April 9, 2024 • 60 mins
🎙This week on Conflict Managed we welcome Dr. Clare Fowler, the Executive Vice-President at Mediate.com. This special episode features a discussion with Clare on her engaging and insightful new book, "Rising Above Office Conflict: A Light-Hearted Guide for the Heavy-Hearted Employee." This guide is filled with easy-to-follow advice for anyone looking to tackle workplace conflicts with a positive approach.
🎁Don't miss out on an exclusive offer for our listeners: you have the chance to receive a free signed copy of Clare’s fantastic book. Simply send an email to Merry Brown at 3pconflictrestoration@gmail.com to seize this opportunity! One name will be pulled at random from the submissions by May 1, 2024.
Dr. Clare Fowler was initially introduced to conflict resolution in a peer mediation course in the third grade and has been studying it since. She received her master's degree and doctorate in workplace mediation from Pepperdine University. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Oregon School of Law and mediates workplace disputes. She is also the executive vice president at Mediate.com. She believes that people want to resolve their own conflict, they just need the right tools.
Her new book, “Rising Above Office Conflict: A Light-Hearted Guide for the Heavy-Hearted Employee,” offers step-by-step advice that empowers readers to understand and overcome the conflicts they face at work. Building on 20 years of mediating workplace disputes, Clare brings practical tools for resolving conflicts right into the employee’s hands. With a humorous and engaging approach, this book is for everyone frustrated at work.
Conflict Managed is produced by Third Party Workplace Conflict Restoration Services.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
All right.
This is all right.
I got it.
I do wraps now.
Get a sound side uptight,
Jack asking questions.
(00:25):
So welcome to Conflict Managed.
I'm your host,
Merry Brown.
This week we're doing something different.
We were talking to Dr. Clare Fowler about her new book Rising Above Office Conflict,
a lighthearted guide for the heavyhearted employee.
Dr Clare Fowler was initially introduced into conflict resolution in a peer mediation course in the third grade and has been studying it ever since she received her master's degree and doctorate in workplace Mediation from Pepperdine University.
(00:56):
She's an adjunct professor at the University of Oregon School of Law and mediates workplace disputes.
She is also the executive vice President at mediate.com.
She believes that people want to resolve their own conflict.
They just need the right tools.
Her new book,
which we're going to be talking about today.
Rising Above Office Conflict.
A lighthearted guide for the heavyhearted employee offers step by step advice that empowers readers to understand and overcome the conflicts they face at work.
(01:22):
Building on 20 years of mediating workplace disputes.
Clare brings practical tools for resolving conflicts right into the employee's hands with a humorous and engaging approach.
This book is for everyone frustrated at work.
Good morning Clare and welcome to Conflict Managed.
Oh,
good morning.
Thank you so much,
Merry.
I'm excited to be here.
I've been really looking forward to our conversation.
(01:44):
This is a first for Conflict Managed.
We've had over 100 episodes,
but this is the first time that we are focusing in on an author's book.
And so today we are going to be talking about Clare because I know that you all like to listen and hear about people's experiences in the workplace.
But we're going to specifically be talking about her book Rising Above Office Conflict,
a lighthearted guide for the heavyhearted employee.
(02:07):
Congratulations on this wonderful insightful,
delightful book to read.
Oh,
thank you.
It's,
it's very exciting to be at this end of it.
Absolutely.
So I just want to start before we get into your book.
Can you tell us just a little bit about your work experience?
And the first thing I'd like to find out is what is the first job you ever had as a young person?
(02:30):
Oh,
great questions.
So,
um work history.
Uh I've pretty much been doing mediation almost all my life.
Uh When I was in third grade,
I took a pure mediation course and I was hooked.
So I've been studying conflict resolution ever since.
Went on to get my undergrad,
master's doctorate.
And um,
(02:52):
and I grew up in a very uh in a very academic household.
Um,
my father,
uh who's an author,
um Ken Kesey.
So he,
he liked to write books that really pushed the boundaries and he liked to make up new words and new sentence styles.
And I think I,
I absorbed quite a bit of that from him and he wanted to push against the grain in a way where he really connected with people.
(03:17):
And I guess that was,
that was my goal in writing this as well.
I,
there are some fantastic academic books out there that have already been written that described the conflict resolution process,
but they've already been written,
I didn't need to write that book.
What I wanted was to write something that,
that pushed the grain a little bit.
So I think again,
I think I,
(03:38):
I,
I absorbed a lot of that thinking without realizing being around him.
And then my mother was a researcher and a teacher.
And so it was just fun to always be talking about these new ideas and pushing them and thinking about what is the application of this?
My first actual job was a job shadow with Hewlett Packard.
(03:58):
And I was one of the people down in the basement where a board would slide across.
And then I had this little tiny welding gun and I would push down on it and then I would slide the board to the next person and I was just part of an assembly line.
But I have to say I learned so much about management and leadership from that experience because the management,
right,
everybody on the top floor,
(04:19):
they made such an effort to connect with everyone.
So as an example,
every Wednesday morning,
the management,
all the CCC Sweet employees had this little breakfast cart and they would wheel it around to everyone and say,
oh,
good morning chocolate.
I saved your favorite bagel for you.
Oh,
hey,
Claire,
I see.
You're new here here.
Do you wanna try some donuts or we have a breakfast burrito?
(04:39):
And they would just spend a few hours every Wednesday connecting with everyone.
And it,
it made such an impact on me that even though they were down in the basement doing the most boring job possible,
but we all felt so appreciated and a vital part of the company.
And that really stuck with me too that if management values and empowers all their employees,
(05:00):
like even if the,
even if the dumbest job,
you can love it and be incredibly happy and feel fulfilled with what you're doing.
That is,
that's amazing.
I mean,
what a wonderful mentoring opportunity and just like what is leadership,
right?
Leadership is not just being strategic,
but it is speaking into the lives of others.
(05:21):
And if you have the people in the basement,
feeling empowered and seen,
you know,
as we know so much about our enjoyment of a job and how engaged we are,
has to do with how we feel about our environment?
Are we being seen?
Are we being treated well?
Is there a possibility to voice a concern?
Right.
The psychological safety we want.
(05:41):
That is,
that's a beautiful story.
That's wonderful.
Thank you.
Yeah,
it was,
it was a fantastic experience.
I'm also interested in coming across mediation in third grade.
So,
so tell us about your third grade self and what that was like.
Um most of the time it was just me and my mom and my mom had grown up in a typical 19 fifties household where everything had to be just perfect and the sandwiches were cut just so and any kind of an issue,
(06:06):
you just swept it under the rug and you didn't talk about it because conflicts were scary and that could imply that you had made a mistake or you were less than perfect or it could blow up and have nasty unforeseen results.
So we just didn't deal with it.
I remember it was,
it was so eye opening.
I'm sitting in this classroom and we,
we did these little play pretend scenarios and it was something like Susie stole Billy's jacket.
(06:31):
And then we,
we walked through these little pretend mediations and we had Susie and Billy sit down and talk with each other and it was just that light bulb moment where it was like,
wait a minute,
we can talk about conflicts and still be friends and the earth keeps spinning.
This is incredible.
And what I have to say that this is kind of cheesy.
But what has been,
(06:53):
what has been so rewarding in this field is that the more I lean into it,
the more those light bulbs go off.
In other words,
the more I see the magic of it that this stuff actually works.
Like it's,
it's just so great to see when people communicate with each other and they feel safe enough to share their ideas and then they listen to the other person's ideas and they respect and they listen and they forgive and they apologize and they heal that relationships improve.
(07:22):
It's,
it,
it's just a,
it's,
I feel like we're so lucky to get to be in this field where it's powerful and it works right.
It's,
we're not,
we're not like selling snake oil here or some kind of a placebo worth.
We actually get to do something that is legitimately helping people's lives.
And again,
I see that more and more and more as I'm working with employees who are just who are shattered or managers who are feeling completely hopeless.
(07:50):
And then you start to teach them this really basic stuff and it works and you start to see their lives turn around.
I love it.
I love it.
It is so true.
I mean,
we come across people who are,
as you said,
shattered,
demoralized and hopeless.
There's all this despair and what I love about your book is that it is about personal empowerment.
And I see that that is what conflict resolution is about showing people.
(08:13):
There's another way and the other way is so simple as you highlight continually.
It's have that conversation,
listen to that other person partner for a resolution.
And if we do those simple steps,
then we are able to get to the other side.
There is something better.
Uh 11 thing that you say in your book,
(08:34):
which I just think is so wonderful is that brownies don't get better over time,
but there's,
there's some cooking in there.
You have a wonderful brownie recipe at the end.
But,
but this idea that some things when we,
they see like fine wine or spaghetti sauce,
maybe the better the next day,
not conflict,
right?
The longer you wait,
(08:55):
it's not impossible but the harder it is to get that sort of uh res resolution restoration and moving forward.
Mhm Yeah.
And I work with so many companies where employees didn't want to address the conflict when it was little because they didn't want to be seen as difficult or somebody who's making a mountain out of a molehill or somebody who can't handle things that are hard and they're so afraid of that image that they just let this stuff go.
(09:24):
And unfortunately,
the more they let it go,
the more they are enabling people around them to have pretty nasty behaviors.
The more that they are saying they are ok with it.
And the more,
unfortunately they're gaslighting themselves because their brain is screaming and saying,
wait,
Mary,
I thought you wanted to be treated better than this.
But they just keep,
(09:44):
they just keep accepting more and more and more of these negative behaviors until eventually they're like the frog sitting in water that just keeps getting turned up and turned up and turned up until eventually they're sitting in a pot of boiling water saying how the heck did I get here?
And,
and I allowed myself to put up with this and I just sit with managers and employees like how come you didn't address this when this was just a tiny seed like we can still handle this.
(10:08):
But now we're surrounded by this huge forest.
So it's going to take a lot of work to change those habits and,
and do some pretty emotional healing and dealing with this trauma when this really could have been solved if we would just have had a conversation a year ago.
Yeah,
that's hard.
Yeah,
I,
I hear exactly what you're saying and I see it echoed so much that I don't want to be perceived as difficult.
(10:31):
I don't want to be perceived as incompetent.
I don't wanna come to the manager who says,
solve your own problems and yet I don't know how because this is one basic skill we don't give people.
It's a basic skill.
I think a akin to being able to swim.
It's,
you know,
the,
the swimming of relationship if we don't know how to have difficult conversations because we,
(10:54):
we will have difficult situations that is a given,
right?
I think you can evade taxes.
But I say,
I think it should be conflict and death.
The things we can't avoid conflict is normal and a part of our experiences and certainly our work life,
why would we not give them these basic tools so that they can deal with conflict early,
often swiftly and justly in the beginning.
(11:17):
Yeah,
I'm so glad that you brought that up because there are,
again,
there's a lot of companies that I work with or a lot of parents and families or relationships around me that say we just have to get through this one hard thing and then everything will be fine.
Like my kids have to deal with something hard right now and that's why they're being so grumpy or that's why they're being disrespectful or my partner is having this really hard time at work.
(11:38):
But as soon as they get past that everything will be fine.
And,
and I have to say that that really makes me nervous because our mental health is not based on everything being free and easy,
right?
Our mental health is actually the opposite.
Our,
our mental health comes from realizing that we can do hard things.
(12:01):
It's just knowing that we have the tools and feeling prepared and then feeling proud of ourselves.
Once we work through it,
there's uh a lot of exercise gurus have been touting these hope molecules.
Have you heard of it?
Ok.
So,
um so they're fun.
The idea here is that if you look at a weight,
let's say it's £20 and you haven't been able to lift it,
(12:22):
but you keep trying and you keep trying and one day you get to the gym and you struggle and you struggle and you did it and you lift that £25 weight and you're so proud of yourself.
What happens is your body produces these mayo canes,
right?
And there are these hope molecules and they tell you that look at you,
you can do hard things,
this thing that you thought you couldn't do before you can now do and you are bettering yourself and you are improving and you are a strong person who can handle hard things and that's what creates hope in the brain.
(12:52):
It's not,
oh,
I just didn't lift weights at all because it seemed hard.
It's there is this hard thing and I tackled it and I lived through it and I think that that's why I think this is one of the big reasons,
obviously,
not the only reason,
but I think it's one of the big reasons why we're seeing such a mental health epidemic in the workplace is because managers are trying to avoid anything that could be offensive where somebody might have a hard conversation where somebody might feel challenged or they might feel critiqued in any way.
(13:24):
So anything that feels uncomfortable,
managers are trying to avoid and get those hard rocks out of the way without realizing that by removing those hard rocks,
people don't realize they can climb over them and then feel very proud of themselves.
