Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / When a High Conflict Decision-Maker Uses BIFF & EAR on You
Transcript
- Megan Hunter: Welcome to It's All Your Fault on TruStory FM. The one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those with folks who may have a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host Bill Eddy. Bill Eddy: Hi, everybody. Megan Hunter: We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. In this episode today, we are focusing on part two of high conflict situations at work and how this new certification program that we've just released might help people who are in situations like this in the workplace. But I want to give you a couple of notes first. Number one, if you have a question about high conflict situations or a person, send them to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website, you can submit them at highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. You can find all the show notes and links there as well, and we'd love it if you gave us a rate or review and told your friends, family, or colleagues about us, especially if they're dealing with a high conflict situation. We'd be very grateful. Now, let's talk high conflict. Last week, we introduced our high conflict certification course that we've just released, which anyone can take. We like it even better when whole organizations take the course so that everyone's sort of on the same page and understanding how to handle high conflict situations, how to handle a person who may have a high conflict personality to just keep the workplace calm and focus on the work instead of dealing with personnel issues, right. High conflict situations are a major, major time drain for human resources, for management, and can be devastating and really impactful on employees that are dealing with it. So, bottom line, it's a disruptor in not a good way. So this certification course is a disruptor, I guess, in a good way because it disrupts the high conflict situation and can turn it around. We thought we'd start this week with one of your listener questions. So, thank you for submitting these. So many have come in and they're just fantastic. We'll start with this workplace situation and then kind of wrap up in to it. How getting certified in high conflict could be helpful in an organization. This one has to do with healthcare. So here we go, Bill. You ready for this? Bill Eddy: Yes, I am. And I used to work in healthcare, so that's very familiar type situation. Megan Hunter: Excellent. Okay. So, here we go. While it has been very useful for me in dealing with high conflict personalities and situations, I've also seen the BIFF response being misused as a way of avoiding criticism and change. I have seen this in the workplace here in the country where I live. I worked as a nurse at a hospital ward with a toxic culture. Staff routinely talked badly about patients going so far as to wishing them dead. I mean, that's extreme, right? Bill Eddy: Yeah, but not rare. Megan Hunter: Not rare, unfortunately. The group functioned like a cult with an authoritarian leader who yelled and used threats and had a lot of close followers who enforced the leader's rules and provided a lot of stress and pressure. People who spoke out were shunned and/or scapegoated. When I, naive as I was, complained about the culture, the leader began obstructing my work through her followers. I guess we'd call those negative advocates, right Bill? Bill Eddy: Yes. Megan Hunter: I double checked everything and thanks to that, I noticed several times that nurse assistants did not provide me with vital information about patients that they were obligated to report to me. Patient safety was undermined, so I reported this to management. They must have learned about high conflict people and BIFF responses because I received a brief, informative, friendly, and firm response, but without them listening to the complaints. I was treated like I was the HCP, the high conflict person for complaining. I continue to present facts about patient safety and culture. Then one human resources specialist asked, as Bill Eddy has suggested, "So what is your proposal?" And I answered that I proposed that I change boards and that they investigate patient safety. Her response was, "Well, you can't change wards and there is no problem. Goodbye." Later on, that ward was closed because when I left the cultic bubble, the bubble sort of burst and several other nurses left too. My question is if you have seen this, and how one can handle situations when BIFF responses are used to silence critics. So, I can just imagine your brain going through this, Bill, going [inaudible 00:05:28]. So, what do you have for us? Bill Eddy: First of all, I want to say this is not a rare occurrence, but it's also not most cases. So I want to make sure people know healthcare has been really dedicated in many ways the last 10, 15 years to handling conflicts well and to trying to weed out or at least restrain high conflict personalities in healthcare. Now, a lot of people think, "Well, doctors are high conflict people." And I'd like to say some of them definitely are, and there's actually a name for that. Disruptive physicians. And so, HCPs in healthcare are often called disruptive physicians. But let's say that 80% of physicians are really good at conflict resolution, paying attention to their clients, and don't have high conflict personalities. But let's say 10% to 20%, as in the legal profession and other professions, do have high conflict personalities. And in healthcare, especially in hospitals, there's administrators too at mid-level, top level, who can really, in many ways, terrorize their employees and they've had little fiefdoms of power that for years we would hear about. So I'd like to say in the last 10 to 15 years as a real committed effort to working on conflict resolution, especially from the leadership level. Megan Hunter: I remember we call a book that came out called Nurse Bullies. Bill Eddy: Yeah. Megan Hunter: And I think they referred to the queen, the head nurse... Or there'd be a queen bully nurse or something like that. And I talked to a few nurses and some had heard about it and others hadn't and they said it kind of depends on the hospital as well. Bill Eddy: Exactly. And I think that's a very good point. So, I do want to get into this one. And so, we see some hospital organizations are tolerating high conflict personalities, high conflict behavior. By and large, most of them don't because they're learning these