Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Group Dynamics Decoded: Taming High Conflict Drama and Disruptions
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 deal with the most challenging human interactions, those that involve someone who may have a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host Bill Eddie. Speaker 2 (00:22): 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 today's episode, we will discuss how to handle a high conflict person who is dominating a group and creating mega drama. But first, a couple of notes send your high conflict related questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or through our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast where you'll also find all the show notes and links. Speaker 1 (01:02): All right, so we're going to talk groups today. Bill, this is a question that came in from a listener. We are a group that must work together to deliver cultural experiences to our audiences. We are a quite diverse bunch and have had a high level of conflict the past few years. It feels like there's a small group that drives the trauma and at the moment there is nothing our management does, they think is right. They have targeted our artistic leader whom they feel are to blame for everything that's wrong in the universe. And this poor person does not stand a chance. It doesn't matter what is said or done, people interpret everything in the most negative way possible. Firing the person isn't an option unfortunately. I would love it if you would talk about high conflict in groups and have to address it. I feel there is a tribal culture where we can be in disagreement amongst ourselves, but as soon as one of us is faced with some kind of criticism from outside, we group together and act as if we're all under attack. I wonder if a group can be high conflict. So we're going to start there. Bill, can a group be high conflict or is it just negative advocates? Let's break this down. Speaker 2 (02:15): Well, I think yes, that a group can be high conflict. One of the big questions always is who's engaging in high conflict behavior? So you may have a bully leader and a bunch of negative advocates, or you may have several bullies who reinforce each other, but it's I think, helpful to think in terms of high conflict behavior and what to do about the behavior specifically and in general. And what we see in organizations is it's not unusual. You get a little group within the organization that reinforces each other. So they may all be bullies or they may be one bully and negative advocates. And briefly I'll explain negative advocates are people who aren't bullies on their own, who aren't high conflict on their own, but they absorb the emotions and accept at face value everything the high conflict person is saying. And they reinforce it and advocate for that person. And sometimes they exceed the behavior of the high conflict person in their advocacy. They're the night and shining armor that's going to go to war for them, and they often have more credibility than the high conflict person. So it really distracts from the bad behavior of a high conflict person and suddenly feels like it's a serious issue that everyone's guilty of being part of when they're not. So this differentiating between whose behavior and what behavior is the problem is important and we'll need to talk about setting limits. Speaker 1 (04:06): Okay. So how does one address this as a leader? Speaker 2 (04:11): Well, that gets into the setting limits. Speaker 1 (04:14): I thought so, Speaker 2 (04:15): And what a leader can do, two things, I think one is have some kind of a standard set for group behavior for meeting behavior, things like that. So that when that standard is violated, the leader can focus on interrupting the violation and setting limits on it. So if you have a standard for your group that we don't do personal attacks, that if there's a behavior that's a problem, that you make a request about that behavior and seek to change that behavior, but that we don't attack the whole person. That we don't say this whole person is responsible for everything or everything this person does is negative. In fact, if we need to give some negative feedback to somebody, that we include some positive feedback as well. And there's a saying in business management since I've learned this 30, 40 years ago, is public praise and private criticism that's getting turned around these days where you have high conflict, people are doing public criticism without anything positive, without any praise. Speaker 2 (05:36): There never is praise. And that's how you know a high conflict person is, it's all or nothing to them. So I think as a leader, it's two steps. One is setting standards and that may be using the group to help set those standards or leaders of an organization. And the other is enforcing the standards and setting limits nipping in the bud. When people suddenly attack each other, the problem isn't the content of the attack, the problem is stopping the attack. No one feels safe in a group where you can be personally attacked and there's no consequence for that. Speaker 1 (06:15): This is a truly a sign of leadership if you can do that, I believe, and a lot of leaders are conflict and some are conflict comfortable. That's one of my new learnings from the hiatus this summer