Like just because I'm not getting along with someone,
it doesn't mean that you move them to another department.
It means you give me the skills to figure out how to have a conversation with them and get along with them.
(13:48):
And now my brain has hope and now my mental health is restored.
That's such an excellent point because we,
we are today,
we talk a lot about emotional intelligence and emotional development and but how do we develop?
Right?
You don't just get it,
get resilience because you say that's the new word of the day and I'm going to have compassion or empathy.
We get it through going through experiences and,
(14:11):
and we need mentors and we need space and we need grace and training and all of these things in the workplace.
So that as you said,
you know,
how do we develop any sort of good habit is by doing it?
And then we get,
it's just amazing how do I get confidence?
We'll do something small,
get a little bit and then build and get a little bit.
(14:31):
So this conflict capacity,
the ability to do difficult things or what you think is difficult,
grows and develops as you do difficult things.
But as I sit here on my chair and I think I'm gonna run a five K and I haven't ever run.
Right.
Of course,
you're not going to be able to do it.
It,
it's,
it's too big of a lofty goal.
How do I have the confidence?
(14:53):
Well,
not by going out and running a five K,
it's by training and developing.
And when I think you're absolutely right,
when we sanitize the work environment or sanitize anything that is difficult,
we are enabling uh stunted growth.
We are encouraging people not to have independence,
(15:14):
not to be empowered and not to have emotional maturity.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I,
I appreciate that example of couch to five K.
And when you're sitting on a couch,
the idea of running A five K might seem impossible,
but it's absolutely possible if you can break it down into little steps.
And that's,
that was really my goal in writing the book that there are amazing books out there that are describing the five K process.
(15:40):
But there just aren't a lot of books that begin at the couch stage.
My husband was coming home from work and he,
he'd be complaining about this worker or this manager or this vendor and oh such a micro manager,
this one won't stop talking or this one is so disrespectful and inappropriate when we have clients coming in and I would look at all of my books.
(16:00):
Right.
It probably looks just like your bookshelf behind you everything for my masters and my doctorate and these amazing books and they're just what he needs,
but he's not gonna read them.
Right.
That's,
he's not gonna sit down and open up like Christopher Moore's,
the mediation process,
which I think is around 600 pages and it's incredible.
Right.
(16:20):
Um,
so I,
so I guess that's really what prompted this was after a mediation.
So I was writing this book over the course of about 10 years after a mediation.
If I was dealing with some kind of a behavior that my husband was describing and was frustrated about,
then I would just start journaling my ideas like,
(16:41):
oh,
this is something that seemed to work or I tried this and this didn't work.
And I'm really lucky because I do workplace mediation that I get to come back and visit the workplace about every 4 to 8 weeks.
So then I was really able to have that feedback to see what techniques were working and just simply what wasn't and what needed to be tweaked.
So that's where I started taking notes on this.
(17:03):
And again,
at first,
it was just,
hey,
hubby,
I hear what you're saying.
I just want to offer you some kind of a guidebook or suggestions,
you know,
because husbands love it when we do that,
when we tell them what to.
Um,
so I wanted to offer him some kind of a guidebook and then as more and more friends were complaining about their workplace,
it's like,
you know,
maybe I could turn this into something that's a little bit,
a little bit more official where more people could,
(17:26):
could have these ideas and have something that was easily digestible to just say I'm,
I'm sitting on my conflict couch right now and I just can't envision how I could possibly get to the five K stage.
Right.
Right now I'm at the place where I,
I hate my boss.
I'm ready to quit.
I can't imagine actually feeling empowered and having peace at work.
So,
(17:46):
yeah.
So I wanted to just break it out.
What are the simple steps that can get us from one to the other?
Well,
I think that you absolutely succeeded in this book.
Uh And I think it's interesting that you said it took you 10 years because I say this in the best possible way.
It feels like it,
it feels what I love about the book is that it's so readable and relatable.
And I have all these academic books.
(18:07):
I love a good academic read,
but I really love practical books as well because conflict is always in the concrete,
particular practitioners need to read the academic work that,
you know,
that,
that kind of rubric,
but everyday people need.
Well,
OK,
what about me?
Now?
How do I do this hard thing.
And the way,
so your book is eminently conversational.
(18:29):
It pulls you in all these different wonderful examples which I think goes to that 10 years.
It's like,
it's marinated in that good way where you've got all these wonderful examples that you can get your mind around.
But what I really love is part one says behaviors that aren't as awesome as ours.
And a lot of times when we,
I think are caught in conflict,
we just lump in this person who I'm having a problem with and me instead of really taking a moment and saying,
(18:55):
but what is it about that person that I'm having a difficulty with?
And,
and you have all of these different ways in which people tend to present in a work environment.
But I love it also because we can turn the gaze on ourselves.
How are other people seeing the way that I show up at work?
Right.
Right.
Oh,
(19:15):
that's,
and that's tough,
especially for somebody who's really hurting or if somebody is having a really hard time,
I understand that they might not be able to do this initially.
But once someone begins to feel validated and they begin to feel safe,
then I agree.
I think that's the,
that's the biggest benefit of conflict is that it does shine a,
(19:35):
it's like a mirror back on yourself.
What is it about me that's triggering this person or that's why am I being triggered so much?
I do a lot of talks on the thunder turtle syndrome,
right?
Where,
um,
you have one person who's thundering and their response to conflict is more of a fight response and they're avoiding it,
but they're avoiding it by just shouting in order and closing down any kind of a conversation and then running away,
(19:59):
like,
oh,
the report has to be done Monday at nine bam and they're out the door.
And so that's a typical thunder response.
A turtle response is more where I'm just avoiding it.
Right.
If there's,
if there's something painful or,
or something that feels a little traumatic,
our brain twists it and that's where a lot of these behaviors come from and we do everything we can.
It's like our brain is playing,
the floor is lava to try to avoid this hotspot.
(20:21):
And so our brains turtle and we just kind of hide underneath it and we retreat within our shell and we ignore,
we pretend it's not there.
So,
I,
it's funny,
I'm,
I'm definitely a turtle,
right?
I,
I love discussing conflict and I,
I've gotten better at it,
but I think a lot of it was because it's not something that comes naturally to me.
Right?
(20:41):
I really had to study and learn how to do this for myself.
So by nature,
I'm a turtle and,
and I give talks on this all the time.
Here's what thunder turtle,
thunder looks like.
Here's how we can break the cycle in your workplace.
Here's how both people can feel empowered.
So I was working a few years ago with uh Dan Burstein.
He's a mental health professional and he mentioned that he felt like a couple of the articles on my website might,
(21:08):
might be tweaked or they could be misinterpreted in a way where it could cause bias at the initial intake phase of the mediation.
And I told him I'd think about it and I'd research it and I started looking into it,
but he wanted an answer immediately.
And so he's,
he became much more aggressive.
We've had lots and lots of talks about this and we've done presentations on this.
(21:29):
So I feel like I'm free to share this.
So he became,
he became a Thunderer Claire.
You have to pull those articles off of the website by 8 a.m. tomorrow or I'm suing your company,
right?
Became very,
very aggressive.
And I turtled.
I completely turtled.
He kept sending me these emails and I would wait a few days and then maybe send him like a one word response or I would forward it to somebody else or I'd see that he was calling and,
(21:51):
and I,
I was sitting giving this presentation about thunder turtle syndrome when it just hit me across the head.
I was like,
oh dang it like everything that I'm telling everybody not to do.
I've been doing it without even realizing it and it was hard and it was embarrassing and I had to call him down and I apologized and I cried and he cried.
(22:13):
And what has been so great about that was,
it was really eye opening for me to realize that my typical response to that type of a personality was I was just turtle and it,
and I kept blaming it on them like they're turtle or they're being a thunderer because they don't have good emotional regulation or they haven't dealt with their,
(22:34):
their anger or right.
And I'm completely blaming it on them,
right?
Typical fundamental attribution error and it's their fault and I'm doing everything right without realizing Dan was just as frustrated as I was because he was trying to right a wrong,
he was trying to fix something and the more I was twirling within my shell,
the more Dan just wanted to be heard and he was getting louder and louder to try to be heard and to try to get through my shell.
(22:58):
And it was,
it was,
it's tough,
it was really hard to realize I had a part to play in that.
But again,
it,
it took about a year.
We had all these good conversations,
we apologized,
we forgave,
we heal,
we set up very healthy boundaries and we learned how to respect each other.
And it required a little bit of growth and bravery from me to be able to handle some of those louder conversations and also be able to figure out.
(23:23):
OK,
we're now reaching one of my boundaries.
This is now starting to feel a little bit too intense or it's starting to be a deluge of too much information.
I need to set a boundary here and Dan has done all this great emotional intelligence work as well.
And now he's become really good at saying,
OK,
I see it,
Claire,
I can tell you you wanna retreat back into your shell,
so I'm gonna back off until you feel safe enough again to come out.
(23:46):
And it's,
it's tough,
right?
It's,
it's,
it's tough work,
but it's so great to feel now like I can be around those personalities and not just run into my shell but be able to,
to hang there and feel safe and get to know a new group of people that before I always would have just written off in a work environment.
I mean that that is our reality.
(24:07):
We have all these different kinds of personalities and I think sometimes when people get into conflict resolution by the,
by the,
by the time they say,
ok,
I need some help and they're in mediation or something else like that,
we have villainized the other party.
It's their fault and they need to change their behavior.
I think one of the the wonderful benefits of going through something like mediation is that in internal gaze and starting to see,
(24:30):
ok,
yes,
this is how you have been harmed and this is the behaviors that you would like to have changed,
what,
what is going on in this dynamic.
And so once we're able to start to see ourselves,
we start to see it's always going to be me.
Right.
I,
because I can't change anybody else's behavior,
I cannot mandate that they apologize or have a lobotomy,
(24:54):
totally different personality.
And certainly in a work environment changing people's personalities is,
um,
it's not what we ought to be up to.
But as you say in your book,
the problem is the problem,
not the person.
And in so far as we focus on problematic behaviors and we have codes of civility in the work environment,
(25:15):
then I can also see,
ok,
this is the code.
When am I not living up to it or when does somebody think that I'm being too loud in my volume?
Um,
and we can have these conversations that aren't so heated because we have the standard and we could talk about behaviors without talking about the people.
Yeah.
(25:36):
Yeah.
I,
I tell a story in my book about,
I was working with a company and there is this one woman who kept saying we need to update the website,
we need to focus on the website and everyone kept saying,
oh,
why are you making it so difficult?
How come you keep harping on the website?
Because everybody else,
they were thinking the same way.
They,
they liked the website exactly how it was eventually.
(25:58):
They realized,
oh my gosh,
this website is horrible.
We're losing a lot of sales because of it.
We actually do need to update the website and they came and apologized to her.
And I think what,
what that is showing to me is that we are starting to have much more awareness in the workplace around diversity in terms of things that might be easier to see in the gender age,
(26:20):
ethnicity,
um sexuality.
A right?
All of these other pieces.
And,
and so I'm so glad that we are starting to encourage and be more intentional about diversity there.
But I think what it really comes down to in order for different people to feel safe and encouraged and welcomed is that there has to be that initial welcoming of diversity of thought and in a workplace you don't want everybody to be exactly like you.
(26:48):
Right?
Because then you're kind of redundant,
you can be kicked out the door.
So it,
it would be much simpler.
I wouldn't have to have any problems or arguments if everyone thought the exact same way I did.
But then where is the richness?
Where's the development?
Where's the depth?
Whereas encouraging new ideas and some of them might challenge me and I might have to accept ideas that that weren't mine and that's very hard.
(27:15):
But I feel like the more we can encourage that diversity of thought at such a basic level saying no,
we do want to bring in all of these ideas because it makes us better as a company then that just naturally flows out to saying and that's what will um that's what will make our,
our company more diverse,
right?
(27:35):
That's what encourages de I is if it begins at that basic level where we say no,
I really do want to hear what you have to say because it's different than what I am thinking as you were talking.
I was thinking about how,
you know,
change management change is the name of the game.
And technology really shows us that because technology is always changing.
And in so far as we want to be relevant,
(27:57):
then we need to change with it,
change can be difficult.
But if we start expecting change,
that means our workforce is going to change whether it's the people actually change or the people,
uh we get new people and you know,
and some people leave new people come,
this is just always the name of the game.
And so I love that example that you used earlier of we think,
(28:19):
oh,
our kid just needs to get through this problem and then it's smooth sailing as if that's the goal.
Now,
we love those,
those,
those periods of peace and stability.
Absolutely needed.
We need to recoup.