better systems, but there are cases like the one she's talking about. So let's talk about this. First of all, with bullying, there's one study shows that in hospitals, men bully men and women bully women. And so, it's not that unusual to see a female administrator bullying female nursing staff. Now, this use of BIFF and making proposals as a weapon is something that we're just starting to see now that these tools are getting out and about. That high conflict people turn anything positive into something negative. And so, with BIFF responses which we've explained before; brief, informative, friendly and firm, the idea is you don't criticize what the other person has said. Instead, you just provide information. Keep it brief, informative, friendly, and firm. So in this example, what the nurse is saying is that someone told me basically they were brief, informative, friendly, and firm with me, and then basically criticizing me for my statement. My email or whatever it was. And that's not the purpose of a BIFF. The purpose is to give new information, so you don't feed the conflict and keep it focused on problem solving. Also, "So what is your proposal?" It doesn't sound in this case like they were interested. Like they just said it. So it could be they had one of our trainings, but they're misusing it because it should lead to a discussion and questions. And so, when the person said, "So what's your proposal?" And then I answered with my proposal, her response was no, basically. But her response should have been, "Let me ask you a couple questions about your proposal. I want to understand." That's the way you're supposed to deal with proposals. And then that might have led to, "Well, we can't change wards now, but perhaps in six months or some other discussion," rather than just here's the door being slammed. So those are misuses of two tools. The question that she has at the end is, "Have you seen this?" So by now you can tell I've seen this. And I actually have lived a little bit of this. I worked as a clinical social worker in a psychiatric hospital, and what's interesting even in a psychiatric hospital, you get little pockets of high conflict people in charge of some other people. My mind goes back to key people who were difficult. I must say I was very pleased that the psychiatric hospital where I worked was, by and large, I'd say 95% really dedicated, positive, supportive people, but you get... High conflict people can pop up anywhere. And the question is if the organization is able to redirect them and change behavior or move them out. And that tends to be those two redirecting or moving them out or training them have been the solutions. So, yes. Silencing critics, that's what high conflict people do. So, I'm not surprised at the end of your story is that the ward was closed and that several other nurses left. So, that's the bad news. The good news is there are skills, there's many good organizations, most I would say, and they're learning and dedicated to handling these situations better. Megan Hunter: Yeah. It is interesting to think of the tools being weaponized, right? Bill Eddy: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Megan Hunter: It's sort of interesting. So then you have this battle of the tools. You're battling potentially high conflict person with your own tools. That's rough. That can be pretty challenging for people. So I guess we would say you just stick with the tools, right? You keep using BIFF and you have to stay structured because it's not a perfect world. And we'd like to think that... And really having this next level information about the high conflict personality and having the tools to deal with interactions with them will solve everything. But as we see in this situation, the ward closed because it was just too toxic of a culture, right. And they weren't able to get a handle on it. So, I suppose the key is to take care of yourself, keep using your skills, focus on your own self care, and keep as structured as you can, yeah? Bill Eddy: Yeah. And let me add. With bullying in the workplace, it used to be you're supposed to report that to your supervisor. The trouble is, the most common bully was the supervisor. Megan Hunter: Uh-huh (affirmative). Bill Eddy: And so, most organizations now have a policy that allows you to go to somebody else. You can go to human resources, go to another manager so that this is reported. And I think with the MeToo movement and sexual harassment cases, Harvey Weinstein- Megan Hunter: Cancel culture. Bill Eddy: Yeah. But I was thinking of Harvey Weinstein and all these people that people have to find somebody that's going to pay attention. What's interesting in Australia, and I'm guessing it's still true... I was at a conference about this several years ago about bullying. And they had, at some point, made executives personally liable. They could come out of their own pockets if they were informed of bullying and didn't do anything about it. And I think that's the kind of consequences that really gets tension. And I think with that, that they've done so much with workplace bullying. There are countries in Europe. Interestingly, no state in the United States has an anti-bullying law. And there's a lot that have been proposed and someday will probably get passed. The Workplace Bullying Institute's been a driving force with that, and I think that's a good cause to raise awareness because you've got to get to these top level people that have power over others by going even higher in the organization and having them pay attention. So this is an area of work and it's good to know people are working on it. It's too bad to know people are going through what this nurse went through. Megan Hunter: It's true. I recall working with a healthcare organization that provided doctors to a few area, local hospitals. I was contacted during the pandemic. And it was when hospitals were hiring traveling nurses because they needed extra staff. So, of course, anytime you bring new people in, you kind of have to start all over again with the forming, storming, norming and performing. So there's going to be a storming part probably with almost all new people that come in into a culture. And if you have a high conflict personality in that mix, they're going to get stuck in that storming phase, and you're not going to get to the norming and performing. And that's what I was seeing a lot here was... I guess there were a few doctors that were identified as maybe potentially problem doctors. After some conversations with