and some trainings is instead of saying we're passive aggressive, some of us are conflict comfortable. And so if you're a leader that's conflict comfortable, you're probably going to maybe engage in the conflict a little bit instead of nipping at this type of behavior in the bud and really seeing it for what it is. So as a leader, you have to look at where you are in that conflict spectrum as well. How do we deal then with the intricacies of group dynamics? Speaker 2 (06:59): I think it really depends on the nature of the group size of the group, all of that. But as a manager and consultant to managers, my recommendation has been as soon as you become a manager in a new group is that you have individual meetings with everybody. So let's say your team is six people, is have an individual meeting with each of them, get acquainted, give them some empathy, attention and respect your statements. Find out their perspective on the organization, its goals and the group dynamics, and establish your own relationship with them, individual one-to-one. If you have an organization like 25 or 50 people, there should be division heads, things like that. So you want to at least meet with the individuals. But when you can have large group meetings where you give pep talks, I just read about this example yesterday where a superintendent of schools was hired in a school district that had been having some problems. And one of the first things he did is he said at the meeting, he says, everybody to stand up, get out your phone and take a selfie of yourself with some of the people around you that we want to value and prize our relationships with each other. And nowadays, the way you show that you value people is you take selfies with them. Speaker 1 (08:42): Interesting. Speaker 2 (08:43): I remember seeing the Pope getting selfies taken in the Vatican once and I was saying, what a brilliant idea. So as a manager, have some fun things, build the positive, don't just focus on the negative. So those are some thoughts, but if there are some really concerning group dynamics that need intervention, you may call in an outside facilitator, someone to see, and we've done that. They've called us in to look at a group and understand what's going on and where the trouble points are. Usually it's some key high conflict people. It may be one person or two or three. And don't blame the group, teach the group and then hold accountable the people that are violating the standards. Speaker 1 (09:34): And that can be such a hard thing for a leader to get a read on the group, especially if they're compassionate. And I think everyone can succeed in this environment. If I'm just showing enough attention or even I'm ignoring the conflict and just telling people to focus on the work, kind of ignoring this one or more individuals who may be creating a lot of high conflict drama and disputes. If we ignore that, it just festers and gets worse. Now, are there times are that you should and can ignore some of this? Or do you think you should always address it? Speaker 2 (10:14): I think there's a point. I like the idea of choosing your battles. And so you want to only choose battles that you can win. Well, actually I don't want to absolutely say that because sometimes choosing a battle that you're going to lose can win in the long run because it exposes a problem. But generally you want to choose your battles and not fight everything. And this is important when you're dealing with high conflict people because they create so many little battles and it's like, oh no, here we go again. Now I have to respond to that. Here we go again, you don't have to respond. It's a choice. Respond to where you can be productive and if you have a high conflict person that you're trying to keep in your organization. Some of the high tech companies that we've worked with talk about they're brilliant people with sharp elbows that they're difficult to be around, but they have some information and skills that you need. And with people like that, let's say there's 10 things they're doing wrong in your thinking, you may want to focus on one or two at a time and kind of chip away at that because when you say there's 10 things wrong with what you're doing, you're basically eliminating the person's ability to focus on changing a specific behavior. You have to give people hope and skills and small steps to learn Speaker 1 (11:47): And some will learn, some people can change and learn some skills. And then as we've found there are some who just absolutely don't or won't. In that case then a leader has a decision to make. And in this particular listeners question, in their scenario, there's no opportunity to fire the person they're living somewhere where the employment laws are very restrictive on that topic. So you have to get very creative. Speaker 2 (12:17): One more thing I want to add with being creative is coaching. And coaching is such an important tool these days, especially if it's somebody that you can't fire for one reason or another. And that's come in with difficult physicians and healthcare systems. They give them coaching employees, managers, et cetera. We developed a method, new ways for work coaching, we give trainings on that and we do coaching for that. And the feedback we've gotten that I've gotten from people doing this coaching is about half of employees will