Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Worth Repeating: Setting Limits Without Public Exposure to Manage Difficult Behavior
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:04): Welcome to us all Your Fault on True Story fm, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you identify and deal with the most challenging human interactions, those with someone who may have a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with my co-host, bill Eddie. Speaker 2 (00:23): Hi everybody. Speaker 1 (00:24): 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 this episode, we're going to talk about a strategy that some use in high conflict situations that may seem natural, but the question is, will it help or will it harm? The strategy we're talking about is the strategy of exposing bad behavior of a high conflict person. Many think this is a way to make progress. So we're going to discuss that and see if that's valid or not. First, a couple of notes. If you have a question about a high conflict situation, please send it to podcast high conflict institute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast, where you'll also find all the show notes and links. Please give us a rate of review and tell your friends, colleagues, or family about us, especially if they're dealing with a high conflict situation. We are always grateful to you, our listeners. Speaker 1 (01:32): All right, bill, let's talk about exposure and humiliation and uh, ooh, you know, so it, I think it's kind of normal, maybe a natural to think of, of exposing bad behavior as a way to, to set limits, which we know is one of the key strategies for, um, handling a high conflict individual, high conflict person. And, um, but maybe it's only when we're out of all other options that we come to this place that we think we have to threaten someone, I guess, and say, Hey, look, if if you don't comply, if you continue with this bad behavior, then I'm going to expose all the bad things you've been doing, all your bad behaviors. So, I don't know, bill, what do you think? Is this a good idea or is it going to backfire? Speaker 2 (02:27): It's, it's mostly a bad idea that can backfire. And let me start with why. So high conflict people, many of them have cluster B personality disorders or traits. And if you want, you can follow up on our earlier podcasts about some of that, that's narcissistic, borderline antisocial and histrionic personalities. But the research says that those personalities are domineering, vindictive, and intrusive. And if you publicly expose and humiliate somebody because of their own real behavior, they're going to try to become more dominating, vindictive, and intrusive. And we know many stories of people who did something like that and said, oops, I wish I had known wish I'd read a book or Wish, wish heard your podcast before, because it just escalates the other person. And high conflict can, people can do high conflict better than anybody else can. Speaker 1 (03:36): So ex Exactly. Speaker 2 (03:38): So yeah, so that's as, as a general principle, you're playing with fire and it's often not even, uh, a necessary approach. There's a thing I like to say, and that is keep the conflict small. There's also a saying, it's not ours, but I like it. And that's public praise, private criticism. And that works in the workplace. It works in communities, even in families at times. So the idea is if, if you's some behavior you're wanting to confront, do it in the least threatening way so that the person may be open to considering what you have to say. And more, more than that is talk about what you will and won't do if they don't change, because you can't change them, but you can change what you do in relationship to them. Speaker 1 (04:36): So that brings up a good question about if they've been running a magnificent distortion campaign against you, right? And telling lies and casting the blame on you as high conflict people do, and ruining your reputation in the community or in your, you know, your legal practice in your church, your school. W it's, I mean, it's just a temptation, isn't it, to say? I mean, it seems logical. Speaker 2 (05:07): Yeah, no, it's with reasonable people. The threat of public exposure of their bad behavior makes them stop and think and go, Ooh, I don't want that in public. But with high conflict people, they think, uhoh, you're gonna dominate me and I can dominate you better than you can dominate me. So Speaker 1 (05:28): I love Speaker 2 (05:28): That you just watch and see what happens if you do that. So as a strategy, it's generally not good. Now let's take the legal system, because if somebody's really treating you badly, and let's say they've been abusive, they've done a legal behavior, things like that, the legal system in many ways is a place that people go to, to address bad behavior. However, most people don't realize 95% of civil disputes, maybe 98% now get settled out of court. So sometimes the threat of a public exposure of a bad behavior may inspire someone to settle or change a little bit of their behavior. So you'll notice I'm not absolutely ruling it out, but saying it's really not, not a good place to start. Now sometimes there's no other resort, and I like the legal system, partly cuz I'm a lawyer, but I really believe