Introduction and Episode Question

[00:00:00] Karen: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:08] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:10] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:00:11] Paul: Each episode we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, what kind of conflict is this? 

Understanding Conflict and Relationship Repair

[00:00:18] Karen: So this is a thing that came up in my work because I started off with a paradigm around conflict of if there's conflict, then we do relationship repair.

[00:00:28] Karen: We work together, we listen to each other. We try to build on the relationship because relationships are pretty important to me. And what would come up is, but what if the other person won't? Or what if I've tried that and it didn't work? Or what if, what if, what if, what if. There are lots of what ifs in there and they're really valid.

[00:00:49] Karen: Like as much as I want it to be true, that making the relationship better and working through it and getting the growth that comes out of it is always the right thing. I'm enough of a realist and a pragmatist to believe that actually isn't the case. It isn't always the right idea to throw a ton of vulnerability into the ring and see what we can do again sometimes. 

Exploring the Four Buckets of Conflict

[00:01:14] Karen: And so in response to that query, I've been playing with kind of a four bucket model of when we're find ourselves in disagreement. And I sometimes say conflict for me is the whole range from like little D disagreement to big C conflict. So there's a big range in there.

[00:01:33] Karen: And this might be a slightly oversimplified structure, but I think it's useful. If we find ourselves in conflict and thinking, what do I wanna do about this? How do I wanna respond to it? Do I wanna deal with this? Or I know I don't wanna deal with it, should I anyway? Or whatever the thing is to have a structure that helps us think about it.

[00:01:51] Karen: So that's kind of where we're going with today's episode. 

[00:01:53] Paul: Yeah, and when you ran this by me, you know, it made a whole ton of sense to me. And so I'm kind of interested to explore this a little bit more with you. So, fair warning dear listeners. Karen has explained this to me about 15 minutes ago, so I'm encountering it for the first time, but it also resonates with me a lot, and we've talked about a couple of things, so we wanna kinda lay this idea out for you because one of the things I find really useful is, and we've talked about this a lot on the show before, and this is often a lot of what might work, is when we understand that we have choices, we can make better ones when we only know how to do relationship repair, for example.

[00:02:30] Paul: And we think absolutely every. Small D disagreement to Big C conflict has to be resolved. Has to be worked with through that lens. It means we're not necessarily picking the thing that's useful here, but also if we think that's the only option we have, we can feel kind of stuck. And so I like what you shared with me just in terms of it gives us a way to think about, okay, given that I'm in this situation, what might I do?

[00:02:56] Paul: We can sort of weigh some of those choices and some of those options. And I find that makes people a lot less anxious when they're in situations like this, which has a tendency to diffuse part of what makes those disagreements and conflicts difficult. So I'm excited to explore this a little bit with you today.

[00:03:13] Karen: Yeah. 

Bucket 1: Tolerance

[00:03:14] Karen: So we're gonna talk about four categories of conflict or four categories of approaching conflict. Might be a way to say it. And to start with this one is, I think undeniably the most common thing that people do in the larger culture. When we find ourselves in disagreement or some level of conflict, and that is what I will call tolerance.

[00:03:35] Karen: We simply decide that we're or don't decide, or just are inherently conflict avoidant enough that we're going to ignore it. I'll say, I think sometimes we ignore it and get really resentful and that carries some consequences or shove it under the rug. And you know, that might lead to some grudges and things that come back to bite us later when we trip over it.

[00:03:58] Karen: And sometimes also we can do the work to really let it go. And that all of those, I think, fall under the realm of tolerance, like behavior's there. It's gonna keep being there. The thing I don't like is gonna keep being there and I think the best choice for me is to not do anything about it.  

[00:04:15] Paul: We've talked about this before, back actually in episode 152. It's been a minute. But you know, the idea of like, well, this situation is fine. Right? And sometimes, you know, it's like, well, it actually is okay enough. Right? Or another way of thinking about it is that this is an option to consider.

[00:04:31] Paul: Like I think that being intentional about saying, you know, I've looked at my other options and I've said, given all that. And what I think is likely to result from them, I am actually just gonna land in this place of going, you know, this behavior's unlikely to change the situation's, unlikely to change.

[00:04:47] Paul: Like I'm unlikely to have a lot of efficacy in terms of being able to affect an external change. So tolerance is often about affecting our internal response to that to say, you know what, what can I do that makes this, I'm gonna lessen the impact on me, but I'm gonna do that through my internal work.

[00:05:06] Paul: Where I'm gonna go. Oh, okay. Yeah. One of the places that shows up a lot for me is being able to, for example, depersonalize it. So I might be working with a client who kind of keeps doing this thing and it really annoys me. And then I kinda go, oh, they do that to everybody. That's not about me, right? It's not personal. And the meaning that I'd attached to that is about, well, this is what it says about me. And when I start to realize it doesn't say anything about me. It says everything about the situation they're in or what's going on with them. Like that takes the sting out of it, like the impact of me.