learn from the coaching and soften their conflict behaviors and about half of employees just don't seem able to learn. And in those cases, organizations have looked for ways to move them somewhere else if not out of the organization. So it's worth doing if you can calm half your conflicts through coaching, I say go for Speaker 1 (13:27): It. Yes, absolutely. Alright, well let's take a short break and we'll be right back after this. Listeners, if you're loving our podcast, we'd love if you'd subscribe and leave us a five star review. We'll be right back. Okay, bill, we're back. And in this listener's scenario, there was a female leader and one of the questions around this is how does one address bias against female leaders? Speaker 2 (14:01): This is where actually we developed our respectful meeting policy referenced in our last podcast because there were two young women who'd been made managers in departments that included some outside consultants who were men who were older, and they gave the women a hard time. They basically were disrespectful because they were women. They interrupted them, they said how things should go, et cetera. So their behavior treated female leaders differently, and that's where the interrupting the interruption is necessary, setting standards for the meeting, taking a break if the person continues to be disrespectful. And I think especially for female leaders that they feel uncomfortable setting limits sometimes on men because they feel like I should be able to handle this. Nobody should be able to handle serious interruptions. And so one of the solutions is you say, I'm taking a break and you stand up and take a 10 minute break, and knowing you have the right to do that is very empowering. Speaker 2 (15:17): I've found feedback for female leaders. The other is if in general you're getting people treating you skeptically that you don't know what you're doing or this is how you really should do it, is to just calmly and confidently state, this is the way that I work and if you want to work with me, then you need to follow my process. Usually that calls their bluff because they do want to solve a problem, have a meeting happen, get a conflict resolved. And so they tend to accept the female leader setting the limits like that. And I think that's an easy limit to set, say, this is the way I work. If you want to work with me, then you need to follow my process. And I might mention that I learned that as a man, as a mediator, being disrespected by some elder lawyers who knew everything and weren't sure that I could handle mediating the dispute for their clients because of the way I structured it. What I learned was I can't control them, but I can control myself saying, this is the way I work. If you want to work with me, you need to follow my process. And I've gotten good feedback from female leaders saying they like that and they tried that and it's worked for them too. So hopefully that's a useful tool. But Megan, you as the female leader, I want to pass to you your thoughts on this subject. Speaker 1 (16:58): I don't feel like I've struggled a whole lot with that in terms of thinking of leadership problems as a female issue, but I know many, many, many do. And if I think go back in my history, I guess I can see where I may have had some struggles with it in the past. I think I do okay now, but I very much believe in just sticking to structure as you were just discussing. And as we do that, it takes away any disempowerment that we may be feeling. And so I just would change my thoughts from, wow, I'm being attacked as a female, or I don't know what to do as a female to I'm going to stick with the structure and just plow forward. This is how it's going to be. This is the program and it isn't about, about this is the program and it'd be interesting listeners, if you agree or disagree or have experience with this, write to us, I'd love to hear. I know Bill would too hear your thoughts on this and we could do a future podcast on it. Now when just a few people get to set the agenda and the rest are taken hostage, so to speak, the whole group is often defined by those few. Any tips on how to handle this? Speaker 2 (18:16): A lot of thoughts about setting agendas. It seems to me two basic strategies, both using the idea that everyone should have an opportunity to participate in setting the agenda. One is to have people send their agenda items by email to one person before the meeting and have that person compile and decide what can be included, the order of things, et cetera, so that everyone has an equal opportunity. Because in groups what we find is that high conflict people are the minority. Majority of people are reasonable. People want to get things done, don't make personal attacks and aren't obsessed with power and control. So by giving everybody a chance, you're going to balance things out. If you don't do it by email beforehand, then do it at the beginning of a meeting and have everyone have a chance, go around the room, an equal chance to contribute to the agenda so that you're not giving the high conflict people more oxygen, you're not giving them more attention. Speaker 2 (19:32): And that's often where leaders lose control is that they just sit and listen to high conflict people as they hijack a meeting that you need to set limits on the hijack, not listen to the