that rules are the way to go rather than just being bullies back to bullies, you know? Speaker 2 (06:42): Mm. And so think of the Harvey Weinstein case. That was public exposure. He's publicly humiliated, but from what I read, he, he sexually abused 80 women. And so it wasn't gonna stop, uh, without some extreme, uh, measures. And that meant public exposure because that had to be public because there had to be court and it had to be court because the consequences is going to jail, which has happened to him. So it's not absolute, but in general it's not a good idea. Now, if you're gonna get someone locked up for their bad behavior, then maybe it's okay cuz they can't retaliate. But in general, high conflict, people do a lot of retaliating. They can be very vindictive and you have to think ahead about that. Speaker 1 (07:39): Yeah. And it's, you know, as, as we talk about a lot people with, with high conflict personality, often if they will learn, uh, to, you know, and adapt their behavior at all, it's only through natural consequences. And so it would almost seem like, you know, um, an exposure would be a natural consequence. But if it, and results in humiliation than, like you said, that's probably going to escalate the vindictiveness, intrusiveness and domineering. Speaker 2 (08:14): There's such a wide range of high conflict people that there may be some, that the threat of this will be sufficient to get them to back off. Even if they don't change their personality, they might change one behavior, something that they're doing cuz they don't want that. But otherwise it really has to be thought of. I think in terms of other consequences, in other words, just exposing somebody's bad behavior doesn't stop them. And if it does, it stops them maybe for 20 minutes. Speaker 1 (08:50): . Why? Why? Why is that? Speaker 2 (08:53): Because it's part of their personality. So let's say you've got somebody that's 35 years old. Well, I'll give you an example. There's, there's a book by a, um, a management consultant in Silicon Valley, and it's the no a-hole rule, and I forget the author's name, but there's apparently a fair number in Silicon Valley. And he gave the example of being, I think at a bar and there was a guy about 35, kind of just loud mouthing, probably been drinking, kind of harassing a waitress. And so the, the management consultant, I think he was observing, or maybe he said this, someone said to the guy, you're being the jerk that you're complaining about everybody else being and you really look like an idiot. And like 20 people laughed and the guy slunk out of the bar. He said, well, and he felt proud of that. My thought was, yeah. Speaker 2 (10:01): And then what did the guy do that slunk out of the bar? What did he do to retaliate for that? And did he change his behavior? Did he learn a lesson or is he just into his vindictive mind right now? So this is why, for example, in the workplace, we want to confront people with possible consequences like loss of job and have them get coaching because someone doesn't just change their personality because you threaten to fire them. You've gotta teach them how to manage their personality better. We find maybe half of the people that we put through workplace coaching change their behavior enough that they can keep their job and not be as difficult and the other half may need to be asked to leave. Although the reality is they usually decide it's time to leave cuz they don't want to go through coaching. So there's, there's other measures to take besides public humiliation and that often doesn't really solve the problem. Speaker 1 (11:08): So if, if, um, you know, you're confronting, uh, an a situation where someone is lying about you and inflicting a lot of reputational damage, what is a, a good strategy then, uh, to set a limit on that? Or do you just have to take it? Speaker 2 (11:25): No, I don't think you should take it. You should really think through what's the most effective strategy, what consequences do you have for the person? And it may be there's someone higher up in an organization or somebody with authority in the family or in the community who can quietly go to this person and say, cut it out, or we're gonna do this, this, and this. Because when you publicly humiliate someone, they're, they're not gonna change. They're, they become so defensive, they're resistant to change that for high conflict people cuz they're already resistant to change. But if you do something privately and, and they realize you're not publicly exposing them, or at least at this point, then it may be leveraged to get them to work on behavior change. I mean, I think of healthcare in our, uh, workplace training. I do this little video of a hospital administrator confronting a surgeon who's really, who's caused several nurses to, uh, to quit because of how he treats them. Speaker 2 (12:36): And they're basically saying, you've gotta get coaching and we need to see behavior change and nurses not quitting anymore or who work with you, or you're gonna go in front of the board and the board may decide that you need to be let go from the hospital. And so it's like, here's a chance to change. And going to the board, that's not the public, but that's kind of a professional exposure, is something that he, he really wouldn't want to