[00:05:37] Paul: So I don't actually try to change it, right? And that is a form of tolerance of just being able to say, you know what? I'm not gonna try to do anything to try to change anything out there. I may do some things that are gonna allow me to sit with it a little bit better. This can be a bad choice as we talked about back in 152.

[00:05:56] Paul: Like we do need to think about are we just setting ourselves up for further resentment and grudges? So like there's a useful litmus test, but this can be when we make an intentional choice about it, a perfectly reasonable response to a disagreement. 

[00:06:09] Karen: Yeah, and I think that's gonna be a theme throughout that given the right circumstances, any one of these is an absolutely appropriate choice.

[00:06:17] Karen: So, I like your frame around that. So I wanna go on to, okay, so we're not gonna ignore it for whatever, we're not gonna tolerate it. We're gonna do something else. 

Bucket 2: Relationship Repair

[00:06:25] Karen: This is where relationship repair comes in, and we've talked a good bit about relationship repair probably on many episodes, but if you're looking for this, you might particularly look to 196 or 217 are both episodes that deal with this pretty directly.

[00:06:40] Karen: But this is the place where we say, I'm willing to do some work on this. I'm willing to do some work on it with the other person. We hope to get some growth out of it. We hope to get a deeper, stronger relationship. This is the choice, if I'm willing to invest in it, probably time, almost certainly emotional energy, almost certainly a good bit of vulnerability.

[00:07:00] Karen: I'm willing to be curious about it, look at their side, all that stuff. And the payoff that I get for that may or may not be that the behavior changes, but it almost certainly will be that the relationship is better at the end than it was at the beginning. So we hope for in the land of relationship repair is that we end up with a relationship that's stronger than if the conflict had never happened to begin with. 

[00:07:22] Paul: And that's a case where like, if we're assessing whether or not we wanna do that, for me there's a couple of things. One is, am I willing to put the energy in right? And the time. And the other thing is, is the other person interested in doing that? Right? Are they interested in building a stronger relationship?

[00:07:37] Paul: There's a great story I've been digging into some of Jeffrey Pfeffer's work recently. So he's a professor at the business school at Stanford, studies power in organizations. And he has a story with a former student who comes to him talking about this thing that's happened in the company that she works for and how she's kind of been stepped on by somebody else and this other thing has happened and she's tried to use the relationship repair skills that she's learned in one of the other classes that she took not from him. And basically said, so how'd that work out for you?

[00:08:09] Paul: And it's not very well. And it's like, well, why did you try them? Well, I thought it would be a good idea. It's like the other person has never demonstrated they're interested in having a relationship with you. It's the wrong tactic, right? It's the wrong thing to use. And so I think that's a useful thing to think about I a hundred percent agree with you.

[00:08:25] Paul: I would, this is the place where I love to live and work. Obviously this is where we talk about a lot on the show, but it is really, you know, useful to assess if I'm trying to decide what's the pragmatic or the useful thing to do, do I think the other person is interested in repairing the relationship?

[00:08:42] Paul: Because if they're not. The chances that they're gonna invest the time and energy into it to make it work, those chances are low. 

[00:08:50] Karen: That'll interfere with getting you off the hook quite that easily. You being dear listener, in the dilemma of, do I wanna do relationship repair? Because relationship repair is for sure the highest energy of the four.

[00:09:01] Karen: Like that's the biggest ask. And if you're just not up for it, that's okay. Like I wanna say, I think that it's okay to say that's not the right choice. But I also wanna say that in that space, Paul, that you're talking about, where they don't wanna do the work, I can still do a lot of the work on my own and it may not repair the dual relationship.

[00:09:20] Karen: It's not great in the space between, but my side of the space between can shift and my experience of it can shift and I can get growth from it. So a lot of the work around being curious about their perspective and digging into my own stuff and going to. A disinterested third party to help me work through why I'm upset about it and all of that.

[00:09:40] Karen: But I think of as relationship repair work. It does have value, even if the other person is like, no, I'm not gonna do that. And that may lead us back into the more, the tolerance space. 

[00:09:50] Karen: Or it may lead us into another category. But because the work is so much like the relationship repair work, I kind of put it a little bit in this bucket.

[00:09:59] Paul: Yeah. That you start to lean into that space between a little bit and see what's there and kind of go like as the other, or, because that may draw them in. Right. And it may not, right. But it may also make you realize, oh, I may have been expecting certain things out of this relationship that aren't actually gonna happen.

[00:10:15] Paul: And that when I start to recognize that I can go. Oh, well. Okay then, then I can change my understanding here and my expectations, things like that. That's actually a form of repair too, of realizing. Oh, we just, were expecting different ways of working together on this. And so even though that may not change, our expectations around it may change.