And I have seen businesses that burn out their employees and even their customers by constantly the new thing,
constantly,
the new thing and it's,
(28:40):
it's overwhelming,
right?
And So there's that sweet spot of,
I don't go through this change in the website and now we're done because it will never be done.
And if we're going to,
I'm not going to get through this conflict to be done.
But maybe if we develop these skills,
we're going to be able to see the price of the conflict,
which is better products,
(29:01):
better services belonging,
getting the benefits of de I,
but that's only if we decide to accept reality,
which is change and conflict.
They're not,
they're not adversaries,
they're great.
I divided the book up.
So the first half is assessment.
(29:23):
Let's understand it.
Let's be able to diagnose this figure out what's going on.
Um Was there some kind of a trauma involved?
Is that why these behaviors are exhibiting?
Is,
are you reacting to something?
Right?
Do you need to look internally to figure out what's causing this?
So the first half is assessment.
The second half is action and I talk a lot about change management and just like you were saying that we can think about change management in two ways.
(29:49):
One can be to resolve an immediate short term problem,
but the other can be just this mindset that we do want to be a learning organization that's opening,
that's open to continually changing and continually improving.
And I,
I like this image of a stair step that we're constantly trying to get to this place where our products are better we're reaching out to new employees or to new customers,
(30:14):
our employees are,
are feeling even more appreciated.
And so I,
I like this image where there is this period where you're pushing up,
right?
Where things are hard and you feel like you're,
you're rolling the,
the stone uphill and that's exhausting and that's hard because change can be difficult.
Absolutely.
Right.
That's one of the most exhausting things in our brain.
They say that our,
our brain when it's going through times of change or things that are hard or we have to learn new things that that's burning 25% of our calories during the day because it is exhausting for your brain to work that hard.
(30:45):
I get that.
So that to me is the uphill part of the stair where you're going through change or you're going through conflict or learning something new.
But then there has to be that smooth part of the step as well where you can celebrate your victories where you can take that time for mental health.
And this is also necessary for a neuroplasticity when we're learning something new.
(31:05):
And those um tho those dendrites reach out and they form the new synapses.
This is a beautiful,
it's a beautiful thing that happens in our brain where we realize,
oh,
I can deal with this kind of a personality or I can forgive them or I can see them in a new light,
right?
When those new connections happen in our brain.
That's great.
But then our brains need that smooth sailing time for a little bit for everything else to kind of settle around that new thought because if not,
(31:32):
it's just going to feel like an outlier.
But after uh after mediation,
after a change,
after we resolved a conflict,
but our brain needs that makeup time,
right?
It needs that feeling of peace at least for a few weeks,
if not a few months.
So everything else can kind of settle.
And that new thought starts to form our worldview.
It starts to,
to change our identity and then we're gonna hit another stare right where we have to go up and we have to deal with something else.
(31:58):
So you're right.
It has to be that,
that it's normalized instead of being like,
oh no,
we hit one bump.
This is,
we must have done something wrong.
That's a really great analogy.
I like thinking about it like that because we need both right growth development um being better tomorrow than we are today personally,
professionally,
(32:18):
our organizations,
how do we achieve that?
We need both,
right?
Sort of that.
The Ying and the Yang,
the push and the pool,
right?
And stability is wonderful.
But if we're just trying to achieve stability,
which means homeostasis where nothing ever changes,
we're actually going to get change,
but it's going to be um unraveling because we don't live in the past,
(32:43):
we always live in the present and the present is always going forward,
right?
And so very important to have both.
Yeah.
Yeah,
that's great.
I'm,
I'm interested,
you mentioned that you're in the middle of a philosophy class.
And um,
and of course,
I tried to keep the book pretty simple and pretty practical,
but I think it is impossible to discuss conflict resolution and these concepts of growth and being intentional about facing conflict without there being some kind of an overlap of,
(33:13):
of philosophy and understanding that there is a bigger picture here that I'm trying to achieve a bigger goal instead of just trying to,
to crush this one conflict and get that out of my way.
Yeah,
I think that in the book,
you do such a wonderful job.
I,
so I've taught for a long time and I'm really interested in accessibility of material uh because what is the point of having this big theory if it doesn't have any practical import or it's just convoluted?
(33:41):
One thing I think is absolutely unique about your book.
I have not read any place else is that you tackle difficult issues today such as feminine and the masculine.
I think a lot of books suffer from.
I mean,
first of all,
I think it is the case that we're all part of the human community and that is very important and we have brains and we have there's a certain sorts of behaviors and yet there is something to the feminine way and the masculine way and those things are,
(34:12):
I,
I was just telling you before we started recording that,
I've been teaching the ethics of care and my ethics courses right now,
which is a feminist ethic by Carol Gilligan.
And she,
she sums up the basic moral attitudes between men and women is that the masculine is interested in the ethics of justice.
And the feminine is interested in the ethics of care and we ought not preference one over the other,
but we need both ways of thinking.
(34:35):
And it's not that women aren't interested in justice and it's not that men aren't interested in care.
But typically,
what happens is when we don't recognize differences,
the male ends up being the standard.
And that has been the case through all of I know Western philosophy for all of Western philosophy,
the male has been the standard and anything else is a deviation.
And so you pick up very nicely.
(34:56):
And I think just about every chapter how this presents itself,
conflict presents itself for the feminine.
Again,
please,
listeners don't hear and Claire certainly isn't doing this and neither am I the strict binaries that to be a man is to act this way and to be a woman is to act this way 100% not.
And yet I think it's a disservice to not recognize the masculine and the feminine as one thing that you point out and maybe you could talk about this,
(35:19):
this difference between um rapport and report and the masculine and the feminine.
Could you talk about that?
Absolutely.
Thank you.
When I was initially writing the book and I sent it to the publishers and I met with a reviewer afterwards and he said,
hey,
in this one chapter,
you talk about the impact on or,
or the different approaches,
(35:40):
that one is feminine and one is masculine.
And he said I would rather that you just lump them all together into one approach.
And it didn't sit right and it took me a few months to figure out why that wasn't sitting right.
And it was when I,
I had to help out at a daycare and I was watching these kids grab all of the play doh and they had all these beautiful canisters with all these like gorgeous colors and they just kept mushing and mushing them together and there were little kids are like mushing them in the carpet and every and it just became this gross brown and it was like the color of refried beans and it took all the beauty out of it to lump everything together as if that,
(36:20):
that hot pink wasn't gorgeous on its own or the turquoise blue or the neon green.
Those were so beautiful when they were distinct.
And so I,
I really rebelled and instead of taking it out of that one chapter,
I added it to every single chapter.
No,
we need to talk about this,
we need to talk about.
There are a variety of pro of approaches and I want to put out all of these different approaches and some of them,
(36:47):
yes are what we would call very stereotypical feminine approaches.
Some are stereotypical masculine approaches.
Some are no non binary approaches.
And I think that what makes us all so unique and wonderful is that we do get to pick from every bucket,
right?
I get to say in this situation,
I want to try this response and it's from a stereotypical masculine approach.
(37:08):
But it's because in this situation,
I need to feel a sense of respect.
Whereas in this situation,
I might need to feel a sense of I am accepted and I am and I am appreciated.
So then I would pick from a more feminine bucket because there are all of these different responses that are,
that are beautiful and I don't want to try to lump them all into one thing like this is the one perfect way they right.
(37:32):
This is this is the one resolution to rule them all.
No,
absolutely not because you and I are completely different right there.
You and I are going to respond different ways and different in different situations and sometimes it's going to take a softer approach.
So the other person feels a little safer and sometimes it needs to take a much braver approach because I need to make sure that I'm feeling heard and respected.
(37:54):
And so I want people to walk away from the book feeling like they have a full toolbox and some of the tools might be pink and some might be blue and some might be purple and some might be the color of refried beans.
But I want people to feel like they're reading through all of these different options and they start to,
to recognize some that really resonate with them.
right?
Something that OK,
(38:14):
I get that I can see why that has worked for other people and,
and I'm happy to try that when we talk about the brain,
you know,
or we talk about the body,
we,
we feel most of us feel like this is very abstract.
We're just talking about brains and bodies and there's something to the masculine and feminine,
feminine.
We obviously have some biological differences.
We don't feel much about that,
(38:35):
but once we start talking about characteristics,
it's,
it's a dance.
I feel I've talked about the ethics of care for a long time in my courses.
And I feel,
I feel the weight of what are the students hearing?
I don't want to misspeak,
I don't want to be misunderstood.
I don't even know some of the times how I understand these differences.
(38:56):
What is socialization,
what is biological,
what is,
what is what?
Right.
Um And so I think,
I think it's very brave and a worthwhile endeavor.
If we're trying to help people understand themselves and the other,
whoever the other is giving a variety of responses.
And I think going out on a limb and saying these are traditional feminine responses.
(39:21):
These are traditional masculine responses because what we're going to find by and large in our organizations is probably a good 80% of people in general responding in this kind of way.
And there's no reason why we need to think of these as strict binaries,
right?
People always do one way,
always do another.
And if they're presenting in something that isn't maybe commiserate with their sex,
(39:43):
they're doing something wrong or bad or unfeminine or un masculine or however it is they're presenting,
I think we're so afraid of.
Maybe I'm just talking about my own fear because I am a personal,
I'm an individualist and at the same time,
if we're trying to help people think up in general,
then it is a mercy to start doing this difficult work that quite frankly most people shy away from.
(40:08):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you remember a few years ago where people were saying,
oh,
I just went,
I'm friends with everyone and,
and I just want to accept everyone and I don't see color and then people from all different backgrounds and ethnicities and cultures said.
But then I feel like you're not seeing a major part of me,
(40:31):
like you're not understanding what my experience has been in my culture up till now.
And I think we were trying to do the same thing for a while in the workplace with gender.
So we were saying,
oh,
we have feminine workers and masculine workers and non-binary workers and transitioning workers.
And you know,
instead of acknowledging that we're just going to say we have one human worker and that's it.
(40:52):
And we just have one person showing up to work and this one situation and this one process should work for everyone.
And I think people felt so dismissed because we are bringing our backgrounds into the workplace.
Right?
There's one guy that I work with and he's,
he's 66.
And he said that by nature,
he's somebody who's really loud and energetic,
(41:15):
but he has had to completely adapt his personality in the workplace because people kept being so frightened of him just because he's bringing in so much hype and he's this,
this big person with this loud deep voice and he didn't mean to,
but he was really scaring people.
So he's,
he has adapted that.
And as he shared that story in our workshop,
(41:35):
I it was,
I can't think of a better word than transcendent.
No,
it's transformational because people could understand now why they were seeing some of these adaptations in times where he didn't feel completely authentic.
And then a woman shared her experience that um that she always felt like she had to be smaller and less than,
and closed up,
right?
And,
but button up her blouse a little bit more and wear longer skirts and,
(41:58):
and make sure that she wasn't peeing too direct when she spoke to someone because she is bringing in this,
this female body and,
and she knows that she's presenting that in the workforce.
And so she had to be very careful of that.
And as she's sharing the story again,
a lot of the men,
it was transformational for them because they didn't realize everything that she was constantly having to be aware of and juggling in meetings.
(42:22):
And I think if we try to dismiss all of that and just say,
no,
you are a human and that's all that you're allowed to be in the workforce.
You're missing the beauty,
right?
You're missing everything that people have overcome and everything they're trying to present and everything that they're trying to get from their workforce.
And again,
if we're trying to encourage diversity of thought,
we need to begin at that basic level where we say,
(42:44):
I want you to bring all of you,
right?
I want you to bring the parts of you that,
that you have had to really struggle to get here and what have you had to overcome?
Because then I get to see you as a whole person.
I want to shift off of that thought for just a second because I keep forgetting to share this.
Um There was one mediation where I did and uh this is around 2018 and it was in a,
(43:08):
a top government office and this was important.
There was a male boss and he had two female employees.
These two female employees were the best of the best in their field.
They couldn't find a job like this anywhere else in the country.
They both had multiple phd S right.
Incredibly seasoned scientist.
(43:28):
Top of the MENSA score is just incredible women.
And as an example,
one of them wrote an email to her boss saying,
oh my gosh,
I just found out about this gas leak.
It's over in Utah and it's going to affect all these people and it's going to make them sick if we don't take this immediate action.
Steps.
123,
she sends it to her boss.
Her boss,
(43:48):
very patriarchal.
Grew up in Peru,
grew up thinking that that his job was just to corral his employees.
So like this very time sensitive,
crucial emergency,
what he does is he prints out her email highlights in red pen every typo,
everything that he thought she should have worded differently,
(44:11):
went and got his assistant to walk it back to the employee and said my eyes deserve better.
