Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Exploring the Path to Mediation: A Conversation with Sonja Wood
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:05): Welcome to, it's All Your Fault On True Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and influence the most challenging human interactions, those involving patterns of high conflict behavior. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Hi everybody. We also have along today with us Sonja Wood, who will be introducing shortly. We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California where we focus on training, consulting, and educational programs and methods, all to do with high conflict. In today's episode, we are talking with our brand new guest, Sonya Wood, she's from Texas, but I think you'll learn here shortly that she does not have a Texas accent and you'll have to guess where she's from or maybe she'll tell you a little bit about that. So Sonya's going to talk about mediation and we'll get to that in a moment. But first, a couple of notes. Send your high conflict related questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links. Speaker 1 (01:22): Welcome Sonya, and we're just very pleased to have you with us today. A little bit about your background for our listeners' sake is that Sonya is a qualified mediator having completed her training in 2019, and her specialization is in civil and business disputes, and we're going to talk all about mediation and her new role in that way. One of the new roles is as the chair of membership for the Texas Association of Mediators, brand new on the board of directors, and she'll talk a little bit about that. We met Sonya when she became a conflict influencer through our conflict influencer certification here at High Conflict Institute. She dedicates her time to volunteer mediation and actively supports dispute resolution centers across Texas. We'll talk about a whole lot more of her background as we go along, but she's done some really amazing things and been very proactive to become highly skilled at mediation, such as getting a certification in positive psychology to emphasize strengths and opportunities for improvement rather than dwelling on shortcomings. So let's start with Sonja. We'd love to hear about your background and sort of your journey and your transition into mediation and into life in the us. Speaker 2 (02:47): Yeah, thank you. I'm really happy to record that with you, Megan and Bill. So my background is actually in chemistry, so I learned, I did a master at University France and graduated as a chemical engineer in 2014 and I started to work right away in Germany. So I basically always worked in Germany's jobs were better, it pays better too. So I got some experience in different companies, oil, gas industry, automotive industry, and I traveled a lot. I ended up, my last job was traveling a lot in Europe, in France, in Belgium, in Australia, in Slovakia and within Germany to just support the customers. So that was giving me a lot of insight on how the communication was going between the company that hired me and the production sites where the customers wear Speaker 1 (03:56): A lot of insight, which is so helpful when you're doing mediations for business in civil cases, just to have that background knowledge. Right, Speaker 2 (04:05): Yeah. And because I was working close to the management and also close to production sites, I was able to know the different aspects, the challenges from the manager, but also the challenges from the employees. And I was seeing where the communication was dysfunctional between both and I was coming to everywhere. That was not typically just one country or another. That was both Germany, France, both the same. Speaker 1 (04:39): Interesting. So you saw the same issues coming up regardless of the country, the culture, just communication issues in general? Yes, Speaker 2 (04:49): Yes. And I had more difficulties in Hungary for example, so more going into East Europe, whereas the culture is very different and they were not really accepting a young woman in a technical job. So that was my first one of my first encounter with high conflict situations where nobody really knew how to deal with it. At that point I was dealing with discrimination and sexism and I think the default behavior was just not really to talk about it because the loss for the company would be too great if the deal was going to be gone. So we were really trying to maintain the deal for the financial health of the company and the human aspect of the work suffered from it. Speaker 1 (05:51): Yeah, it sounds like it. So I think for our listeners who are used to hearing so much about high conflict, this comes from a very different angle and I know we have listeners all over the world, so it'd be interesting to hear from you if you're listening to this, say from Eastern Europe or any part of Europe and your experiences. Which leads me to a question about how much, you mentioned that the human aspect suffered. So I would imagine that not a lot of attention is given to interpersonal skills training or conflict training. Would that be a true statement? Speaker 2 (06:29): Oh yeah, totally. There is no such thing as conflict management. That was not even concept being used. And basically, and you have to imagine the situation where you have a less experienced young woman working with 20 plus years experienced employee, and if something goes wrong, if my manager doesn't show up, then there is an unbalanced power. So what happened at that time is I tried to open the door to talk about that, even just with my direct bus at that point. But I think there was the fear of facing the conflict mixed with the financial goals of the company. And that had just really, I think terrible consequences for the work after that because I first, I like total trust in my own ability to deal with the situation. I like trust toward my manager. I like trust toward the whole company because what happens is they're not supporting their employee in a crisis situation, and I just became totally disengaged in my work. So that has a lot of consequences and the company faced a lot of turnover after that. Speaker 1 (07:59): Yeah, I'm not surprised. It's fascinating to discover I guess, where people started and how they got to where