[00:10:37] Paul: And that is different than tolerance, right? 'Cause it is engaging with that other person in some way. 

[00:10:42] Karen: Yep. 

Bucket 3: Behavior Response

[00:10:43] Karen: So moving on to bucket number three, which I think is the one that's least familiar, like I think this is the one that might be most surprising, although we have talked about it on the show before, and I call this behavior response, and this is the space where I've decided I'm not doing the relationship repair stuff.

[00:11:01] Karen: I've been down that road with them before. I don't have the energy for it this week, or ever. I've tried to engage them and they just don't want to. I have my trust with them is so broken that I just, I don't have, like, I can't do the whole vulnerability part of the relationship repair. Lots of reasons. And I actually think the reason in the end doesn't matter in terms of what you decide going forward.

[00:11:22] Karen: If you've done your soul searching and you're clear, I'm not doing the relationship repair, or it would be too costly to be worth it to me. But, I'm still in this person's sphere, like they're still, I'm gonna walk by 'em in the hall, I'm gonna run into them, and you know, maybe we work on a committee together or whatever, so I can't avoid them, which means I can't avoid being in the space of the behavior.

[00:11:44] Karen: Then what I can think about changing is not the behavior or even the relationship, but my response to the behavior. And we talked a good bit about this in episode 240, so if you're looking for more detail, head to episode 240. 

[00:12:00] Paul: Yeah. And part of that is about, again, giving yourself more choices, right?

[00:12:04] Paul: It's about recognizing, okay, this person does this thing, or this thing comes up and here's what I do In response to that, trying to break that pattern in some ways of saying like, oh, well, okay. What else might I do instead? That's gonna help mitigate impact. That's a big thing that we have talked about a lot on this show, is the idea that if the other person's not gonna change, if they're not gonna do anything different, if they're gonna keep bringing this thing up and I wanna get out of this cycle of disagreement and conflict, then that's about how do I respond to it in a different way?

[00:12:35] Paul: Right. What's the. Work that I can do on my side to, you know, if it takes two to tango, how can I learn the chacha? And so, you know, when they try to bait me back into my old patterns, what am I gonna do instead? And that's again, the interesting thing for me is that I think that approach can also show up in the relationship repair space.

[00:12:57] Paul: Because, there you're doing it collaboratively with the other person where I'm saying to you, okay, we keep doing this thing together, you'll do this thing and then that, and then I respond to that in this way, and that triggers you in this way. So how do we wanna work with that? For me, that's in the relationship repair space. 

[00:13:13] Paul: Where we're trying to do it together. Right. It's two of us against the problem. And this is the case of, it's just like, I'm not gonna say you are the problem, but I'm also not gonna say that. I'm not gonna expect, I'm not gonna be working with you to do the problem solve. I'm going, okay, how do I approach that?

[00:13:29] Paul: So what I think, and I actually do a lot of this work with my clients because I'm often just working in my executive coaching, for example, with one person, and they may or may not be in a situation where they want to do relationship repair in the sense of, I'm gonna collaboratively problem solve with this other person.

[00:13:47] Paul: But they do need to recognize I can shift my own behavior no matter what the other person wants to do. As I sometimes say to some of my clients, let's assume that as a result of the work that you and I do together, your boss is still gonna be the same person. So given that, what can you do to get you a different result?

[00:14:06] Paul: And that's kind of what this behavior response thing is. Is being able to recognize, what can I do? How can I change my response, the behavior that I have in response to this thing, to get a different result, to move through it without requiring the other person to come into that space of relationship prepared to me.

[00:14:23] Karen: Yeah, for sure. And if, that's not what we want. Because the thing about the first three that we've talked about is that we have to do them more or less on the assumption that the behavior that I don't like may very well not change. There's nothing that I'm doing there that is about causing the behavior to change.

[00:14:43] Karen: Now maybe we do relationship repair and the other person says, oh wow, I didn't even realize what that did with you, and absolutely I won't ever do that thing again. Maybe we get lucky that way. But if that's what we're aiming for, if our only goal is to change the behavior, it usually doesn't, 'cause usually the relationship doesn't get repaired.

[00:15:01] Karen: I mean, that just goes sideways. So if you're in a place where I actually don't care whether the relationship survives, I don't like the only thing or the hugely primary thing, the thing that matters to me most is to make this behavior stop. Either because they stopped doing it or because they go away.

[00:15:20] Karen: Those are usually the two ways that we can make that happen. 

Bucket 4: Power Over

[00:15:23] Karen: Then we're in what I'm gonna call the Power Over category, and this is where you are. I think if you are trying to enforce rules. So for example, a lot of us probably lived in college dorms at some point, and there was a rule about quiet hours say, and it's 10 o'clock, and the hierarchical staff person, whatever we called that in, that dorm comes and knocks on the door and you need to quiet down. And we know that if we don't, then you know, fees can be assessed. And there are different things like that whole enforcement business that's Power Over that's saying we're using the power that we have to cause someone to change their behavior.