Retype this and then I will read it and respond.
Wow.
Oh my goodness.
Right.
Here's this woman who is protecting the health and safety of our country and she like,
are you,
are you insane?
Really?
(44:32):
So I will be completely transparent when I say he is probably the only person that I have worked with.
So I've been mediating for about 20 years now.
He is the only person that I have worked with that I couldn't find some inner sense of,
of good or like a good justification for why he was behaving the way,
the way he was behaving.
(44:53):
So I do acknowledge that there are those people out there,
but at least in my experience,
it's about 0.0001%.
Other than that,
every single other person that I have worked with,
even if they are coming across as mean or,
or rude or callous or dismissive,
it's coming from a place of there has been some kind of a trauma or pain and this is the way that they have adapted to deal with that and to protect themselves.
(45:21):
And once we start to deal with that pain,
then you get to see this beautiful person that is hiding underneath.
And again,
the more time I spend doing this work,
the more I realize everybody that I have worked with,
except for this one singular man,
everybody else they are behaving in a way that is completely understandable.
(45:41):
It is a normal response to an abnormal situation.
They are trying their best to figure it out and they might not have done it perfectly.
But you can understand where they are coming from.
And the more I think we,
we bring that expectation into our work as mediators as conflicts,
Olivers,
as employees,
as partners.
As parents,
(46:01):
the more we bring that expectation in that this is a beautiful person that has just had to adapt and they might not have done a great job at it.
Right.
They might have,
have grabbed some behaviors that aren't that healthy or that aren't that pleasant.
It's my job to find that beautiful person underneath and help them to,
to come up with more,
more constructive,
(46:22):
more effective behaviors.
That's what I really appreciate about the first part of your book.
Um is,
that's,
I think a lot of what you're doing there.
You're,
you're helping the person caught in conflict to see the other because you don't solve a problem with a villain.
You don't solve a problem with a card but cut out you solve a problem with another human and when somebody causes us pain and any kind of conflict that's unresolving,
(46:46):
it's painful,
psychologically painful,
sometimes physically painful.
And if we,
you know,
if I realize,
oh,
this person isn't intentionally being the same me,
then I can,
my brain can help me start thinking,
oh,
it's,
there's still a problem that needs to be addressed.
But maybe now I ha I can start being creative and curious and reflective and maybe possibly partner with this person because it seems to me the issue is this and your book does a lovely job of laying out all these kinds of people that we find at work or at least the way they tend to present or,
(47:19):
or deal with conflict.
And if we start seeing it's not just this homogeneous way and they are this obstacle to my happiness,
but they are a human person,
they have issues and so do I,
and let's address the issue,
but we address it by taking a step back and seeing them as people and moving forward.
(47:41):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Because if not just like I was doing by avoiding so many people,
we're missing out on so much of life,
right.
We're missing out on interacting with all of these personality types and all of these situations because we're afraid or there might be a conflict or I don't know how to deal with it.
That's,
that's not what life is about.
(48:02):
Right?
Life is supposed to be about continuing to grow and continuing to change and,
and it's not easy,
but it's definitely worth it.
Or you're perpetually stuck with the,
with the thunderer and the turtle,
right?
And if we say,
well,
they should know better,
they should be professional,
they shouldn't be doing that and we don't do anything.
(48:24):
That's the wonderful thing about conflict resolution is that,
oh,
I can come out of Michelle,
I am the one to erect and keep my boundaries.
It's up to me to communicate in a constructive way and they will do whatever they do.
I'm not in charge of them,
but based on the off their response,
then I can decide what my next action is,
(48:45):
I don't have to be stuck in this dance.
All,
all it takes for me not to be offended is for me to make a different choice,
have a different narrative,
do something different and I can do that today.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Absolutely.
I think people struggle with.
(49:05):
So if you say,
OK,
Mary,
you're telling me I have to listen to this other person and if I'm listening to this other person,
I'm enabling them or I am endorsing their behavior and you talk about the difference between understanding and enabling.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
So it's helpful for me,
if I break it down into,
(49:26):
we're listening to two different things.
So you have the position,
that's what somebody is stating that they want,
I want you to behave this way.
I need this from you or I don't like this about you.
That's her stated position.
But that's kind of what we see above the surface.
That's like the tip of the iceberg.
What's underneath that?
What's motivating that is their interest.
(49:47):
And when we are listening,
what I have noticed is that if you just focus on the position,
you are absolutely empowering it,
right?
If that's,
if,
if you're just living there above the surface and you're going back and forth on the position and the person is going to dig their heels in,
they will become firmer on the position.
Instead when at least when I'm sitting at the mediation table and somebody is sharing your story,
(50:14):
I ignore the position initially and I just focused on the interest.
So it sounds like you're saying this because or this is how it made you feel or this is what prompted that or this is why you reacted that way.
And I just live under the surface for a while.
And what's interesting about that is then someone is usually willing to let go of their position and arrive at a different position that um that is more respectful to the other person right there instead of saying,
(50:44):
you know,
I'm going to be completely strict.
You have to get here at 8 a.m. every day and that's it because I demand respect.
Ok,
I'm gonna focus on that respect.
I'm gonna focus on what that means.
And why is that so important?
And it's so important for the office to run smoothly and then we can start to talk about.
Ok.
And her bus drops her off here at 804.
(51:05):
So if is there a way where we can arrive at a different position where she also can take the bus and get here at 804,
but you're still feeling respected.
Um I think where it gets really tricky is when a wrong has clearly been done,
right?
If you are living in a,
in a verbally abusive environment or if you have a boss that's just incredibly toxic because I think,
(51:29):
I think your brain has to hold both thoughts for a moment that you want to have resolution and you want to move forward.
But there is also this wrong that has been done.
And you have to acknowledge that before you're able to move forward.
My son,
when he was younger,
I remember he fell and scraped his knee,
right and it was bleeding and it was all dirty and I was kind of busy.
(51:50):
And so I,
I just rushed and I grabbed the Neosporin and the antiseptic and washed it off.
Put this little Wonder Woman band aid on it and we ran out the door and I could tell like physically he felt better,
but he's just kind of down the rest of the day.
A couple of weeks later,
same thing follow scrapes his knee.
I had more time.
I rush over.
I grab him.
I hold,
I'm like,
oh buddy,
I'm so sorry.
(52:11):
That must have been really scary.
I can tell this really hurts you.
And what was so interesting was after being validated after he knew that what happened to him was wrong,
right?
That is so important for our psyche and for our worldview for the wrongs to be identified.
They can't be dismissed because then it starts,
it does,
it does funny things to our brain because in our brain states thing,
(52:31):
our brain says,
oh wait,
like you're accepting,
being treated this way,
you're accepting that this is how the world is that people are just mean to you and they can get away with it.
Oh,
ok.
Well,
uh Claire,
I thought that,
that you deserved better.
But now that I know that this is what you will accept.
Now,
I will lower my standards.
We don't want that to happen in your brain.
Right?
(52:51):
And we have to identify and acknowledge the wrongs.
When somebody does something wrong,
it has to be acknowledged.
It has to be called out.
That person might be able to hear it.
They might not,
we might have to find another avenue,
might have to journal,
it might have to go to a therapist.
You might have to just continue to document everything or go to hr but there has to be some point where you can express this was wrong and have that wrong be validated.
(53:15):
It's only after that,
that a person is able to move into.
Now,
how can we talk about resolution?
How can we talk about the next steps?
Right?
It was it only after hugging my son that then he could take a breath and he knew how to take care of himself.
Then right?
Then he walked into the bathroom,
he got the neosporin,
he got his Wonder Woman band aid and he was ok.
But first he needed that moment in his brain where he said this is wrong.
(53:39):
I'm not supposed to be in pain.
I need you to tell me that I'm going to be ok.
And that,
that's an abnormal situation.
That's such a great example.
We have to deal with what has happened so that we can move forward.
And sometimes we fall in the trap of just replaying those tapes over and over.
And that's a lot of times because we don't know how to have this conversation.
(54:00):
So we don't have the support or the organizational um yeah,
the organizational support or just the internal support.
And,
but we can't just say,
ok,
we're not going to talk about the past.
Let's just move forward because people need to be heard and it,
I think it is tricky for a variety of reasons.
As you mentioned,
sometimes crimes have been committed against people some things and,
(54:23):
and even then,
you know,
sometimes the perpetrator does not apologize.
And so we still though need that that wrong to be validated that it was a wrong.
But we may again,
if we're in this is still strict positional that I will only get it.
If this person says it in this way,
then we are setting ourselves up for failure and realizing that we just need it acknowledged and there's a variety of ways in which that can happen.
(54:45):
Yeah.
Right now in the workplace,
they're saying that they think about seven out of 10 employees have experienced a trauma that was so severe that it has changed,
their behavior has changed their identity,
changed their sense of worldview.
Um,
they are saying that on average,
they think people are spending about 35% of their working day thinking about conflicts,
(55:06):
replaying them,
replaying conversations in their head or I wish I had said it this way or I'm going to tweak this email because I'm afraid of how it's going to be perceived.
About 35%.
Uh,
in 2023 the most expense,
the,
the largest expense to the US workforce wasn't smoking,
obesity,
cancer,
everything that it has been before it was mental health.
(55:29):
And if this is all coming from,
we are just not in a culture that encourages speaking to each other that encourages,
hey,
you did something that was wrong and it really hurt me and I need to be able to talk about it and we think I can just stuff it down,
right.
But it's like it's like people are holding a balloon,
right?
A balloon filled with air and I'm just,
(55:50):
I am trying to squish it and squish it,
but it's kind of squish out.
Right.
It's gonna find some way to squish out and the ways that it's squishing out are people are feeling burnt out.
People are quite quitting.
People are feeling discouraged.
Um Again,
35% of their day,
they're replaying those conversations and those pains in their head.
Instead of taking the few hours with a manager,
(56:13):
with a mediator,
with a counselor,
with somebody to say we have to talk about this because this was not OK,
it needs to be addressed and then my brain is free to start moving into the healing place.
That's an amazing statistic.
And I'm glad that you shared it because I was thinking about as you were talking about the conflict um uh with,
with your colleague.
(56:35):
And I can imagine somebody saying,
gosh,
that just gonna take a lot of time.
I don't have that time.
And I would say,
well,
you,
you can't afford the other.
You're already spending all this time.
We don't,
we just don't recognize it because it was on the calendar for two or three hours or an all day mediation.
We think,
oh my gosh,
all that time and money because we don't,
it's the iceberg.
(56:56):
We don't see,
we don't see the real cost of conflict,
which is just astronomical to organizations,
to physical and mental health,
right?
To families,
right?
Because you bring it home and it,
it trickles down.
If you're not dealing with that tension in the workplace,
it's just like a waterfall,
it's going to trickle down and that means it usually comes out on your partner or your kids.
(57:18):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There,
thank you so much for writing this book and for staying with it and for 10 years and adding to it,
I recommend this to everyone.
There'll be a link wherever you find this podcast.
So what is one takeaway?
You want our listeners to have they read this book.
Uh They'll get all these,
all this wonderful helpful information.
But can you give us one takeaway for them?
(57:39):
Absolutely.
That you deserve peace,
that you deserve growth.
And we think I'm being the better person and being the honorable person by not saying anything.
No,
you just,
you absolutely deserve better than that.
You deserve to be at peace with your coworkers,
with your family,
with your kids and having one conversation that might be a little hard.
(58:03):
It does amazing things.
It opens up the relationship.
It creates hope in your brain.
It helps you to grow as a person and you're modeling the kind of behavior that you want everyone around you.
And you're also telling your brain,
I knew I deserved better.
I knew I was worth it.
So instead of just writing it on funny little Facebook meme or a post it note on your mirror,
(58:24):
actually do it,
actually get out there and have the hard conversation because you deserve it.
That's wonderful.
Well,
thank you Clare so much for being on Conflict Managed and um it's been such,
I've been enjoying your book so much and I appreciate all the work that you've put into it.
Oh,
thank you.
This was wonderful,
Merry.
I just want to sit and talk with you the rest of the day.
(58:46):
Well,
take care.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You too,
Clare.
Thank you so much for being on Conflict Managed.
I just absolutely enjoyed our time together.
And your book.
You can see.
Well,
if you're just listening,
you can't see all my little tabs.
It's really a wonderful book.
I highly recommend it.
It's just very practical and Clare's voice as you could hear,
(59:06):
just comes through the pages.
Find it on Amazon and the book is Rising Above Office Conflict,
a lighthearted guide for the heavyhearted employee.
And Clare is gonna be,
um,
giving away one of her books,
autographing it to a lucky listener.