do. So he decides to get the coaching. So healthcare is a place where they're trying to quietly get bad behavior coached, especially by people they really want to keep. Surgeons have special skills that, you know, people have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in training and they bring in millions of dollars of business Speaker 1 (13:33): And they're not growing on trees either. Speaker 2 (13:34): Exactly. Speaker 1 (13:35): The the supply is, is limited , it's just like the nursing industry at, at this time too, you know. So, um, you know, there's a reason for investing in folks who may be causing some, some difficulties, invest in some coaching so that they can have some success. Yeah. Speaker 2 (13:53): Coaching people to change gives them skills that they lacked. You publicly humiliate somebody, you haven't given them any skills and you've motivated them to be vindictive and come back at you. Yeah, that's a, a general principle. There may be exceptions like Harvey Weinstein and court cases and court cases, public exposure threat inspires a lot of court cases to settle and you end up not hearing what the settlement was because they feared that public exposure. So that's why I'm not saying it Absolutely. That's like a last resort. Speaker 1 (14:33): Yeah. So it's more the, maybe the threat for some, just the threat of exposure that's going to be the motivating factor. But I think you have to, you know, put some hard thought into it and analyze your options and try to choose the option that's going to deescalate the situation instead of escalate it. Yeah, it's, it's, it's an interesting, interesting topic and you know, we see this kind of in the news every day with the Harvey Weinstein's and, um, there was some that came across the news just today, but um, this past weekend we saw Warren Buffett, the, um, what do they call him? The oracle of Omaha, the very world famous investor, one of the world's richest men, um, from my home state of Nebraska. And he, uh, had his, uh, his annual investor meeting and a young man, uh, stood up during the question and answer time. Speaker 1 (15:26): And it was quite an interesting, you know, and special, special thing to get to ask Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, his kind of his sidekick, um, some questions. So this young man who's about 14 asked Warren, what is your advice for me for investment and or, you know, for an, uh, an investing strategy, something along those lines. And my second question is, what is your, you know, advice in for life in general? So Warren gave the investment strategy advice, and then when it got to the life advice, he said, you know, you just gotta get really toxic people outta your life. Very interesting. Yeah, it was really fascinating. And um, I actually recorded it, , maybe we'll get to use it in the future in some trainings. Um, but he talked about how detrimental they can, you know, be in business because I mean, face it, you know, Warren is all about choosing companies to invest in that are solid, that don't have a lot of disruption. Speaker 1 (16:28): And, um, so it's, it's an interesting dilemma because we have, you want to have this, this perfect company, this perfect organization that is, you know, going to maximize profit. And, and you only do that if you have a well-oiled, well-functioning machine, and that means limited disruption, high conflict employees cause some disruption that cost time, cost money. So then, but then you have to balance that with, like you said, bill, what if you have a limited supply of neurosurgeons, , right. Or nursing staff or whatever the industry is. And especially now we, at least in the us, we see such a limited supply of in the labor market. So you know that it's probably a time that organizations might have to invest more in coaching and training and getting people skilled up and, and, and like you said, there will be some who can get skilled up at least enough to where they're not disrupting and taking so much time. Speaker 1 (17:30): And that's going to mean that some limits have to be set by the organization, right? Some coaching has to be done and, um, and some role modeling, I think as, as well, but, and strong policies and such. And then those who who can change, we've, you've given them a chance to change through the coaching and the setting limits, then you might have an employee that's not disrupting so much or whatever, whatever, um, area of life you're in, uh, you know, that's, you, you want less disruption and less stress. So it might be a worthy thing to invest in that kind of coaching. Speaker 2 (18:10): You know, let me mention, there was a study out of Harvard about, hmm, six or seven years ago, Georgia DeStefano and I got ahold of it and wrote an article called Fire or Keep High Conflict Employees. And the study at Harvard talked and used the term toxic employees and they said, they may be some of your stars, but as long as they're toxic, they're worse than keeping them as a star. And you should either get rid of them or convert them into normal employees. And the converting into normal employees seems to come from coaching and some people can respond to that and other people not. But we found it very interesting that a lot of companies keep toxic people because they may be highly