they are, what is that journey, and it's just so interesting and I can see on Bill's face here that there's such a difference between chemistry, which is such a straightforward, I would think, not that I even took chemistry in high school, but way more straightforward than mediation. And what is that? So how did you make that transition from that corporate chemistry engineering background into becoming a mediator? Speaker 2 (08:39): Well, after this episode in Hungary, I came back trying to resolve a little bit of something within the company, but I really faced only closed doors, so nobody wanted to talk about it. And at that point, I think it can be possible and nobody cares. It just can't. So I thought, okay, if the company is not willing to support employees and be more efficient on crisis management, I'm going to learn how to deal with it because nobody knew how to face conflict, then I was determined to know how to deal with it myself. So I looked for another path into management and at that time was 2016, 17 about, and there was a lot about happiness management, happiness manager. So I was trying to go in that direction, but I was not really convinced about the impact of that, the classes that were referred. And I came across conflict management and it's how I went into mediation. So I took, then I was in Germany and I took a nine month class that was on weekends when I was still working and on weekends I was going into class and we were learning mediation and conflict management, and we did mediation practice and play a role for nine months. And it's how I became a mediator. First Speaker 3 (10:14): Was the company in Germany open to mediation and talking about issues and was it just in Hungary that they weren't comfortable with that or was that also true a lot in Germany except for the people training you in mediation? In other words, is it a cultural thing or were they really open to mediation in Germany now? Speaker 2 (10:39): When I learned mediation in the first time, we're talking about 20 17, 18, it was starting to be more popular, but I don't think that the companies were really integrating conflict management into their management. I think it really depends where you are in which company you are working with. The one I was in had no idea about that, and the only times I was trying to talk about this, they just didn't want to. They just clearly let me know it's not my problem anymore. So to my opinion, there is no will to really try to solve something. Speaker 3 (11:25): Now do you see that as generational? Is there a generational difference or is that just kind of throughout the culture or the business culture? Speaker 2 (11:36): That's an interesting question. I think there is both. And the challenge that was with the situation in Hungary was there is a cultural aspect of it and there is also generational course because I was younger than everybody else, and I think the deal was just too big to take the risk to lose it, Speaker 2 (12:06): And that was fun. And just then we have different priorities and different ideas about how to do business and different values, but it's then the point where you decide if that company is still aligned to the values I have, do I need to find another company or not? I think startups and in Germany, and I'm thinking about Berlin, maybe that is a little bit more hipster and open where you have maybe more startups, the kilter might be different and a lot more human focused. Now, the area I was in was very conservative and maybe more task focused, task focused, and we can say also a lot of things about equality, about genders, but still being a young woman among a lot of men in this prediction is historically is very masculine, historically precise. I don't want to get in debate about that, but it was still a problem. Speaker 3 (13:16): What's interesting is I teach a course once a year at Pepperdine, the law school on high conflict psychology of conflict. And last fall I had four students from Germany and they were I'd say mid twenties, and they came really to learn about dispute resolution in the us and Pepperdine is kind of neck and neck with Harvard at being top dispute resolution law schools. And I asked them, what are you going to do with your degree? I wondered if they were just going to stay put and say, oh, we're going to change Germany and open them up to much more mediation and conflict resolution. So they were enthusiastic and since there were four of them, I really believe they'll give each other a lot of support. But they also said that they think that the culture is ready now to really learn to use mediation instead of court to use mediation to resolve business disputes, et cetera. So would you say that there was an openness even though there wasn't knowledge much about Speaker 2 (14:32): It? Yeah, definitely. And when I took my class for example, whereas a police officer that took the class to become a mediator, not that he wanted to change his career path, but he wanted to support within the policy team in case of conflict, there is a bunch of teachers and they were already open. Really the path is going toward this now. I think a lot of companies are not startups, maybe the generation before me or two generation before me. So in a more conservative mindset, and I think all the young people from my generation to after that want to change this and try to do management differently is definitely spreading, but it's not really a secret either that US usually is a bit more advanced on this thing than Europe. Speaker 1 (15:38): Well, very good. Let's take a short break and we'll come right back and continue talking with Sonya. All right. We're back with Sonya Wood to continue talking about mediation and kind of the journey of a new mediator. And so the first question is how you got to the US and then we're going to talk about some of the challenges you've encountered in becoming a mediator. Speaker 2 (16:12): So how I came to us is not really original, I'm sorry. Speaker 1 (16:18): That's okay. Speaker 2 (16:19): 2018 I am learning mediation and there is a lot in one year. There is a lot that changes. At the same time, I am quitting my job in Germany, I'm moving in with my now husband and I'm trying to create a new career based on conflict management. 