So listeners,
if you would email me at 3PConflictRestoration@gmail.com,
(59:30):
that's 3PConflictrestoration@gmail.com.
You can email me and you can enter into getting a free copy of the book and I'll send that information over to,
to Clare. Conflict Managed is produced by Third Party Workplace Conflict Restoration Services and hosted by me, 00:59:47,149 --> 00:59:47,979 Merry Brown.
You can find us online at 3PConflictRestoration.com.
(59:51):
Come back next week.
We have new episodes every Tuesday and I hope to continue to do this format every once in a while talking to an author about her.
book,
our music is courtesy of Dove Pilot and remember,
conflict is normal and to be expected.
Let's deal with it until next time.
Take care.
(01:00:20):
So.
All right.
This is all right.
I got it.
I do wraps now.
Get a sound side uptight,
Jack asking questions.
(00:25):
So welcome to Conflict Managed.
I'm your host,
Merry Brown.
This week we're doing something different.
We were talking to Dr. Clare Fowler about her new book Rising Above Office Conflict,
a lighthearted guide for the heavyhearted employee.
Dr Clare Fowler was initially introduced into conflict resolution in a peer mediation course in the third grade and has been studying it ever since she received her master's degree and doctorate in workplace Mediation from Pepperdine University.
(00:56):
She's an adjunct professor at the University of Oregon School of Law and mediates workplace disputes.
She is also the executive vice President at mediate.com.
She believes that people want to resolve their own conflict.
They just need the right tools.
Her new book,
which we're going to be talking about today.
Rising Above Office Conflict.
A lighthearted guide for the heavyhearted employee offers step by step advice that empowers readers to understand and overcome the conflicts they face at work.
(01:22):
Building on 20 years of mediating workplace disputes.
Clare brings practical tools for resolving conflicts right into the employee's hands with a humorous and engaging approach.
This book is for everyone frustrated at work.
Good morning Clare and welcome to Conflict Managed.
Oh,
good morning.
Thank you so much,
Merry.
I'm excited to be here.
I've been really looking forward to our conversation.
(01:44):
This is a first for Conflict Managed.
We've had over 100 episodes,
but this is the first time that we are focusing in on an author's book.
And so today we are going to be talking about Clare because I know that you all like to listen and hear about people's experiences in the workplace.
But we're going to specifically be talking about her book Rising Above Office Conflict,
a lighthearted guide for the heavyhearted employee.
(02:07):
Congratulations on this wonderful insightful,
delightful book to read.
Oh,
thank you.
It's,
it's very exciting to be at this end of it.
Absolutely.
So I just want to start before we get into your book.
Can you tell us just a little bit about your work experience?
And the first thing I'd like to find out is what is the first job you ever had as a young person?
(02:30):
Oh,
great questions.
So,
um work history.
Uh I've pretty much been doing mediation almost all my life.
Uh When I was in third grade,
I took a pure mediation course and I was hooked.
So I've been studying conflict resolution ever since.
Went on to get my undergrad,
master's doctorate.
And um,
(02:52):
and I grew up in a very uh in a very academic household.
Um,
my father,
uh who's an author,
um Ken Kesey.
So he,
he liked to write books that really pushed the boundaries and he liked to make up new words and new sentence styles.
And I think I,
I absorbed quite a bit of that from him and he wanted to push against the grain in a way where he really connected with people.
(03:17):
And I guess that was,
that was my goal in writing this as well.
I,
there are some fantastic academic books out there that have already been written that described the conflict resolution process,
but they've already been written,
I didn't need to write that book.
What I wanted was to write something that,
that pushed the grain a little bit.
So I think again,
I think I,
(03:38):
I,
I absorbed a lot of that thinking without realizing being around him.
And then my mother was a researcher and a teacher.
And so it was just fun to always be talking about these new ideas and pushing them and thinking about what is the application of this?
My first actual job was a job shadow with Hewlett Packard.
(03:58):
And I was one of the people down in the basement where a board would slide across.
And then I had this little tiny welding gun and I would push down on it and then I would slide the board to the next person and I was just part of an assembly line.
But I have to say I learned so much about management and leadership from that experience because the management,
right,
everybody on the top floor,
(04:19):
they made such an effort to connect with everyone.
So as an example,
every Wednesday morning,
the management,
all the CCC Sweet employees had this little breakfast cart and they would wheel it around to everyone and say,
oh,
good morning chocolate.
I saved your favorite bagel for you.
Oh,
hey,
Claire,
I see.
You're new here here.
Do you wanna try some donuts or we have a breakfast burrito?
(04:39):
And they would just spend a few hours every Wednesday connecting with everyone.
And it,
it made such an impact on me that even though they were down in the basement doing the most boring job possible,
but we all felt so appreciated and a vital part of the company.
And that really stuck with me too that if management values and empowers all their employees,
(05:00):
like even if the,
even if the dumbest job,
you can love it and be incredibly happy and feel fulfilled with what you're doing.
That is,
that's amazing.
I mean,
what a wonderful mentoring opportunity and just like what is leadership,
right?
Leadership is not just being strategic,
but it is speaking into the lives of others.
(05:21):
And if you have the people in the basement,
feeling empowered and seen,
you know,
as we know so much about our enjoyment of a job and how engaged we are,
has to do with how we feel about our environment?
Are we being seen?
Are we being treated well?
Is there a possibility to voice a concern?
Right.
The psychological safety we want.
(05:41):
That is,
that's a beautiful story.
That's wonderful.
Thank you.
Yeah,
it was,
it was a fantastic experience.
I'm also interested in coming across mediation in third grade.
So,
so tell us about your third grade self and what that was like.
Um most of the time it was just me and my mom and my mom had grown up in a typical 19 fifties household where everything had to be just perfect and the sandwiches were cut just so and any kind of an issue,
(06:06):
you just swept it under the rug and you didn't talk about it because conflicts were scary and that could imply that you had made a mistake or you were less than perfect or it could blow up and have nasty unforeseen results.
So we just didn't deal with it.
I remember it was,
it was so eye opening.
I'm sitting in this classroom and we,
we did these little play pretend scenarios and it was something like Susie stole Billy's jacket.
(06:31):
And then we,
we walked through these little pretend mediations and we had Susie and Billy sit down and talk with each other and it was just that light bulb moment where it was like,
wait a minute,
we can talk about conflicts and still be friends and the earth keeps spinning.
This is incredible.
And what I have to say that this is kind of cheesy.
But what has been,
(06:53):
what has been so rewarding in this field is that the more I lean into it,
the more those light bulbs go off.
In other words,
the more I see the magic of it that this stuff actually works.
Like it's,
it's just so great to see when people communicate with each other and they feel safe enough to share their ideas and then they listen to the other person's ideas and they respect and they listen and they forgive and they apologize and they heal that relationships improve.
(07:22):
It's,
it,
it's just a,
it's,
I feel like we're so lucky to get to be in this field where it's powerful and it works right.
It's,
we're not,
we're not like selling snake oil here or some kind of a placebo worth.
We actually get to do something that is legitimately helping people's lives.
And again,
I see that more and more and more as I'm working with employees who are just who are shattered or managers who are feeling completely hopeless.
(07:50):
And then you start to teach them this really basic stuff and it works and you start to see their lives turn around.
I love it.
I love it.
It is so true.
I mean,
we come across people who are,
as you said,
shattered,
demoralized and hopeless.
There's all this despair and what I love about your book is that it is about personal empowerment.
And I see that that is what conflict resolution is about showing people.
(08:13):
There's another way and the other way is so simple as you highlight continually.
It's have that conversation,
listen to that other person partner for a resolution.
And if we do those simple steps,
then we are able to get to the other side.
There is something better.
Uh 11 thing that you say in your book,
(08:34):
which I just think is so wonderful is that brownies don't get better over time,
but there's,
there's some cooking in there.
You have a wonderful brownie recipe at the end.
But,
but this idea that some things when we,
they see like fine wine or spaghetti sauce,
maybe the better the next day,
not conflict,
right?
The longer you wait,
(08:55):
it's not impossible but the harder it is to get that sort of uh res resolution restoration and moving forward.
Mhm Yeah.
And I work with so many companies where employees didn't want to address the conflict when it was little because they didn't want to be seen as difficult or somebody who's making a mountain out of a molehill or somebody who can't handle things that are hard and they're so afraid of that image that they just let this stuff go.
(09:24):
And unfortunately,
the more they let it go,
the more they are enabling people around them to have pretty nasty behaviors.
The more that they are saying they are ok with it.
And the more,
unfortunately they're gaslighting themselves because their brain is screaming and saying,
wait,
Mary,
I thought you wanted to be treated better than this.
But they just keep,
(09:44):
they just keep accepting more and more and more of these negative behaviors until eventually they're like the frog sitting in water that just keeps getting turned up and turned up and turned up until eventually they're sitting in a pot of boiling water saying how the heck did I get here?
And,
and I allowed myself to put up with this and I just sit with managers and employees like how come you didn't address this when this was just a tiny seed like we can still handle this.
(10:08):
But now we're surrounded by this huge forest.
So it's going to take a lot of work to change those habits and,
and do some pretty emotional healing and dealing with this trauma when this really could have been solved if we would just have had a conversation a year ago.
Yeah,
that's hard.
Yeah,
I,
I hear exactly what you're saying and I see it echoed so much that I don't want to be perceived as difficult.
(10:31):
I don't want to be perceived as incompetent.
I don't wanna come to the manager who says,
solve your own problems and yet I don't know how because this is one basic skill we don't give people.
It's a basic skill.
I think a akin to being able to swim.
It's,
you know,
the,
the swimming of relationship if we don't know how to have difficult conversations because we,
(10:54):
we will have difficult situations that is a given,
right?
I think you can evade taxes.
But I say,
I think it should be conflict and death.
The things we can't avoid conflict is normal and a part of our experiences and certainly our work life,
why would we not give them these basic tools so that they can deal with conflict early,
often swiftly and justly in the beginning.
(11:17):
Yeah,
I'm so glad that you brought that up because there are,
again,
there's a lot of companies that I work with or a lot of parents and families or relationships around me that say we just have to get through this one hard thing and then everything will be fine.
Like my kids have to deal with something hard right now and that's why they're being so grumpy or that's why they're being disrespectful or my partner is having this really hard time at work.
(11:38):
But as soon as they get past that everything will be fine.
And,
and I have to say that that really makes me nervous because our mental health is not based on everything being free and easy,
right?
Our mental health is actually the opposite.
Our,
our mental health comes from realizing that we can do hard things.
(12:01):
It's just knowing that we have the tools and feeling prepared and then feeling proud of ourselves.
Once we work through it,
there's uh a lot of exercise gurus have been touting these hope molecules.
Have you heard of it?
Ok.
So,
um so they're fun.
The idea here is that if you look at a weight,
let's say it's £20 and you haven't been able to lift it,
(12:22):
but you keep trying and you keep trying and one day you get to the gym and you struggle and you struggle and you did it and you lift that £25 weight and you're so proud of yourself.
What happens is your body produces these mayo canes,
right?
And there are these hope molecules and they tell you that look at you,
you can do hard things,
this thing that you thought you couldn't do before you can now do and you are bettering yourself and you are improving and you are a strong person who can handle hard things and that's what creates hope in the brain.
(12:52):
It's not,
oh,
I just didn't lift weights at all because it seemed hard.
It's there is this hard thing and I tackled it and I lived through it and I think that that's why I think this is one of the big reasons,
obviously,
not the only reason,
but I think it's one of the big reasons why we're seeing such a mental health epidemic in the workplace is because managers are trying to avoid anything that could be offensive where somebody might have a hard conversation where somebody might feel challenged or they might feel critiqued in any way.
(13:24):
So anything that feels uncomfortable,
managers are trying to avoid and get those hard rocks out of the way without realizing that by removing those hard rocks,
people don't realize they can climb over them and then feel very proud of themselves.
Like just because I'm not getting along with someone,
it doesn't mean that you move them to another department.
It means you give me the skills to figure out how to have a conversation with them and get along with them.
(13:48):
And now my brain has hope and now my mental health is restored.
That's such an excellent point because we,
we are today,
we talk a lot about emotional intelligence and emotional development and but how do we develop?
Right?
You don't just get it,
get resilience because you say that's the new word of the day and I'm going to have compassion or empathy.
We get it through going through experiences and,
(14:11):
and we need mentors and we need space and we need grace and training and all of these things in the workplace.
So that as you said,
you know,
how do we develop any sort of good habit is by doing it?
And then we get,
it's just amazing how do I get confidence?
We'll do something small,
get a little bit and then build and get a little bit.
