Adulting, together
The key to holding and hosting difficult conversations is to trust that everyone in the room has the ability to put on their grown up pants.
I’ve just finished two projects with very different groups of people where conflict was one of the main themes - one mediation role with a leadership team and one facilitation engagement with a maternity unit.
But just as with all the teams and groups I work with where conflict seems to have got everyone stuck, there was one simple principle I held which I believe is the key to getting unstuck.
When people find themselves in relational difficulty that doesn’t seem to be getting better, it’s almost guaranteed that they’ve stopped talking.
Not that they haven’t tried - most likely they’ve given it a good go. But at some point that got too hard and everyone retreated.
Conflicts arise because we’re triggered. And in a literal sense, that means some external stimulus - an argument or other written interaction, triggered a conditioned response inside of someone.
Acting out of that feeling, the resulting words or behaviour then triggered a conditioned response in the other person, and then off it all goes.
Back and forth, round and round.
This is not some inferior, infantile behaviour or defect on the part of anyone - it’s just how humans work.
We are all just a walking, talking story book of unconscious narratives which we picked up over our lifetime about who we are and how we need to be in the world.
These narratives serve an important purpose - they help keep our ‘self’ safe. They tell us how we need to act in any given moment to retain a sense of stability inside.
But now and again they just get in our way.
Someone does or says something that touches on one of those narratives which says: “You can’t deal with this kind of person or behaviour because they are a threat to your safety or dignity and when you come into contact with them, you need to make them change or go away.”
Because these stories and patterns are laid down in our early lives, you can see them as the response of the childlike self, or perhaps that of the parent that the child observed and absorbed in moments of distress.
This is the basic principle that’s described in Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis - that in moments of difficulty we slip into a parent (nurturing or judgemental) or child (petulant or needy) role that stimulates a corresponding response in the other person, where we both remain until someone is able to change.
So whether you’re a CEO, teacher or (ahem!) conflict practitioner, you’re always going to be susceptible to these reactions in yourself.
This basic premise is one that I hold central to my work, especially when facilitating or mediating difficult conversations.
I recognise that yes, we’re all doing our very best in any given situation with what we have, and that can result in being triggered by each other and behaving in ways that don’t seem constructive. That’s OK.
And at the same time, as we learn from that model of Transactional Analysis, what also has to be true is that we’re all capable of being adults - owning our ‘stuff’, holding things in balance and acting with integrity.
The trouble is, our conditioned responses are so strong, sneaky and subtle that while we all know this at heart, in these tricky situations we become convinced that how I’m behaving is the right response, and it’s the other person who is wrong.
Ultimately, we all just want stability - in our work, in our life, in our relationships and in our physical selves.
This is why I find myself working with people. The balance has been upended and nothing seems to be making a difference.
People have tried to work through the difficulty but it felt too painful or threatening, and whether they know it or not, part of them felt that the safest thing to do is stay away.
The big problem is that in the absence of interaction, the stories they hold about the other person (or people) and themselves become more entrenched by the day.
With a nervous system that’s dysregulated, their mental focus narrows to create a two-dimensional story about the other person and the situation.
Although I have a lot of different tools in my toolbox and models at my disposal, the core principle I have been focusing on lately is simply: we are all adults.
If I step into a situation with the idea that these people need my help because they aren’t capable of sorting things out and I have to fix them, I’ve disempowered and undermined both of them before we’ve even begun.
While it might be true that the stuckness stems from a current inability to switch out of a ‘child’ or ‘parent’ behaviour, my job is to create the conditions and provide minimal interventions to help them realise that being the adult is the only way to rebalance both the relationship and their internal system.
As you might imagine, this also means that I have to stay in that adult position - which isn’t always easy because, yes, you guessed it, I am also a walking talking bundle of stories.
I come with my own baggage, especially when I’m being paid to come and ‘help’ people overcome their problems.
They are contracting with me to try and make some progress on something that’s causing them pain and might be hurting their business, so it would be easy for me to do everything I can to sort it all out.
But paradoxically, the only sustainable way I can support other people is by trusting that they can work it out themselves.
If I get my stuff entangled in their stuff and become the anxious, overbearing parent, then even if we manage to find a good way forward, once I’m out of the picture, then it will all go back to how it was.
By trusting them, trusting myself and trusting the process, I create the conditions for people to ‘get back to base’, really hear what’s going on and find the understanding they need to move things on
Because when one person chooses to shift themselves into the adult role, then everyone else has no choice but to do the same.
The paradoxes are everywhere in this work and at the heart of it has to be both compassion and acceptance - that we’re all doing our best, even when we’re at our worst - and that we can all change in any given moment, if we focus on the right things.
And the only thing that I can change that is worth focusing on, is how I handle my ‘self’.
If you need support in a difficult work relationship, check out more of my writing on conflict, my six-week online course or email me hello@maxstjohn.com to set up a conversation.