content. By giving everyone a minute to say, what's most important to you for this agenda, then everyone has an equal opportunity. Now, if you're the leader, you want to keep hold your group together, so you want to make good use of this. There may be things that can't be addressed at this meeting, but they can in the future. There's something coming down the pike that relates to that topic. I think having a few people set the agenda, if you let those be high conflict people, you're just going to be asking for trouble. And that's where you need, in many ways, a single leader to set the tone and the culture of a group is set primarily by the leader of the group. So you want to have a non-high conflict leader of the group. If you have a high conflict leader of the group, then as an employee or member, you want to talk the larger organization about maybe this person needs to be replaced or coached, but you need to get someone above that high conflict leader. You're not going to just be able to deal with it individually as an employee or group member. Speaker 1 (21:02): And that's tricky because it looks like you're the whiny person and no one will believe you. So that's challenging. So I think you have to be really think about your options and be cautious before proceeding with that, as I know you do as well, bill and have clear evidence of what's happened. Speaker 2 (21:24): Details, yes, facts and details are important. I guess I want to reinforce with this, a problem that I hope we help overcome in the next 10 or 20 years is people are afraid of high conflict people. And if we don't set limits on them, they're going to get worse and worse individually and collectively. And I think that's a message for our society is we need to really learn to set limits because the majority of people aren't high conflict. I think it's maybe 10% of people, but they can dominate organizations because everyone defers to them because they don't understand or they're afraid to set limits. And that's a big lesson that we're all learning. The hard way is the problem with high conflict people is they don't restrain themselves. That's the primary problem. And the primary solution is that the people around them, the structure, the rules needs to set limits on them. Speaker 1 (22:24): And how did we get into this position in our society, at least in the US Bill, where we were afraid to set limits and training? A couple of weeks ago, a gentlemen came to me and we spoke at some length with a whole group about setting limits. And he was a former military member who did psychological operations. I can't remember the whole title, but it was impressive. And he had to talk down some people from very scary threatening positions and just tough stuff. And his premise is, we as a society just need to set more limits, less ear, more limits. So I had to kind of help him discuss that. What EAR is really for is really to deescalate an upset person, but setting limits is equal. And there's a quote you have in your book called It's All Your Fault, that where we're going to have success in society and in relationships and interactions is when we have an equal balance of connecting with ear and setting limits. That's on my last slide. Now at the end of all my trainings, by the way, you probably don't know that because you're not in my trainings. Right? Speaker 2 (23:40): Right. No, that's great. And I think that's so important because some people are good at empathy, attention and respect. Some are good at setting limits, but the combination is really the most effective because if you harshly set limits, often down the road you're going to have more trouble. But if you can give people empathy, attention and respect and set limits, you can calm them as well as stopping the behavior. You asked the question about why this is, that's probably another whole podcast, but I just want to real briefly say that our culture is right now paying more attention to bad behavior. And I believe that you get more of what you pay attention to. And if you make it initials, it spells I Maui, pat, it's y. You get more of what you pay attention to, I Maui, pat. And I think that as a culture, we need to start paying attention to the positive behaviors and give a whole lot less to all this negative stuff while still setting limits on it. Speaker 1 (24:53): And with that, we'll call it good. Excellent, excellent advice. Speaker 1 (25:05): So we hope that today's episode has been helpful to you wherever you're listening, and we are so grateful that you have taken the time to listen to our podcast. Next week we'll talk about how to help management or others see that conflict isn't always just a spat between two people or specifically two women. Sometimes it's driven by one high conflict person. Is there a way to help others see this? Send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. We'd love it if you'd tell your friends and colleagues about us, and we'd be very grateful if you'd leave a five star review so we can keep growing and helping more people around the world. Until next time, keep learning and practicing so you can be confident in your human interactions. In high conflict situations, as you do, your life will become more peaceful. 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 at True story fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.