(14:31):
So this conflict capacity,
the ability to do difficult things or what you think is difficult,
grows and develops as you do difficult things.
But as I sit here on my chair and I think I'm gonna run a five K and I haven't ever run.
Right.
Of course,
you're not going to be able to do it.
It,
it's,
it's too big of a lofty goal.
How do I have the confidence?
(14:53):
Well,
not by going out and running a five K,
it's by training and developing.
And when I think you're absolutely right,
when we sanitize the work environment or sanitize anything that is difficult,
we are enabling uh stunted growth.
We are encouraging people not to have independence,
(15:14):
not to be empowered and not to have emotional maturity.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I,
I appreciate that example of couch to five K.
And when you're sitting on a couch,
the idea of running A five K might seem impossible,
but it's absolutely possible if you can break it down into little steps.
And that's,
that was really my goal in writing the book that there are amazing books out there that are describing the five K process.
(15:40):
But there just aren't a lot of books that begin at the couch stage.
My husband was coming home from work and he,
he'd be complaining about this worker or this manager or this vendor and oh such a micro manager,
this one won't stop talking or this one is so disrespectful and inappropriate when we have clients coming in and I would look at all of my books.
(16:00):
Right.
It probably looks just like your bookshelf behind you everything for my masters and my doctorate and these amazing books and they're just what he needs,
but he's not gonna read them.
Right.
That's,
he's not gonna sit down and open up like Christopher Moore's,
the mediation process,
which I think is around 600 pages and it's incredible.
Right.
(16:20):
Um,
so I,
so I guess that's really what prompted this was after a mediation.
So I was writing this book over the course of about 10 years after a mediation.
If I was dealing with some kind of a behavior that my husband was describing and was frustrated about,
then I would just start journaling my ideas like,
(16:41):
oh,
this is something that seemed to work or I tried this and this didn't work.
And I'm really lucky because I do workplace mediation that I get to come back and visit the workplace about every 4 to 8 weeks.
So then I was really able to have that feedback to see what techniques were working and just simply what wasn't and what needed to be tweaked.
So that's where I started taking notes on this.
(17:03):
And again,
at first,
it was just,
hey,
hubby,
I hear what you're saying.
I just want to offer you some kind of a guidebook or suggestions,
you know,
because husbands love it when we do that,
when we tell them what to.
Um,
so I wanted to offer him some kind of a guidebook and then as more and more friends were complaining about their workplace,
it's like,
you know,
maybe I could turn this into something that's a little bit,
a little bit more official where more people could,
(17:26):
could have these ideas and have something that was easily digestible to just say I'm,
I'm sitting on my conflict couch right now and I just can't envision how I could possibly get to the five K stage.
Right.
Right now I'm at the place where I,
I hate my boss.
I'm ready to quit.
I can't imagine actually feeling empowered and having peace at work.
So,
(17:46):
yeah.
So I wanted to just break it out.
What are the simple steps that can get us from one to the other?
Well,
I think that you absolutely succeeded in this book.
Uh And I think it's interesting that you said it took you 10 years because I say this in the best possible way.
It feels like it,
it feels what I love about the book is that it's so readable and relatable.
And I have all these academic books.
(18:07):
I love a good academic read,
but I really love practical books as well because conflict is always in the concrete,
particular practitioners need to read the academic work that,
you know,
that,
that kind of rubric,
but everyday people need.
Well,
OK,
what about me?
Now?
How do I do this hard thing.
And the way,
so your book is eminently conversational.
(18:29):
It pulls you in all these different wonderful examples which I think goes to that 10 years.
It's like,
it's marinated in that good way where you've got all these wonderful examples that you can get your mind around.
But what I really love is part one says behaviors that aren't as awesome as ours.
And a lot of times when we,
I think are caught in conflict,
we just lump in this person who I'm having a problem with and me instead of really taking a moment and saying,
(18:55):
but what is it about that person that I'm having a difficulty with?
And,
and you have all of these different ways in which people tend to present in a work environment.
But I love it also because we can turn the gaze on ourselves.
How are other people seeing the way that I show up at work?
Right.
Right.
Oh,
(19:15):
that's,
and that's tough,
especially for somebody who's really hurting or if somebody is having a really hard time,
I understand that they might not be able to do this initially.
But once someone begins to feel validated and they begin to feel safe,
then I agree.
I think that's the,
that's the biggest benefit of conflict is that it does shine a,
(19:35):
it's like a mirror back on yourself.
What is it about me that's triggering this person or that's why am I being triggered so much?
I do a lot of talks on the thunder turtle syndrome,
right?
Where,
um,
you have one person who's thundering and their response to conflict is more of a fight response and they're avoiding it,
but they're avoiding it by just shouting in order and closing down any kind of a conversation and then running away,
(19:59):
like,
oh,
the report has to be done Monday at nine bam and they're out the door.
And so that's a typical thunder response.
A turtle response is more where I'm just avoiding it.
Right.
If there's,
if there's something painful or,
or something that feels a little traumatic,
our brain twists it and that's where a lot of these behaviors come from and we do everything we can.
It's like our brain is playing,
the floor is lava to try to avoid this hotspot.
(20:21):
And so our brains turtle and we just kind of hide underneath it and we retreat within our shell and we ignore,
we pretend it's not there.
So,
I,
it's funny,
I'm,
I'm definitely a turtle,
right?
I,
I love discussing conflict and I,
I've gotten better at it,
but I think a lot of it was because it's not something that comes naturally to me.
Right?
(20:41):
I really had to study and learn how to do this for myself.
So by nature,
I'm a turtle and,
and I give talks on this all the time.
Here's what thunder turtle,
thunder looks like.
Here's how we can break the cycle in your workplace.
Here's how both people can feel empowered.
So I was working a few years ago with uh Dan Burstein.
He's a mental health professional and he mentioned that he felt like a couple of the articles on my website might,
(21:08):
might be tweaked or they could be misinterpreted in a way where it could cause bias at the initial intake phase of the mediation.
And I told him I'd think about it and I'd research it and I started looking into it,
but he wanted an answer immediately.
And so he's,
he became much more aggressive.
We've had lots and lots of talks about this and we've done presentations on this.
(21:29):
So I feel like I'm free to share this.
So he became,
he became a Thunderer Claire.
You have to pull those articles off of the website by 8 a.m. tomorrow or I'm suing your company,
right?
Became very,
very aggressive.
And I turtled.
I completely turtled.
He kept sending me these emails and I would wait a few days and then maybe send him like a one word response or I would forward it to somebody else or I'd see that he was calling and,
(21:51):
and I,
I was sitting giving this presentation about thunder turtle syndrome when it just hit me across the head.
I was like,
oh dang it like everything that I'm telling everybody not to do.
I've been doing it without even realizing it and it was hard and it was embarrassing and I had to call him down and I apologized and I cried and he cried.
(22:13):
And what has been so great about that was,
it was really eye opening for me to realize that my typical response to that type of a personality was I was just turtle and it,
and I kept blaming it on them like they're turtle or they're being a thunderer because they don't have good emotional regulation or they haven't dealt with their,
(22:34):
their anger or right.
And I'm completely blaming it on them,
right?
Typical fundamental attribution error and it's their fault and I'm doing everything right without realizing Dan was just as frustrated as I was because he was trying to right a wrong,
he was trying to fix something and the more I was twirling within my shell,
the more Dan just wanted to be heard and he was getting louder and louder to try to be heard and to try to get through my shell.
(22:58):
And it was,
it was,
it's tough,
it was really hard to realize I had a part to play in that.
But again,
it,
it took about a year.
We had all these good conversations,
we apologized,
we forgave,
we heal,
we set up very healthy boundaries and we learned how to respect each other.
And it required a little bit of growth and bravery from me to be able to handle some of those louder conversations and also be able to figure out.
(23:23):
OK,
we're now reaching one of my boundaries.
This is now starting to feel a little bit too intense or it's starting to be a deluge of too much information.
I need to set a boundary here and Dan has done all this great emotional intelligence work as well.
And now he's become really good at saying,
OK,
I see it,
Claire,
I can tell you you wanna retreat back into your shell,
so I'm gonna back off until you feel safe enough again to come out.
(23:46):
And it's,
it's tough,
right?
It's,
it's,
it's tough work,
but it's so great to feel now like I can be around those personalities and not just run into my shell but be able to,
to hang there and feel safe and get to know a new group of people that before I always would have just written off in a work environment.
I mean that that is our reality.
(24:07):
We have all these different kinds of personalities and I think sometimes when people get into conflict resolution by the,
by the,
by the time they say,
ok,
I need some help and they're in mediation or something else like that,
we have villainized the other party.
It's their fault and they need to change their behavior.
I think one of the the wonderful benefits of going through something like mediation is that in internal gaze and starting to see,
(24:30):
ok,
yes,
this is how you have been harmed and this is the behaviors that you would like to have changed,
what,
what is going on in this dynamic.
And so once we're able to start to see ourselves,
we start to see it's always going to be me.
Right.
I,
because I can't change anybody else's behavior,
I cannot mandate that they apologize or have a lobotomy,
(24:54):
totally different personality.
And certainly in a work environment changing people's personalities is,
um,
it's not what we ought to be up to.
But as you say in your book,
the problem is the problem,
not the person.
And in so far as we focus on problematic behaviors and we have codes of civility in the work environment,
(25:15):
then I can also see,
ok,
this is the code.
When am I not living up to it or when does somebody think that I'm being too loud in my volume?
Um,
and we can have these conversations that aren't so heated because we have the standard and we could talk about behaviors without talking about the people.
Yeah.
(25:36):
Yeah.
I,
I tell a story in my book about,
I was working with a company and there is this one woman who kept saying we need to update the website,
we need to focus on the website and everyone kept saying,
oh,
why are you making it so difficult?
How come you keep harping on the website?
Because everybody else,
they were thinking the same way.
They,
they liked the website exactly how it was eventually.
(25:58):
They realized,
oh my gosh,
this website is horrible.
We're losing a lot of sales because of it.
We actually do need to update the website and they came and apologized to her.
And I think what,
what that is showing to me is that we are starting to have much more awareness in the workplace around diversity in terms of things that might be easier to see in the gender age,
(26:20):
ethnicity,
um sexuality.
A right?
All of these other pieces.
And,
and so I'm so glad that we are starting to encourage and be more intentional about diversity there.
But I think what it really comes down to in order for different people to feel safe and encouraged and welcomed is that there has to be that initial welcoming of diversity of thought and in a workplace you don't want everybody to be exactly like you.
(26:48):
Right?
Because then you're kind of redundant,
you can be kicked out the door.
So it,
it would be much simpler.
I wouldn't have to have any problems or arguments if everyone thought the exact same way I did.
But then where is the richness?
Where's the development?
Where's the depth?
Whereas encouraging new ideas and some of them might challenge me and I might have to accept ideas that that weren't mine and that's very hard.
(27:15):
But I feel like the more we can encourage that diversity of thought at such a basic level saying no,
we do want to bring in all of these ideas because it makes us better as a company then that just naturally flows out to saying and that's what will um that's what will make our,
our company more diverse,
right?
(27:35):
That's what encourages de I is if it begins at that basic level where we say no,
I really do want to hear what you have to say because it's different than what I am thinking as you were talking.
I was thinking about how,
you know,
change management change is the name of the game.
And technology really shows us that because technology is always changing.
And in so far as we want to be relevant,
(27:57):
then we need to change with it,
change can be difficult.
But if we start expecting change,
that means our workforce is going to change whether it's the people actually change or the people,
uh we get new people and you know,
and some people leave new people come,
this is just always the name of the game.
And so I love that example that you used earlier of we think,
(28:19):
oh,
our kid just needs to get through this problem and then it's smooth sailing as if that's the goal.
Now,
we love those,
those,
those periods of peace and stability.
Absolutely needed.
We need to recoup.
And I have seen businesses that burn out their employees and even their customers by constantly the new thing,
constantly,
the new thing and it's,
(28:40):
it's overwhelming,
right?
And So there's that sweet spot of,
I don't go through this change in the website and now we're done because it will never be done.
And if we're going to,
I'm not going to get through this conflict to be done.
But maybe if we develop these skills,
we're going to be able to see the price of the conflict,
which is better products,
(29:01):
better services belonging,
getting the benefits of de I,
but that's only if we decide to accept reality,
which is change and conflict.
They're not,
they're not adversaries,
they're great.
I divided the book up.
So the first half is assessment.
(29:23):
Let's understand it.
Let's be able to diagnose this figure out what's going on.
Um Was there some kind of a trauma involved?
Is that why these behaviors are exhibiting?