2020, we decided to stay together, so I followed my husband that was at that point still in service in the army and moved with him to Texas. So it's how I came from Europe to the middle of nowhere in Texas. Speaker 1 (16:59): And that's a large change. It's not like moving from Europe to New York City or Texas is very, very different and I guess every state is, but I'm sure that that came with some challenges. Speaking of which, when you got to Texas and began your conflict resolution career, did you encounter any challenges trying to find training or how did that go about? Speaker 2 (17:26): Yeah, there was a lot of challenges because arriving in a new country, knowing no one, even if I've lived in different countries and I traveled outside Europe, it's still not easy to start a, and that's basically what I did when I decided to follow my husband. It's to start a personally. And so the first thing was to get to know people, and at that time I had the mediation certification from Germany, but I didn't know if I could do mediation within Texas also because I had no idea about the regulation in Texas. So at that point I decided to look for an association that was with mediators, and that's how I found just on Google, I found Success Association of Mediators and that was the first step. But even after that, it took me a little bit time to understand, okay, what do I want to do? Do I want to retrain in Texas or do I want to do something else? Well, I finally chose to do a new training specific to Texas, and it's always good to relearn a little bit as the training was a lot shorter though in Germany I had more than 200 hours training. Speaker 2 (18:49): The basic training is 40 hours, so it's a lot shorter, but I needed to have those little ethics and success regulation details to do mediation better here. Speaker 3 (19:05): What kind of mediations you were attracted to Speaker 2 (19:08): At that point? I was already going into business mediation and civil mediation because of my background knowing, having a background with chemistry and technical aspect of the industry, I think I know quite good what challenges the management can face in oil and gas industry or automotive industry, and they're pretty similar, whatever industry you're in and what challenges you can have between the management team and the employee. Speaker 3 (19:40): It's an interesting thing that as new people move into mediation, most people that I know, including myself, came from another career. So it was really a mid career change. But what we're seeing and hoping is that more young people like yourself can get into it earlier. And what's helpful is that you have some background, so it's not your first occupation out of college, but pretty quickly you've got some experience and then have now moved into mediation. So have you done anything with other types of mediation like divorce, mediation, things like that? Interpersonal stuff? Speaker 2 (20:26): I've taken the class when last year with you actually Bill, when I was looking at a conflict, high conflict mediation, and we had a practice about the family case. So that was the closest to family mediation training I've done so far and planning to do the proper family training, family mediation training this summer, but I've actually done a mediation with a CPS issue. Not everybody can do family mediation then. That's my personal opinion. It just, I think family mediation triggers a lot of things. So if you are not clear with your own issues, it's going to be hard to do family mediation as a mediator and being efficient as a mediator. Speaker 3 (21:20): That's really good awareness to have and I totally agree with you. And there's some people that want nothing to do with it and a few people that want to do it, but it's not good for them. But I'm glad you're getting to comediate, something like that so that you're not thrown in the deep end of the pool of family mediation. Speaker 2 (21:46): That was a good experience that clearly let me know. It's maybe not what I want to do now. I still want to take the training because I still want to have an open door if the disparate resolution center needs a family mediator for it, but I'm not myself going to advertise my services for family mediation. That's a lot of things also because I'm just learning the success legislation and when you're going into the family law, you have so many things to know to be efficient in mediation, just talking about child support seems an easy topic, but it's very difficult to understand what is around the law around child support board. So I need to catch up on that too. And I don't think you can be efficient as family mediator if you don't have a good idea about zow around divorce. Speaker 1 (22:51): Absolutely. So like Bill said, it's good where your strengths are and where maybe your services are best suited. So let's talk for a moment about high conflict, which is where the High Conflict Institute podcast. How did you get to us and we'll kind of I guess talk about what dimension this has added to your mediation that you provide. Speaker 2 (23:22): So my first research about something else than mediation led me to high conflict. So 2020 I received, I was still in Germany, I received my certification as mediator, and yet I still feel I need to know more, but I came to the end point of what I can learn with them. So I looked for informations about more about mediation. I didn't know high conflict yet, but I was looking for more informations. And then I came across a high conflict institute and that concept of high conflict. And when I read about that concept, it's like a light bulb above my head that just went on because soon I could realize why some personal relationship were not making any improvement despite nine months working on myself and learning mediation tools. Some relationship were not going anywhere. So when I read about the high conflict personality, I was, this is it. This is exactly what's going on. And then that just gave me the drive to know more and more about that. Speaker 1 (24:35): Fascinating. So I know we've talked in the past quite a bit about Biff and that you're a big fan of Bill's book, the original Biff book, we call it Biff Red because the cover is red. So how did that impact your work and maybe even other relationships? Speaker 2 (24:53): When I got that book, I think