them, it became very clear to me which ones were and which ones were not. And that a lot of it was due to the storming phase and just everybody was anxious and stressed during the pandemic. They didn't know how a new traveling nurse coming into the hospital didn't understand some of the processes and they bring their own... That's a recipe for some issues, right. But ordinary, reasonable people can work them out. But when you get a high conflict person in the mix, it can really get stuck there. So what I saw was just giving the doctors who didn't seem to have these high conflict traits some good skills just really for connecting with the nurses and just... They were so focused on what their job, patient care and treatment and all that. And I said, "Just take a few minutes and connect a little bit. How was your weekend?" And make a joke, buy pizza, whatever. And it really worked for all the doctors, but those who might have been more on the high conflict side would quickly revert back, right, to the way they've been. Bill Eddy: Yeah. There's one thing here. What you're saying reminded me of is a study of doctors and who got sued and who didn't get sued. And the study looked at how they spoke to patients. And in the middle of the study, they garbled the speech of the doctors, so you couldn't tell the words they were saying. And what they found is the tone of voice was the key thing. And doctors with an empathetic tone of voice, a patient tone of voice versus doctors with a domineering tone of voice, that the domineering tone of voice doctors were the ones getting sued and the empathetic tone of voice, the patient tone of voice doctors were the ones who weren't getting sued because it isn't like every doctor gets sued once and some doctors get sued 10 times and some doctors might not get sued at all. However, I might add, depends on which area of medicine you're in because some doctors get sued just because... Obstetrics is an area where people are very upset if you lose their child and there may be only child. And so, those doctors have dealt with a lot of lawsuits, but in general, what they found is the tone of voice for doctors really can make a huge difference. And that can be taught, but as you said, if it's not practice, people can relapse into their old domineering tone of voice. Megan Hunter: And I would see the unmanaged emotions as well when things didn't go to their way. Everyone was tired. Everyone was stressed. The COVID patients were really sick and there was a lot of death and it was very hard on healthcare workers in all segments. So, those who could contain their emotions, they were even stressed, but just a little will work with them about just taking some good self care, using your tone of voice, keeping it calm and just connecting with those working in the hospitals and with the patients, it really seemed to help. But those that who had those same stresses like same scenario, same landscape, but couldn't manage their emotions, they'd end up yelling and screaming at other workers, and it was a real problem. And I think in those cases, either they are asked to leave or they get assigned fewer shifts or they get angry themselves and at the situation and go find somewhere else to work or they retire. Bill Eddy: And actually that's a good point because some of the places that we've consulted and trained with, once we've given a training, it becomes obvious that certain people don't have the ability to change and learn these skills. And they often select themselves out of. Either they leave the organization or they retire. And that's one of the benefits like you said earlier. Training a whole organization to use the same tools and have the same knowledge. And I think of times when I've given trainings, people have said, "So and so here has been a very difficult person and they just went through your training. It will be interesting to see if they use these skills." And then a month later I hear back, "No, they didn't use these skills. They just moved on." And they were quite relieved because now the standard is to use these much more cooperative skills and not to tolerate high conflict behavior. Megan Hunter: Yep. We're not saying that you can't work with people who have these types of personalities or that they should be denigrated in any way or we're mocking. It's absolutely not. Everything we do and teach is to help people understand the rules of that other person's operating system. How they operate so that you can do something differently that gives them a chance to stay. That gives them a chance to feel calm. That gives them a chance to feel rational and a chance to succeed. Bill Eddy: And especially there's some highly skilled, highly trained people in healthcare that organizations don't want to lose. And the solution that we've really focused on is coaching and training, and that brings us back to the high conflict certification course and how that can help people. And you may want to remind people how long that is and what they learned in that. Megan Hunter: Nice segue, Bill. Yeah. As we both know, we can sometimes get in these conversations and end up talking on and on forever about this. We would love it. So the certification course. Instead of giving someone a one time coaching session or someone coming to our training where people really do love what we do and they take a lot of skills from it, but this is kind of the next level for someone to get an intensive training at their own convenience, really, because it's online. So, it makes it very easy, but basically it's 10 weeks in length. I mean, you could do all 10 weeks probably in 24 hours. So, let's call it 10 sessions except for the live labs. You have to schedule those. But what is in the certification course is sort of the foundation. First about what is high conflict. What it's not. That's really important too. And we talk about the five high conflict personality types and their fear-based kind of operating system and patterns and then ways to address each type. So, you learn how to respond. First, really how to analyze dilemmas because HCPs bring us a lot of dilemmas and we have to stop and figure out what we're going to do about it. So, that's one of the most important thing. You just stop yourself and then learning to adapt how you communicate and interact with them. And that's using your statements and BIFF responses. So EAR for verbal and BIFF for written word. And then you have to practice this because it's just not natural and normal for us because we have our own default