Is,
are you reacting to something?
Right?
Do you need to look internally to figure out what's causing this?
So the first half is assessment.
The second half is action and I talk a lot about change management and just like you were saying that we can think about change management in two ways.
(29:49):
One can be to resolve an immediate short term problem,
but the other can be just this mindset that we do want to be a learning organization that's opening,
that's open to continually changing and continually improving.
And I,
I like this image of a stair step that we're constantly trying to get to this place where our products are better we're reaching out to new employees or to new customers,
(30:14):
our employees are,
are feeling even more appreciated.
And so I,
I like this image where there is this period where you're pushing up,
right?
Where things are hard and you feel like you're,
you're rolling the,
the stone uphill and that's exhausting and that's hard because change can be difficult.
Absolutely.
Right.
That's one of the most exhausting things in our brain.
They say that our,
our brain when it's going through times of change or things that are hard or we have to learn new things that that's burning 25% of our calories during the day because it is exhausting for your brain to work that hard.
(30:45):
I get that.
So that to me is the uphill part of the stair where you're going through change or you're going through conflict or learning something new.
But then there has to be that smooth part of the step as well where you can celebrate your victories where you can take that time for mental health.
And this is also necessary for a neuroplasticity when we're learning something new.
(31:05):
And those um tho those dendrites reach out and they form the new synapses.
This is a beautiful,
it's a beautiful thing that happens in our brain where we realize,
oh,
I can deal with this kind of a personality or I can forgive them or I can see them in a new light,
right?
When those new connections happen in our brain.
That's great.
But then our brains need that smooth sailing time for a little bit for everything else to kind of settle around that new thought because if not,
(31:32):
it's just going to feel like an outlier.
But after uh after mediation,
after a change,
after we resolved a conflict,
but our brain needs that makeup time,
right?
It needs that feeling of peace at least for a few weeks,
if not a few months.
So everything else can kind of settle.
And that new thought starts to form our worldview.
It starts to,
to change our identity and then we're gonna hit another stare right where we have to go up and we have to deal with something else.
(31:58):
So you're right.
It has to be that,
that it's normalized instead of being like,
oh no,
we hit one bump.
This is,
we must have done something wrong.
That's a really great analogy.
I like thinking about it like that because we need both right growth development um being better tomorrow than we are today personally,
professionally,
(32:18):
our organizations,
how do we achieve that?
We need both,
right?
Sort of that.
The Ying and the Yang,
the push and the pool,
right?
And stability is wonderful.
But if we're just trying to achieve stability,
which means homeostasis where nothing ever changes,
we're actually going to get change,
but it's going to be um unraveling because we don't live in the past,
(32:43):
we always live in the present and the present is always going forward,
right?
And so very important to have both.
Yeah.
Yeah,
that's great.
I'm,
I'm interested,
you mentioned that you're in the middle of a philosophy class.
And um,
and of course,
I tried to keep the book pretty simple and pretty practical,
but I think it is impossible to discuss conflict resolution and these concepts of growth and being intentional about facing conflict without there being some kind of an overlap of,
(33:13):
of philosophy and understanding that there is a bigger picture here that I'm trying to achieve a bigger goal instead of just trying to,
to crush this one conflict and get that out of my way.
Yeah,
I think that in the book,
you do such a wonderful job.
I,
so I've taught for a long time and I'm really interested in accessibility of material uh because what is the point of having this big theory if it doesn't have any practical import or it's just convoluted?
(33:41):
One thing I think is absolutely unique about your book.
I have not read any place else is that you tackle difficult issues today such as feminine and the masculine.
I think a lot of books suffer from.
I mean,
first of all,
I think it is the case that we're all part of the human community and that is very important and we have brains and we have there's a certain sorts of behaviors and yet there is something to the feminine way and the masculine way and those things are,
(34:12):
I,
I was just telling you before we started recording that,
I've been teaching the ethics of care and my ethics courses right now,
which is a feminist ethic by Carol Gilligan.
And she,
she sums up the basic moral attitudes between men and women is that the masculine is interested in the ethics of justice.
And the feminine is interested in the ethics of care and we ought not preference one over the other,
but we need both ways of thinking.
(34:35):
And it's not that women aren't interested in justice and it's not that men aren't interested in care.
But typically,
what happens is when we don't recognize differences,
the male ends up being the standard.
And that has been the case through all of I know Western philosophy for all of Western philosophy,
the male has been the standard and anything else is a deviation.
And so you pick up very nicely.
(34:56):
And I think just about every chapter how this presents itself,
conflict presents itself for the feminine.
Again,
please,
listeners don't hear and Claire certainly isn't doing this and neither am I the strict binaries that to be a man is to act this way and to be a woman is to act this way 100% not.
And yet I think it's a disservice to not recognize the masculine and the feminine as one thing that you point out and maybe you could talk about this,
(35:19):
this difference between um rapport and report and the masculine and the feminine.
Could you talk about that?
Absolutely.
Thank you.
When I was initially writing the book and I sent it to the publishers and I met with a reviewer afterwards and he said,
hey,
in this one chapter,
you talk about the impact on or,
or the different approaches,
(35:40):
that one is feminine and one is masculine.
And he said I would rather that you just lump them all together into one approach.
And it didn't sit right and it took me a few months to figure out why that wasn't sitting right.
And it was when I,
I had to help out at a daycare and I was watching these kids grab all of the play doh and they had all these beautiful canisters with all these like gorgeous colors and they just kept mushing and mushing them together and there were little kids are like mushing them in the carpet and every and it just became this gross brown and it was like the color of refried beans and it took all the beauty out of it to lump everything together as if that,
(36:20):
that hot pink wasn't gorgeous on its own or the turquoise blue or the neon green.
Those were so beautiful when they were distinct.
And so I,
I really rebelled and instead of taking it out of that one chapter,
I added it to every single chapter.
No,
we need to talk about this,
we need to talk about.
There are a variety of pro of approaches and I want to put out all of these different approaches and some of them,
(36:47):
yes are what we would call very stereotypical feminine approaches.
Some are stereotypical masculine approaches.
Some are no non binary approaches.
And I think that what makes us all so unique and wonderful is that we do get to pick from every bucket,
right?
I get to say in this situation,
I want to try this response and it's from a stereotypical masculine approach.
(37:08):
But it's because in this situation,
I need to feel a sense of respect.
Whereas in this situation,
I might need to feel a sense of I am accepted and I am and I am appreciated.
So then I would pick from a more feminine bucket because there are all of these different responses that are,
that are beautiful and I don't want to try to lump them all into one thing like this is the one perfect way they right.
(37:32):
This is this is the one resolution to rule them all.
No,
absolutely not because you and I are completely different right there.
You and I are going to respond different ways and different in different situations and sometimes it's going to take a softer approach.
So the other person feels a little safer and sometimes it needs to take a much braver approach because I need to make sure that I'm feeling heard and respected.
(37:54):
And so I want people to walk away from the book feeling like they have a full toolbox and some of the tools might be pink and some might be blue and some might be purple and some might be the color of refried beans.
But I want people to feel like they're reading through all of these different options and they start to,
to recognize some that really resonate with them.
right?
Something that OK,
(38:14):
I get that I can see why that has worked for other people and,
and I'm happy to try that when we talk about the brain,
you know,
or we talk about the body,
we,
we feel most of us feel like this is very abstract.
We're just talking about brains and bodies and there's something to the masculine and feminine,
feminine.
We obviously have some biological differences.
We don't feel much about that,
(38:35):
but once we start talking about characteristics,
it's,
it's a dance.
I feel I've talked about the ethics of care for a long time in my courses.
And I feel,
I feel the weight of what are the students hearing?
I don't want to misspeak,
I don't want to be misunderstood.
I don't even know some of the times how I understand these differences.
(38:56):
What is socialization,
what is biological,
what is,
what is what?
Right.
Um And so I think,
I think it's very brave and a worthwhile endeavor.
If we're trying to help people understand themselves and the other,
whoever the other is giving a variety of responses.
And I think going out on a limb and saying these are traditional feminine responses.
(39:21):
These are traditional masculine responses because what we're going to find by and large in our organizations is probably a good 80% of people in general responding in this kind of way.
And there's no reason why we need to think of these as strict binaries,
right?
People always do one way,
always do another.
And if they're presenting in something that isn't maybe commiserate with their sex,
(39:43):
they're doing something wrong or bad or unfeminine or un masculine or however it is they're presenting,
I think we're so afraid of.
Maybe I'm just talking about my own fear because I am a personal,
I'm an individualist and at the same time,
if we're trying to help people think up in general,
then it is a mercy to start doing this difficult work that quite frankly most people shy away from.
(40:08):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you remember a few years ago where people were saying,
oh,
I just went,
I'm friends with everyone and,
and I just want to accept everyone and I don't see color and then people from all different backgrounds and ethnicities and cultures said.
But then I feel like you're not seeing a major part of me,
(40:31):
like you're not understanding what my experience has been in my culture up till now.
And I think we were trying to do the same thing for a while in the workplace with gender.
So we were saying,
oh,
we have feminine workers and masculine workers and non-binary workers and transitioning workers.
And you know,
instead of acknowledging that we're just going to say we have one human worker and that's it.
(40:52):
And we just have one person showing up to work and this one situation and this one process should work for everyone.
And I think people felt so dismissed because we are bringing our backgrounds into the workplace.
Right?
There's one guy that I work with and he's,
he's 66.
And he said that by nature,
he's somebody who's really loud and energetic,
(41:15):
but he has had to completely adapt his personality in the workplace because people kept being so frightened of him just because he's bringing in so much hype and he's this,
this big person with this loud deep voice and he didn't mean to,
but he was really scaring people.
So he's,
he has adapted that.
And as he shared that story in our workshop,
(41:35):
I it was,
I can't think of a better word than transcendent.
No,
it's transformational because people could understand now why they were seeing some of these adaptations in times where he didn't feel completely authentic.
And then a woman shared her experience that um that she always felt like she had to be smaller and less than,
and closed up,
right?
And,
but button up her blouse a little bit more and wear longer skirts and,
(41:58):
and make sure that she wasn't peeing too direct when she spoke to someone because she is bringing in this,
this female body and,
and she knows that she's presenting that in the workforce.
And so she had to be very careful of that.
And as she's sharing the story again,
a lot of the men,
it was transformational for them because they didn't realize everything that she was constantly having to be aware of and juggling in meetings.
(42:22):
And I think if we try to dismiss all of that and just say,
no,
you are a human and that's all that you're allowed to be in the workforce.
You're missing the beauty,
right?
You're missing everything that people have overcome and everything they're trying to present and everything that they're trying to get from their workforce.
And again,
if we're trying to encourage diversity of thought,
we need to begin at that basic level where we say,
(42:44):
I want you to bring all of you,
right?
I want you to bring the parts of you that,
that you have had to really struggle to get here and what have you had to overcome?
Because then I get to see you as a whole person.
I want to shift off of that thought for just a second because I keep forgetting to share this.
Um There was one mediation where I did and uh this is around 2018 and it was in a,
(43:08):
a top government office and this was important.
There was a male boss and he had two female employees.
These two female employees were the best of the best in their field.
They couldn't find a job like this anywhere else in the country.
They both had multiple phd S right.
Incredibly seasoned scientist.
(43:28):
Top of the MENSA score is just incredible women.
And as an example,
one of them wrote an email to her boss saying,
oh my gosh,
I just found out about this gas leak.
It's over in Utah and it's going to affect all these people and it's going to make them sick if we don't take this immediate action.
Steps.
123,
she sends it to her boss.
Her boss,
(43:48):
very patriarchal.
Grew up in Peru,
grew up thinking that that his job was just to corral his employees.
So like this very time sensitive,
crucial emergency,
what he does is he prints out her email highlights in red pen every typo,
everything that he thought she should have worded differently,
(44:11):
went and got his assistant to walk it back to the employee and said my eyes deserve better.
Retype this and then I will read it and respond.
Wow.
Oh my goodness.
Right.
Here's this woman who is protecting the health and safety of our country and she like,
are you,
are you insane?
Really?
(44:32):
So I will be completely transparent when I say he is probably the only person that I have worked with.
So I've been mediating for about 20 years now.
He is the only person that I have worked with that I couldn't find some inner sense of,
of good or like a good justification for why he was behaving the way,
the way he was behaving.
(44:53):
So I do acknowledge that there are those people out there,
but at least in my experience,
it's about 0.0001%.
Other than that,
every single other person that I have worked with,
even if they are coming across as mean or,
or rude or callous or dismissive,
it's coming from a place of there has been some kind of a trauma or pain and this is the way that they have adapted to deal with that and to protect themselves.
