to be kind and honest. That's the modeling piece. A second piece here for the owner or leadership, you don't have to fucking qualify every damn thing you say.

Some things are just hard to say. You prepping the person in front of you for 45 minutes in order to say one thing is A, confusing B, exhausting C defeats the purpose because they're tuned the fuck out by the end.

The only qualifier you could say is you might say two things. One, this is really hard to say because I like you as a person, and I think in general you are an exceptional employee. Two, I still have to say it, and we need to have a conversation about blank topic. Whatever that topic might be. You can just say the thing that you need to say. You don't have to cushion everything.

Another piece, there is a hardcore need for a system for resolving conflict.

Whether it's a clear mediation structure or a very clear place where conflict lives, you should be embedding this into what you have already. Whatever you have in existence, add this to it. If you have one-to-ones, add in what's going wrong between us? What's going wrong in your role? What is left unsaid that you really should be telling me right now?

And then it would go both ways where you also might say the same thing to the person you're having the one-to-one with . Or again, you might need to have a clear mediation structure, something in place so people know this is how we resolve conflict, this is how we collectively do this.

When you go to mediate or model conflict, just embed this notion that it's not personal. As long as you are not character attacking people or crapping on people, you are addressing something that is problematic.

Conflict is not personal. It's a signal that something is going on or wrong between two parties or maybe multiple parties. It's just data. It is data, period. It indicates there's something that needs to be addressed. That's it. That's easy. Well, I mean, maybe it's simple. I know it doesn't feel easy for you, at least not for most people all the time, but it is simple. It's relatively simple.

Two more agenda items. Number one is teaching rules of engagement. So I love this. So you could bake this into your mediation process. You could embed this in part of your meeting agenda. You could just share it widely with the group and say, this is how and why we address conflict. If you ever have issues, do it this way.

There is five basic rules that I would say you should incorporate.

One is assume positive intent. So this is for especially my people who tend to land on defensiveness. You know, if you tend to hear something that might be a little conflict pokes at you a little bit, and then your response is defensiveness. This is easier said than done. And that I mean that genuinely, this is easier said than done, especially for people who are prone to defensiveness.

However, it is still a good rule to try to bake into your understanding of how we engage with conflict. So number one, assume positive intent. Number two, stick to behavior, not character. That's my favorite. Character assaults are very much criticisms. They're gonna get defensiveness. If we stick to a behavior and we're not attributing anything to character, then we're just literally talking about something that happens between the two of us or with this person in another direction.

Number three, ask before assuming. Everybody thinks they do this. I very rarely see this happen, and I don't know if it's because I'm, I, I say this about myself. Maybe it's not true. You know, somebody who knows me might say differently. But I think broadly speaking, my tendency is to just doubt whatever it is that I think, and I mean that in the direction of other people.

So if I'm seeing something, my first, you know, route I go isn't gonna be well, they blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever that blah, blah, blah is it's, well, it's, they do this, or they're just this person. I might stop and say, well, hang on a second. How did I play a role in this? Fuck, okay, what did I say or not say that I should have?

Do we have a process or policy in place? Was I clear about it? Did I over communicate? Did I communicate at all? Did I set different expectations in the beginning and then I changed them? I'm gonna internally reflect.

And what happens sometimes is if I don't know the answer, I might go to that other person and say, tell me what happened. Like, tell me what the rundown is. Because I'm not sure if it's a policy or a process thing. I don't know if it's me, like, did I give you the wrong impression? Did I not say something? Did I probably should have? Where are you getting, like what are you thinking about this?

And it, I just usually start pretty open-ended with things just to get a sense for how they are thinking about something or what their understanding is of something. So ask before you assume.

Number four, be hard on the problem, but soft on the person. You know, in therapy we have beneficence and we also have non maleficence. So one is do no and harm and the other is act with goodness in mind, something along those lines. They are so related, but they are very distinct at the same time.

So being hard on the problem and soft on the person for me is the same thing as asking before assuming, assuming positive intent, sticking to behavior, not character, but it's a different way of framing it.

We might not want a problem to remain, we might not want the behavior to continue. That's fine. However, the person in front of us is still a person we want to have a relationship with. We need to have a positive and healthy relationship with this person to best support them, to be in their role, to help them evolve and grow into the, I would say, person, but also employee that they could be, you know, like what's their capability?

We can help them get there. Whatever they're aspiring to do, we can be supportive in that journey. That's a person in front of you. A person might be engaging in a problem that you don't like or in a behavior that you don't like, cool. Be hard on that behavior, on that problem and care for the person that is in front of you. So that's number four.

And the fifth thing is you can provide language to model this stuff. So when you're doing it, you might just talk openly about, look, we are stepping in. For my opinion, these are the rules of engagement. I think we both know that we're here to talk about this behavior, whatever it might be, assuming that the other person does know and is, if not, you might say, we are here to talk about a behavior that is problematic. Before we do that, let's talk about these rules of engagement. Here's how I'm expecting myself to engage and I would like the same from you.

Boom. So you're kind of setting the stage right away. You might be giving them some scripts to help model again with the rules. Maybe that's what I'm thinking of scripts. And also you're providing language for them to, to see like, okay, cool, this is how it comes to life. Okay, so those are the rules of engagement.

