Practicing Conflict Transformation

A couple of summers ago I was reading a book called, “The Whole Brain Child,” by Daniel J. Siegel. I found it very interesting how when children are acting out emotionally it is crucial we hang out in the right side of the brain with them, empathizing and validating their feelings before bridging to the left side of brain where we talk about the “why” or logic. Totally easier said than done. All I could think was, “I wonder how this applies to adults?” A few months later, because anymore, it takes me this long to read books, as a new mother. I am camping with friends and the book was on the table. My friend sees the book and says, “Oh, you are reading a Daniel J. Siegel book, that man is brilliant!” I responded thinking she also read the book because her child was four years older than our little girl. That wasn’t it at all though, she had produced a course for the author with the production work she does for her career. We started talking and she shared that she had to read multiple books of his to understand what he was talking about in his course. That was the beginning of the path I went down to understand more about his findings and how actually, we should be communicating the same way with adults by hanging out in the right brain before bridging to the left. It follows the same concept I talk about with empathizing before educating, yet it explains more of the “why” behind it. As humans, we cannot hear or grasp left brain thinking until we feel heard, validated and empathized with. Once we have this type of connection, our brains can relax and hear the next steps for resolving the issue or situation at hand. He shares that communicating this way will help in living balanced, meaningful, and creative lives full of connected relationships. Sometimes I feel like adults are similar to a bunch of children running around on a playground lashing out at one another with frustrations. I am not convinced a high population of parents in the 50’s-70’s were reading such books. Here we are as leaders seeing that we must change how we communicate with our team members and in turn coach them on how to communicate with guests.

As I read more of Daniel J. Siegel’s books I dug into his research about the prefrontal cortex. I learned the nine functions encompass: empathy, insight, response flexibility, emotional regulation, body regulation, morality, intuition, attuned communication and fear modulation. Listing these functions make me think of multiple challenging customer situations I have worked with over the years. He shared a story of a situation where he was working with a son and husband of a woman who was in an accident and her prefrontal cortex was affected and would never be the same. Then I learned the prefrontal cortex is compromised by a few of the following: repeated stress, daily substance abuse, those incarcerated, criminals, sociopaths and lead poisoning. I learned that in our state of Oregon, they only started testing for lead paint 15 years ago. What does this mean? I believe there are more people in our world suffering from prefrontal cortex challenges than we realize. This is where emotional intelligence comes in. The definition defines it as the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically. Often when I am coaching the root cause of the conflict, I hear that emotional intelligence isn’t being practiced. I feel this leads to what Brene Brown has spoken to as compromising dignity, dehumanization. Dehumanization is to deprive others of human qualities, the opposite of connection. Connection being, one of the top three hierarchy of needs. The next time you hear team members verbally tearing apart a guest or co-worker, what is your responsibility? We don’t know what people are going through or have been through. As leaders it is our responsibility to educate team members how to look at situations through different lenses and our responsibility to look at team members through those same lenses, giving them the tools for connecting with others and giving people the benefit of the doubt and building them up. Another part of the brain is the limbic brain, it houses the fight, flight, freeze stress response. I was told during our adoption process that my numbers showed I was in this state constantly. I do think it was due to the amount of times we said “yes,” and were still not picked by a birthmother. It also houses the, “Am I safe? Do people want me?” emotion.

I like to share the stages of grief with teams; bargaining, denial, depression, anger and acceptance. As humans we go through grief during any type of change, not just loss of a human. It is the loss of what used to be. This looks like bringing a new family member into the family, moving to a new home or city, change in a job or career, change in technology, and the list can go on and on. Currently experiencing COVID-19, anyone could be experiencing all of these changes at the same time. When you experience someone throwing the emotional volley ball at you, because all humans do it at one point or sometimes often, don’t react by throwing it back, yet put it down and hang out in the right side of the brain. Change your voice tone, facial expressions, eliminate judgements and put your ego aside so you can really hear what is happening with the person. They may act like they are mad about the door code not working on the home they are trying to enter, yet it might really be their anxiety from driving five hours with a screaming child in the car and a frustrated spouse. We don’t know people’s triggers either. If someone is upset about a sliding door not locking in the house or not having window treatments in a room, it might be because they have had multiple house robberies in their lives. We just don’t know and the best thing we can do, is believe people are doing the best they can at that moment. I was coaching a team member who was frustrated with another team member who was not carrying their weight in the job and it was causing this person frustration and creating challenges with their job responsibilities. The easy reaction is to react with frustration. The mindfulness and emotionally intelligent response is to approach the team member and ask how they are doing and if there is anything they can do to support them. This is connection and what dissolves conflict and builds strong teams.

A simple way to keep ourselves in check include, The Three P’s by Lise D’Andrea, president and CEO of Customer Service Experts Consulting Firm.

Be Pleasant- body language, tone of voice and words in a calm demeanor Be Patient- let them vent and don’t give a solution too quickly before they have vented. This is where empathy comes into play
Be Professional- give two options when possible so the customer feels they are making the choice for the solution to the challenge.

​“For “full” emotional communication, one person needs to allow his state of mind to be influenced by that of the other.” -Daniel J. Siegel