it's important to really do all the exercise of the book just for yourself at first. And that unlocked a lot of things that get me to the point where I was able to put distance between me and the situation or me and the other person by understanding I was able to not take it more personally or not to get emotionally involved. When I realized that in mediation, and even if you look around in the street in a grocery store or on the road when you drive, there is a lot of high conflict people. So putting this application was really life-changing because it's not just a good tool for me and my personal relationship, but it's also a good tool for every day everywhere. And in family media, we were talking about family mediation, family mediations are maybe, I don't know percentage, but I think it's most of the time it's just high conflict situation because highly emotional. And I'm still surprised that a lot of mediators within the Texas Association of Mediators have no idea about high conflict. They're really good tool that the ear model cars or just beef response, they're all such good tool for everything. Speaker 3 (26:21): Well, what's exciting is that you're learning this stuff while you're also meeting new people and spreading the word of these methods because over and over again we get what you said, that a light bulb went off, that things made sense, certain relationships that didn't change. Now they made sense. And you see what you can do. And what's interesting, we get feedback that the BIFF method, which was designed for writing to be brief, informative, friendly, and firm, and that a lot of people now say they're starting to use it in conversations and that I had this theory, I can't prove it yet, but my theory is as people practice the Biff method, it somewhat rewires their brain towards how they deal with other people to be brief and informative, friendly and firm rather than overwhelmed or overly aggressive. So I'm excited that you like it and you find it such a wide use and that you'll be spreading the word about it as well. Speaker 2 (27:34): I really believe it too, that when you start to apply often what's in the book, the Biff books, all the theory of Biff, then you start to talk differently. You start to use different words and to approach the situation differently compared to what you used to do. So I really believe that something changes in the brain too because you shift your own behavior. So something must happen. Speaker 3 (28:08): And that's one of the themes of the Biff method and anybody that gets a Biff book, by the time you get to the end of the Biff book, you see that the way you respond influences the way the next person responds, whether they have a defensiveness that we associate with the right hemisphere of the brain or whether they have problem solving that we associate with the left hemisphere of the brain. So you can influence which kind of response you get. And I didn't realize that when I first wrote these, but now it just kind of settled in. Yeah, you really can decide how the other person's going to respond to you, Speaker 1 (28:50): Which is a good testimony for why we shouldn't leave everything to ai. Sure, I might be able to write something that's mildly predictive but probably doesn't quite do the job. But the flip side of that is you're not learning the skill and thereby you're not influencing someone else as well. So we're all about the skills, and Sonya, we really appreciate your support of Biff and being so excited about it. We'll kind of wrap it up with that, except one thing I wanted to ask you, if you have any advice or a tip for anyone who is either a new mediator, brand new in their career, or someone who's maybe considering it? Well, Speaker 2 (29:35): They need to join the Texas Association of Mediation. Speaker 2 (29:42): Becoming a mediator is highly challenging because it's not like you go to university and you send your resume to companies and they're going to hire you. When you decide to become a mediator, you're basically saying, I'm going to create my own job and I'm going to be self-employed. Truly important to be aware of that, that if you want to be a mediator, that means you need to know how to build your own business, how to network, and get the skills for it. So joining association is a good way to network and learn more and more about how successful mediators did it. That's personally what I do. Yeah, it's a very gratifying job. I think I see it as highly important today, and it's going along the line of beef, being able to self-regulate, if it's just that it's a self-regulation tool, being able to self-regulate is to me, one of the, if not the most important thing we have to do today. Each of us, unfortunately, not enough people do it. So becoming a mediator is showing the path towards self-regulation. But to do that, you must be aware that you need to self-regulate yourself, and you must be ready to do what it takes to build that business. Speaker 1 (31:10): Yeah, very different skills, but ultimately those who really apply themselves and keep learning and applying themselves will probably succeed as you have and continue doing. So we're very excited you've joined us at HCI and thank you for joining us today on our podcast. We're hoping that we can get into the French speaking communities in other parts of the world, and probably German, I think you speak three languages. Yes. Speaker 2 (31:40): Yeah. I don't know what my German become over time, but I can still understand and speak a little bit. Speaker 1 (31:47): Oh, I'm sure you do. Great. So again, thank you and thank you listeners for joining us today. Speaker 1 (32:00): Next week we're going to talk about the results of our polls on marriage and women and on child custody. So those polls are still open. You have time. We'll put the links in the show notes. It only takes about 30 seconds To complete each poll, send us your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. And we'd love it if you'd tell your friends and colleagues about us, and we'd be grateful if you'd leave us a review. Until next time, you've learning and practicing these skills, be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins and Ziv Moran. Find the show notes and transcripts@truestory.fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.