So this last piece, normalizing. Conflict debriefs. This is agenda item number five. I fucking love this so much. It's hard to put into words. I don't know if it's because my brain, I like to go meta.

I like to think about thinking or think about feelings, or feel about feeling, you know, I like to like go a level up, basically whatever it is that we're talking about, I wanna look down from a perch and see that with a different view. This is like a bird's eye view after a hard conversation where you are talking with somebody and you might ask them once it's over, and I would honestly say even during, but that might be a little much for some people, so I'm gonna refrain from going there.

But when you're having a conversation after this conflict discussion has wrapped up, you might say, okay, let's just check in real quick. Tell me how that was for you. How are you feeling right now? How was that experience for you as we were like in discussion?

What I, I can share how I feel? What do you need from me to move through this? Do we feel like this is all wrapped up? Do you have things left unsaid we need to discuss here?

Basically just talk about what the experience was like for the two of you, or three, you know, if there's more people there. This really helps to, I think it does a couple things.

One is that I think it helps people to move from being in the thick of it to seeing it outside of themselves. So when we're in something, we are just, we are the thing that we're in when we talk about something with some distance and we say, well, let's step back and look at this a little bit differently or look at this from a slightly different angle, we can, I, I think physiologically in some cases, but I think also cognitively we're starting to create some space to be able to see it differently.

And when we do that, from my perspective and what feels most important, is that we are also making meaning out of that experience. I might say if I was the one there and this person is sharing how they felt and what they think and how they, whatever.

For me, I might say of course, how I felt also in the process, maybe, you know, I stepped into this and I was really uncomfortable. I, I care a lot about you and I just hate the idea of saying something that makes you doubt what you're doing or feel bad about being here, or whatever I might say. And then I might say.

But I always have to balance my care for my people with my care for the structure that we all exist in. And so it's just this tightrope experience and to bring something up to somebody is always hard to do and always has to happen. And so as we're in it, I know as I was talking with you, I was trying to share openly about what was happening and what we need moving forward. And I was kind of concerned. I was worried about, okay, how is this person receiving this? How are they feeling while we're having this discussion? So it's nice to be at the tail end of this and to check in with you because I care about how you're feeling about this. I want to know, you know, whatever.

I don't actually know if that's exactly what I would say, but realistically it's gonna be some variation of that because that's typically the experience for me.

It's hard stepping into something. I'm gonna normalize that for myself and also with this other person. I am thinking about them in the middle of discussion while also holding the line for the problem. And then at the end of it, I wanna know how they are and what it was like for them. I wanna share about, yeah, this might've like sucked. I feel relieved maybe even though it was difficult to do.

And one more thing I will say about post-conflict debriefs, so to speak, is that you might say to the person, or I might say also, how would you have liked me to have addressed this differently? Is there any way that I could have had this conversation with you that would've helped it go better?

And that doesn't mean that you have to change up everything that you're doing, but if you can get one small takeaway and one small little mental note about, oh, Joe really likes if I lead with this, or he wants to know in the middle that I still, I still see him, I still see how hard he works, or whatever it might be.

You just mentally tuck that away in that person's file, you know, end quote,

and then use it next time if something like this were to happen again. And so then the next time something happens, my guess is if you were to untuck that from your file and use it, the person would really feel cared for even in the midst of this is a difficult conversation.

Whew. Goodness. Goodness gracious.

So. We, my good friends, have talked about reframing conflict as neutral or even good, for the record, we've talked about what unhealthy conflict looks like in practices. We've talked about your role as the owner or leadership or boss modeling and mediating. We've talked about rules of engagement. For the record, I didn't say this, but you absolutely can have different rules.

These are just some very, very basic ones. Realistically with anything else in life, this might be the first iteration of something and it's just gonna keep evolving as things go. You know, that's typically how things work in life. And the last piece is normalizing post-conflict debriefs.

If you don't do anything from what we talked about today, please start doing that. Start doing post-conflict debriefs. So, so great.

If you really wanna dig in deeper into how to build a conflict resilient team, then I would highly encourage you to join the Culture Focused Practice membership. Go to www.taravossenkemper.com, hover over work with me, and you'll see Culture, focus Practice. Boom, that's it. Steal of a price. You get me twice a month for a live q and a live training and a live q and a. There's a portal with a fuck ton of resources. Of course, all the previous trainings and things like that, and a private Facebook group. So there's that really, really amazing people in that group. I will say that much.

Second thing, if you are in the position where you are really wanting help implementing EOS and trying to deal with conflict from an EOS perspective. I would say join my EOS mastermind wait list. I got a new mastermind kicking off soon, which may or may not be soon, depending on the time that you're listening to this, but know that they happen twice a year and they are all about bringing EOS to life, so you can hop on the wait list. That's also at www.taravossenkemper.com. Hover over work with me, then do EOS Mastermind. Join the wait list and we do the mastermind twice a year.

It's an incredible, well, I think it's incredible, but I'm probably biased resource for people who are looking to add EOS into their practice, so, or shore up E OS that they're already attempting to implement. And that's all folks.

Oh, and of course subscribe. That way you can stay up on everything that's coming out from the culture focused practice. Boom. I think that really is it. It is so great seeing you here. I am so happy you've been doing this with me, you have helped make it incredible, and I will see you on the next podcast. Bye.