systems and a way of interacting with people and our expectations, right? We expect that other people should be able to handle the way we interact, but we really have to adapt what we do because they can't. And then we work around... Do a lot of work around setting limits because- Bill Eddy: They don't stop themselves. That's the problem. Megan Hunter: That's the problem. And then we're afraid a lot of times to set a boundary with them because we feel frightened, we're walking on eggshells. We are afraid of retribution or maybe some public shaming or even getting yelled at. So instead of setting limits with high conflict people, who need them more than anyone in the world? And it's a gift to them to give them boundaries. We give them the least boundaries in the world. The way I look at it because we're afraid. We're walking on eggshells. So, it's a very important part of this. And I think for anyone in the workplace, who would take this certification course? I think it's for anyone truly that... Any type of business, any type of organization, nonprofit, whatever. Where you are working with people, it's good to get skilled up. HR, anyone. Even if you're an employee and you're not in management or anything, it's good to take this if you're dealing with another coworker or a boss or anyone who might be high conflict. So, that's kind of it except for the... The real game changer, I think, with this is the practice part, and that's why we have two live labs built into it in the eighth and 10th weeks. So you really have to practice with our live lab coach all these skills. That to me, I think will be the most helpful, don't you? Bill Eddy: Yeah. I think also that learning this knowledge and learning to use these skills helps you feel like our tagline, more inner peace, also gives you confidence because more and more people are getting caught by surprise by high conflict behavior. And they go, "What is this? I never confronted this before. Now I have this person that's... I have like a stalker." And people go, "Every time I go to work, I dread it because there's this one person." And since, I think it's 2008, people reported that it was other workers or other people was their biggest problem in the workplace. It used to be workload or pay or something. It became other people about the time we started High Conflict Institute. And I believe that still other people is the biggest problem people report in the workplace. But another thing I wanted to add is I think it builds compassion for high conflict people because once they gain the knowledge that we provide, they realize they really can't stop themselves. That it's in a lack of certain wiring in the brain in a sense, and that they lack this self-awareness, they lack this change and that what people do to try to get them to change, yelling or crying or persuading just doesn't work. But these other tools help you manage the relationship. And by realizing that this is personality based, that it's part of who they are, and probably part of who they've been since early childhood. Some people are born with these characteristics. Some learn them from abuse in childhood. Some are heavily indulged in childhood and get away with stuff like this. And we're not in control of our childhood. And so, by the time people are adults, they're the accumulation of these experiences and they can't see it, and that's why we have to learn how to manage them. And we have to a little more work on the relationship because they can't. And so, by and large, especially if a whole team has these skills, you can really get the best out of your high conflict coworkers and really reign in the worst. So I think that's where this can really be helpful. Megan Hunter: I love that. You know what Bill? I have never heard you say that phrase before that we didn't have control over our childhoods. That's so interesting. Bill Eddy: Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about that lately. Yeah. That's what we're seeing is people who just... Here they arrived at 20 years old and this is who they are. Megan Hunter: You could look at this as you wait until you have a high conflict situation and then, "Ah, I need to do something about it," right. "Kev, I'm going to take that certification course they were talking about." Or I think maybe in the era we're in where a lot of organizations are becoming more proactive, this is how you can be more proactive, right. Get your whole organization on board to... And I know some bigger companies do some things like this where they have communication policies and such, but this is kind of a little bit different where how to identify these situations, these people in advance and how to handle them, I really think every company, every organization should get skilled up. So, we do have enterprise solutions, so if any organizations want to do the whole thing. So, I think that wraps it up and we'll put a link to that course, the certification course, in the show notes along with a few articles and some other information. And also want to let our listeners know that Bill is currently working on a certification course for legal professionals. So lawyers will be able to take a certification course and it's going to be amazing. So that's coming out in a couple months. Next week, we're going to continue talking about written communications and more of the intricacies of using BIFF. And why are we staying on this subject and talk about it so much? Because it's probably the biggest problem out there. Bill and I were chatting before we recorded today about a lot of our coaching and consulting is around written communication. So, we'll break down some actual emails and kind of show what should be responded to and what shouldn't be responded to and how to do it. And we'll be basing that all on the book we released last year we wrote together called BIFF at Work, and we'll be answering some listener questions that focus on emails, texts, and other written communications. If you have any questions, send them to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. Tell all your friends about us, and we'd be really grateful if you'd leave us a review wherever you listen to us. Until next week, have a great week and practice BIFFing as much as you can, so you can find the missing piece. It's All Your Fault is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson, music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes and transcripts at trustory.fm or highconflictinstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.