[00:16:04] Karen: And there are a couple of things to say about that. One is that. The power that we use can be a wide variety of things, including social pressure, including dirty looks, including enforcing rules that theoretically that person has already agreed to, and certainly including any kind of structural hierarchy like the boss or that kind of thing.

[00:16:25] Karen: All of those are power, and the other thing to say about this is it will always damage relationships. Power Over always damages the relationship. Sometimes it's worth it. 

[00:16:34] Paul: And I think that's a really key thing. ' Cause again, we go back to that spot of like, this is a choice, right? This is something you could choose to do.

[00:16:43] Paul: There are situations in which it does make sense because you recognize that the other options that we've laid out here aren't likely to succeed. This is a case where I agree with you, like there will be damage to the relationship. And you might be willing to pay that cost.

[00:16:58] Paul: I think there's a thing that I heard recently, and it was actually Dave Ramsey, the finance guy talking about major decision making and talking about happy choices where you don't control what the outcome is gonna be, but are you happy with it either way? And so, as you were kind of saying like with those earlier choices, with, you know, the sort of the first three buckets you have to be okay with it.

[00:17:20] Paul: Whether the behavior changes or not, right? Whether or not the situation gets resolved or not, because it may not, you don't have control over that, and so you're okay with it either way, and this is that situation where you need to be okay with the damage that you're gonna do to the relationship as that you're okay with that, right?

[00:17:37] Paul: You're willing to bear that cost because the cost of the behavior not changing is just so high for you. You're in a space where you're willing to do that. I do think that we go into that space sometimes more quickly than is useful. We rush into it because we don't think about how we have the other option, but we do have this, you know, using coercion, using punishment, any, that's what we're really talking about.

[00:18:03] Paul: I was laughing when you brought up the living in a dorm. Enforcing the rules sorts of things, because I happened to be out to eat this weekend and there was two tables over. It was two people talking about this, one person talking about their roommates and about how they never cleaned up and this, that, and the other thing.

[00:18:18] Paul: And it's like a great, you know, situation to think about like, well, what might I do? Right? And one of those things you might do in this situation is going, look, I am not paying rent until the bathroom gets cleaned. Right now we're talking about like consequences. You're laying out, this is what I'm gonna do, or I'm gonna go to the boss, or I'm gonna, we're talking about putting consequences for a lack of behavior change.

[00:18:42] Paul: And that I think is really where that relational damage always comes in. And as you point out, that is sometimes worth it. 

Conclusion and Recap

[00:18:49] Karen: So we're gonna talk more about power over in the next episode, which will be 255 if you're keeping score. But for now, I'm gonna wrap up this one. To say that what we're talking about today is that conflict comes in a whole range of experiences and how we might wanna respond to it has a lot of variance and we think it's useful to think about how might we wanna respond to this in a sort of four bucket structure as a way of recognizing that we do have choices, we're not just stuck with the behavior that we're experiencing.

[00:19:22] Karen: We do have options and there are ways to think about those options. So bucket number one is tolerance. This is, I'm not gonna do anything about it. I'm going to make my peace with it or live with the resentment that I have because I didn't make my peace with it. But in any case, I'm not going to do anything about it.

[00:19:38] Karen: I'm going to tolerate that this is likely to continue. Bucket number two is relationship repair. So this is the vulnerability work, the space between work the most emotionally intensive and probably time intensive. Approach, but to say, I'm willing to invest that because I expect that on the other end of it, I will have a stronger, more connected relationship than I had even before.

[00:20:00] Karen: So this is the super productive conflict workspace that we've talked about a good bit. And number three is behavior response. So this is saying. I am not going to work with the other person on it. I don't have a joint problem solver, but I am going to think through what are different ways that I could respond to this that would mitigate the impact of it?

[00:20:20] Karen: How can I reduce the impact of the behavior based on how I respond to it and given the choices that I have about that, choose the one that serves me best. And so again, that hopefully brings us some peace and it certainly gives us strategy that we can feel good about using. The fourth one is for the case where in the end, changing the behavior is a higher priority than nurturing the relationship, and that's the Power Over option where we use whatever we have, rules, hierarchy, position, dirty looks, social pressures, whatever.

[00:20:53] Karen: We've got to coerce a change in behavior, and we do that knowing that it will damage the relationship and having made the very intentional choice we hope. That damage that is done to the relationship is a price we're willing to pay in order to get the change in behavior that we are aiming for. And so our hope is that with those buckets to think about, you can notice when you're in a conflict space and be more thoughtful and intentional about how you wanna respond to it.

[00:21:25] Paul: Well, that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:21:29] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig and this has been Employing Differences.