(45:21):
And once we start to deal with that pain,
then you get to see this beautiful person that is hiding underneath.
And again,
the more time I spend doing this work,
the more I realize everybody that I have worked with,
except for this one singular man,
everybody else they are behaving in a way that is completely understandable.
(45:41):
It is a normal response to an abnormal situation.
They are trying their best to figure it out and they might not have done it perfectly.
But you can understand where they are coming from.
And the more I think we,
we bring that expectation into our work as mediators as conflicts,
Olivers,
as employees,
as partners.
As parents,
(46:01):
the more we bring that expectation in that this is a beautiful person that has just had to adapt and they might not have done a great job at it.
Right.
They might have,
have grabbed some behaviors that aren't that healthy or that aren't that pleasant.
It's my job to find that beautiful person underneath and help them to,
to come up with more,
more constructive,
(46:22):
more effective behaviors.
That's what I really appreciate about the first part of your book.
Um is,
that's,
I think a lot of what you're doing there.
You're,
you're helping the person caught in conflict to see the other because you don't solve a problem with a villain.
You don't solve a problem with a card but cut out you solve a problem with another human and when somebody causes us pain and any kind of conflict that's unresolving,
(46:46):
it's painful,
psychologically painful,
sometimes physically painful.
And if we,
you know,
if I realize,
oh,
this person isn't intentionally being the same me,
then I can,
my brain can help me start thinking,
oh,
it's,
there's still a problem that needs to be addressed.
But maybe now I ha I can start being creative and curious and reflective and maybe possibly partner with this person because it seems to me the issue is this and your book does a lovely job of laying out all these kinds of people that we find at work or at least the way they tend to present or,
(47:19):
or deal with conflict.
And if we start seeing it's not just this homogeneous way and they are this obstacle to my happiness,
but they are a human person,
they have issues and so do I,
and let's address the issue,
but we address it by taking a step back and seeing them as people and moving forward.
(47:41):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Because if not just like I was doing by avoiding so many people,
we're missing out on so much of life,
right.
We're missing out on interacting with all of these personality types and all of these situations because we're afraid or there might be a conflict or I don't know how to deal with it.
That's,
that's not what life is about.
(48:02):
Right?
Life is supposed to be about continuing to grow and continuing to change and,
and it's not easy,
but it's definitely worth it.
Or you're perpetually stuck with the,
with the thunderer and the turtle,
right?
And if we say,
well,
they should know better,
they should be professional,
they shouldn't be doing that and we don't do anything.
(48:24):
That's the wonderful thing about conflict resolution is that,
oh,
I can come out of Michelle,
I am the one to erect and keep my boundaries.
It's up to me to communicate in a constructive way and they will do whatever they do.
I'm not in charge of them,
but based on the off their response,
then I can decide what my next action is,
(48:45):
I don't have to be stuck in this dance.
All,
all it takes for me not to be offended is for me to make a different choice,
have a different narrative,
do something different and I can do that today.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Absolutely.
I think people struggle with.
(49:05):
So if you say,
OK,
Mary,
you're telling me I have to listen to this other person and if I'm listening to this other person,
I'm enabling them or I am endorsing their behavior and you talk about the difference between understanding and enabling.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
So it's helpful for me,
if I break it down into,
(49:26):
we're listening to two different things.
So you have the position,
that's what somebody is stating that they want,
I want you to behave this way.
I need this from you or I don't like this about you.
That's her stated position.
But that's kind of what we see above the surface.
That's like the tip of the iceberg.
What's underneath that?
What's motivating that is their interest.
(49:47):
And when we are listening,
what I have noticed is that if you just focus on the position,
you are absolutely empowering it,
right?
If that's,
if,
if you're just living there above the surface and you're going back and forth on the position and the person is going to dig their heels in,
they will become firmer on the position.
Instead when at least when I'm sitting at the mediation table and somebody is sharing your story,
(50:14):
I ignore the position initially and I just focused on the interest.
So it sounds like you're saying this because or this is how it made you feel or this is what prompted that or this is why you reacted that way.
And I just live under the surface for a while.
And what's interesting about that is then someone is usually willing to let go of their position and arrive at a different position that um that is more respectful to the other person right there instead of saying,
(50:44):
you know,
I'm going to be completely strict.
You have to get here at 8 a.m. every day and that's it because I demand respect.
Ok,
I'm gonna focus on that respect.
I'm gonna focus on what that means.
And why is that so important?
And it's so important for the office to run smoothly and then we can start to talk about.
Ok.
And her bus drops her off here at 804.
(51:05):
So if is there a way where we can arrive at a different position where she also can take the bus and get here at 804,
but you're still feeling respected.
Um I think where it gets really tricky is when a wrong has clearly been done,
right?
If you are living in a,
in a verbally abusive environment or if you have a boss that's just incredibly toxic because I think,
(51:29):
I think your brain has to hold both thoughts for a moment that you want to have resolution and you want to move forward.
But there is also this wrong that has been done.
And you have to acknowledge that before you're able to move forward.
My son,
when he was younger,
I remember he fell and scraped his knee,
right and it was bleeding and it was all dirty and I was kind of busy.
(51:50):
And so I,
I just rushed and I grabbed the Neosporin and the antiseptic and washed it off.
Put this little Wonder Woman band aid on it and we ran out the door and I could tell like physically he felt better,
but he's just kind of down the rest of the day.
A couple of weeks later,
same thing follow scrapes his knee.
I had more time.
I rush over.
I grab him.
I hold,
I'm like,
oh buddy,
I'm so sorry.
(52:11):
That must have been really scary.
I can tell this really hurts you.
And what was so interesting was after being validated after he knew that what happened to him was wrong,
right?
That is so important for our psyche and for our worldview for the wrongs to be identified.
They can't be dismissed because then it starts,
it does,
it does funny things to our brain because in our brain states thing,
(52:31):
our brain says,
oh wait,
like you're accepting,
being treated this way,
you're accepting that this is how the world is that people are just mean to you and they can get away with it.
Oh,
ok.
Well,
uh Claire,
I thought that,
that you deserved better.
But now that I know that this is what you will accept.
Now,
I will lower my standards.
We don't want that to happen in your brain.
Right?
(52:51):
And we have to identify and acknowledge the wrongs.
When somebody does something wrong,
it has to be acknowledged.
It has to be called out.
That person might be able to hear it.
They might not,
we might have to find another avenue,
might have to journal,
it might have to go to a therapist.
You might have to just continue to document everything or go to hr but there has to be some point where you can express this was wrong and have that wrong be validated.
(53:15):
It's only after that,
that a person is able to move into.
Now,
how can we talk about resolution?
How can we talk about the next steps?
Right?
It was it only after hugging my son that then he could take a breath and he knew how to take care of himself.
Then right?
Then he walked into the bathroom,
he got the neosporin,
he got his Wonder Woman band aid and he was ok.
But first he needed that moment in his brain where he said this is wrong.
(53:39):
I'm not supposed to be in pain.
I need you to tell me that I'm going to be ok.
And that,
that's an abnormal situation.
That's such a great example.
We have to deal with what has happened so that we can move forward.
And sometimes we fall in the trap of just replaying those tapes over and over.
And that's a lot of times because we don't know how to have this conversation.
(54:00):
So we don't have the support or the organizational um yeah,
the organizational support or just the internal support.
And,
but we can't just say,
ok,
we're not going to talk about the past.
Let's just move forward because people need to be heard and it,
I think it is tricky for a variety of reasons.
As you mentioned,
sometimes crimes have been committed against people some things and,
(54:23):
and even then,
you know,
sometimes the perpetrator does not apologize.
And so we still though need that that wrong to be validated that it was a wrong.
But we may again,
if we're in this is still strict positional that I will only get it.
If this person says it in this way,
then we are setting ourselves up for failure and realizing that we just need it acknowledged and there's a variety of ways in which that can happen.
(54:45):
Yeah.
Right now in the workplace,
they're saying that they think about seven out of 10 employees have experienced a trauma that was so severe that it has changed,
their behavior has changed their identity,
changed their sense of worldview.
Um,
they are saying that on average,
they think people are spending about 35% of their working day thinking about conflicts,
(55:06):
replaying them,
replaying conversations in their head or I wish I had said it this way or I'm going to tweak this email because I'm afraid of how it's going to be perceived.
About 35%.
Uh,
in 2023 the most expense,
the,
the largest expense to the US workforce wasn't smoking,
obesity,
cancer,
everything that it has been before it was mental health.
(55:29):
And if this is all coming from,
we are just not in a culture that encourages speaking to each other that encourages,
hey,
you did something that was wrong and it really hurt me and I need to be able to talk about it and we think I can just stuff it down,
right.
But it's like it's like people are holding a balloon,
right?
A balloon filled with air and I'm just,
(55:50):
I am trying to squish it and squish it,
but it's kind of squish out.
Right.
It's gonna find some way to squish out and the ways that it's squishing out are people are feeling burnt out.
People are quite quitting.
People are feeling discouraged.
Um Again,
35% of their day,
they're replaying those conversations and those pains in their head.
Instead of taking the few hours with a manager,
(56:13):
with a mediator,
with a counselor,
with somebody to say we have to talk about this because this was not OK,
it needs to be addressed and then my brain is free to start moving into the healing place.
That's an amazing statistic.
And I'm glad that you shared it because I was thinking about as you were talking about the conflict um uh with,
with your colleague.
(56:35):
And I can imagine somebody saying,
gosh,
that just gonna take a lot of time.
I don't have that time.
And I would say,
well,
you,
you can't afford the other.
You're already spending all this time.
We don't,
we just don't recognize it because it was on the calendar for two or three hours or an all day mediation.
We think,
oh my gosh,
all that time and money because we don't,
it's the iceberg.
(56:56):
We don't see,
we don't see the real cost of conflict,
which is just astronomical to organizations,
to physical and mental health,
right?
To families,
right?
Because you bring it home and it,
it trickles down.
If you're not dealing with that tension in the workplace,
it's just like a waterfall,
it's going to trickle down and that means it usually comes out on your partner or your kids.
(57:18):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There,
thank you so much for writing this book and for staying with it and for 10 years and adding to it,
I recommend this to everyone.
There'll be a link wherever you find this podcast.
So what is one takeaway?
You want our listeners to have they read this book.
Uh They'll get all these,
all this wonderful helpful information.
But can you give us one takeaway for them?
(57:39):
Absolutely.
That you deserve peace,
that you deserve growth.
And we think I'm being the better person and being the honorable person by not saying anything.
No,
you just,
you absolutely deserve better than that.
You deserve to be at peace with your coworkers,
with your family,
with your kids and having one conversation that might be a little hard.
(58:03):
It does amazing things.
It opens up the relationship.
It creates hope in your brain.
It helps you to grow as a person and you're modeling the kind of behavior that you want everyone around you.
And you're also telling your brain,
I knew I deserved better.
I knew I was worth it.
So instead of just writing it on funny little Facebook meme or a post it note on your mirror,
(58:24):
actually do it,
actually get out there and have the hard conversation because you deserve it.
That's wonderful.
Well,
thank you Clare so much for being on Conflict Managed and um it's been such,
I've been enjoying your book so much and I appreciate all the work that you've put into it.
Oh,
thank you.
This was wonderful,
Merry.
I just want to sit and talk with you the rest of the day.
(58:46):
Well,
take care.
Thank you.
Thank you.
You too,
Clare.
Thank you so much for being on Conflict Managed.
I just absolutely enjoyed our time together.
And your book.
You can see.
Well,
if you're just listening,
you can't see all my little tabs.
It's really a wonderful book.
I highly recommend it.
It's just very practical and Clare's voice as you could hear,
(59:06):
just comes through the pages.
Find it on Amazon and the book is Rising Above Office Conflict,
a lighthearted guide for the heavyhearted employee.
And Clare is gonna be,
um,
giving away one of her books,
autographing it to a lucky listener.
So listeners,
if you would email me at 3PConflictRestoration@gmail.com,
(59:30):
that's 3PConflictrestoration@gmail.com.
You can email me and you can enter into getting a free copy of the book and I'll send that information over to,
to Clare. Conflict Managed is produced by Third Party Workplace Conflict Restoration Services and hosted by me, 00:59:47,149 --> 00:59:47,979 Merry Brown.
You can find us online at 3PConflictRestoration.com.
(59:51):
Come back next week.
We have new episodes every Tuesday and I hope to continue to do this format every once in a while talking to an author about her.
book,
our music is courtesy of Dove Pilot and remember,
conflict is normal and to be expected.
Let's deal with it until next time.
Take care.
(01:00:20):
So.
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