productive, they may produce a lot of cases, good income and this and that, but the reality is there's people who are highly, highly productive and bring in good income, et cetera, who aren't toxic people. And so that was the point of that, uh, study and it's included in that article, if you wanna put it in the show notes, fire or keep high conflict employees. But the kneejerk response is to publicly exposed and humiliate high conflict people generally that knee-jerk response will run into trouble. But if you think it through, you may be able to, to leverage somebody into getting some help and maybe even becoming, uh, an easier person to be around Speaker 1 (19:56): Thinking it through is, is really the key strategy , um, in any high conflict situation because it's, it, we do have knee-jerk reactions, we have our defaults and we're human and you know, sometimes it just seems pretty pretty necessary to, to take some some extreme actions I suppose. And, uh, but, uh, often you, you'll regret them later. So it's, it's, it's worth the time to invest in, in thinking things through analyzing your options, you know, eliminating any options that are, are going to be seen as, or come across as high conflict and actually escalate the conflict. And, um, so you can use our little dilemmas and decisions model of, of analyzing your own options and it really slows you down, makes you think, and just gets you to a best decision. So I need to remember to use that in, in, um, situations as, as we all do. And, uh, cuz high conflict is not ordinary and it's not, uh, I mean, after you deal with it for, for quite a, quite some time, I think you do develop muscle memory and it gets to be more natural as, as a part of your life to deal with things correctly. But you'll still be faced with dilemmas that you don't know what to do with. Um, especially in, in personal life, it can be pretty, pretty challenging because you're, you know, it's a lot, you're a lot more likely to be emotionally hooked Speaker 2 (21:29): When you think about alcoholism and addiction. That the process of an intervention by people close to the person, getting them into treatment and getting them into recovery has really developed over the last 30 years or so. And I hope someday that we can see a comparable thing for people with personality disorders, for people with high conflict personalities. If you have a small group that says, we care about you, we want you to succeed, and you need to get some help that people may find in families, in communities as well as the workplace, that hopefully our society will get better and better at that and that'll get easier and also be done early in the process before people's lives are ruined. Speaker 1 (22:24): Yeah, and I think Bill, that's what we're hearing from so many of our clients and, and people who organizations who contact us is they want to, to, you know, they've, they've tried everything else and it doesn't work when we blame and we shame and we just throw up our hands or we get frustrated and we just don't know what to do. But if we can approach people saying, all right, everybody's welcome here, , you're gonna, you're gonna get a chance and let's see how it goes and let's get some coaching and see if we can skill up and, and I, and, and really try to help people through our processes so they don't, uh, you know, high conflict people typically run into brick walls at, at some point they're not happy or, uh, you know, they feel a lot of Yeah. And they've, they, they're, they fail in our systems. Speaker 1 (23:10): And so I think that's a lot of why we get new clients is because we, we strive to help those who work with high conflict people to understand what skills to use to help these folks get through our systems. They just ordinarily don't get through our systems very easily or we get it wrong in our systems. So I think it's kind of a, a way to be more inclusive of people with personality disorders, people with high conflict personalities, and, um, you know, as we like to thank Bill, hopefully we'll make the world a better place. We'll change the culture of conflict. Speaker 1 (24:00): Thank you listeners for tuning in today and listening. While that sounded like radio, the old days tuning in, , I guess online on podcasts, you don't tune in, but maybe you do, I don't know. Clicking in, clicking in . Clicking in. That's right. Um, next week we're going to talk about, um, something a little more dramatic, which is the Prince Harry, um, Megan Markle and the Royal Coronation. Uh, is Megan the villain she's made out to be in the media? Is Harry under her spell or have they simply set limits on their family? Hmm. We'll talk about that. In the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. And we'd love it if you'd give us a rate of review wherever you listen to your podcast. Until next time, keep learning and practicing these skills. Be kind to yourself and others while we all try to find the missing peace. It's All Your Fault is a production of True Story FM Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music, by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and zip Moran. Find the show, show notes and transcripts@truestory.fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app Laos ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.