Okay, so I hate conflict. My natural style is to avoid conflict at almost any cost. However, as a Manager for Learning and Development, I've taken a lot of self assessments, and I'm actually in charge of teaching many of these concepts. So, you can't do that. My natural style in the wild, so to speak, is probably not to get into it with everybody I run into. The waiter, the barista at Starbucks. I'm just not gonna do that. However, [LAUGH] knowing that, and knowing that, that's my natural style, I have to compensate. So I have to be very direct when I need to be very direct, and I'm also an accommodator. On a TKI scale I'm an accommodator avoider. So I'm very collaborative and I wanna talk to everybody and try to make everybody happy. At the same time I know that, that realistically is not possible. Especially, when you're working with a diverse team. So one of the things that I find works really well is to let people know up front how a decision is going to be made. So giving them an idea of what the decision model is going to be, I'm going to ask all of your opinions but in the end I'm going to make the decision. Or letting them know we're gonna keep meeting until we come to a consensus. When people know in advance how you're gonna make your decision, I think that helps them understand that you respect their opinion and you get into fewer conflicts. So we've already talked about that my natural style is somewhat of an accommodator avoider, and an example of when I used that style effectively [COUGH] was when, as I've discussed before. I was given an assignment, and it was taken away or it was recommended that it be removed from my department by another HR manager. And my natural style is pretty easy-going or I try to be pretty easy-going. So I just let it go and offered help. And even though I was inside, I thought wow, that is not very collaborative. That doesn't really jive with the culture of our organization. I just kind of let that go and thought this is all gonna play out the way it's supposed to play out, and eventually it did play out the way I thought it would in such a way that the person didn't end up staying with the organization and the assignment came back to me. I actually didn't know she wasn't gonna stay with the organization, but I had a feeling that the path that she was on was so conflict laden that I though this project is gonna come back to me. Because chances are people aren't gonna work, want to work with that type of person. Specially not on succession planning. So the advice that I would give young professionals, learned professionals, advice that I would give anyone, is to know yourself. Know what your personal style is and then to figure out how to accommodate and how to emphasize your strength within that style. So if your style is an accommodator avoider as mine is. You're gonna have to learn how to be more direct and how to over come that. Because it won't always serve you. If you're style is very conflict, I want to say conflict laden, but someone who doesn't mind conflict. Who is very direct, who feels comfortable in conflict, and many people do, then you should know that also. But you should understand when it's appropriate. I think a huge part of that is understanding the culture of the organization that you're in. So if you're in a very competitive environment where conflict is the order of the day. Maybe that's wonderful, but if you're in an organization where people are more passive, or where it's much more collaborative and people are working in teams, then you're gonna have to know how to adapt your personal style into that organizational culture. So on my team, we have a diverse team. Diverse in ages, ethnicities and personality types. Small team, but diverse, and there are a couple individuals who have really different styles. One is me, the accommodator-avoider. And the other person has a much more direct and, I would almost say aggressive style. So, in meetings, what we observed, or what I observed, is that when people would get into conflict when I would get into conflict with this individual, or when other people would get into conflict with this individual, the rest of the staff would kinda shut down. They would physically, almost, you could see them withdrawing. Their body language would change, their posture would change, their [SOUND]. They would be manifesting gestures that would tell you we're in conflict and this is so uncomfortable. Conflict in general makes people uncomfortable, for both the people in the conflict and everyone around them who isn't sure what is going to happen. So, using active listening skills, the team got together and we were actually working through Patrick Lencioni's five dysfunction of a team and we developed a process through active listening that when we are in a meeting and when we are in conflict when any person feels that a conflict is escalating and they feel somewhat uncomfortable or threatened or that the conversation has become less than safe. They have, we have a signal which is, time out. That means that the meeting stops and we re-group and we use our active listening skills to kind of take it down a notch because elevated voice, body language, when you get into that with a team, although I believe in constructive conflict, what happens is a lot of people shut down. And they won't bring their best ideas forward. Especially in a team meeting. Because they're so worried about those two people going at it, that they're just thinking how can I get out of this. [LAUGH] How can this meeting be over and how can I get back to my desk safely. So when that starts to happen, I think there's a balance between constructive conflict where people are willing to bring their ideas and their passion and 'I think your idea won't work and here's why'. But that has to be tempered with active listening where we're respecting each other's ideas and respecting each other's different opinions.
