Some people are just impossible!

If you want to manage someone, manage yourself.
Once you master that, you'll be a much more effective leader of others.
Jim Clemmer

You'd prefer fewer difficult or destructive conflicts in your life? You'd like to be more mature and confident when confronted with differences? Sometimes your interactions are fraught with feelings of anxiety, anger, guilt, blame and thoughts of retaliation and attack? Too often, the causes of these problems are difficult to find and remedy? You're not alone, by any means.

These things are true for most people at one time or another. But far too many unnecessarily resign themselves to finding conflict "too hard" or too difficult for mature dialogue. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, they say and anyway, some people are just impossible. Well, it ain't necessarily so.

We don't know what we don't know

If we aim to conduct ourselves, our teams and organisations cooperatively and as if people matter, the quality of our interactions is central to success. Although there is more to effective relationships, our interpersonal communication is one of the most personal ways we demonstrate the value we place on them. Our interpersonal practices are the foundation of people-management.

But this area of competency is often precisely where organisations are significantly underdeveloped and the aspect of self-management in which many individuals are least self-aware. We simply don't know how inefficient and ineffective are our attempts at interpersonal communication, nor do we realise what we stand to gain from changing our habits.

As repeated research demonstrates, poor people-management is still the principal general reason staff leave for other employment, though they cite different reasons at the time. (Click to view archived article about Stephen Taylor's research into this.)

Best communication is most called for when it's most difficult

Especially under challenging circumstances, when differences between people are acute, emotions are running high and issues are very "sensitive", interpersonal communication is likely to be unconsciously reactive rather than well-considered and responsive. At the very moment it needs to be at its most competent, it is more likely to be based on the early role-modelling of others and a behavioural repertoire generally unsuited to mature interactions appropriate for today.

Who knows our competence best?

There are some very important questions for managers: "How do we know how much trust we develop and how others experience us as a result of our problem-solving, conflict resolution and other interpersonal practices?"

Managers rarely ask the questions of those most qualified to provide answers, and commonly make some very unsafe assumptions. They tend to think that although their practices may not be perfect, they don't cause significant problems and there's not enough to be gained by improving them to outweigh the effort it might take to do so. When given opportunities to assess their competencies and improve them by attending training, they enrol other people - especially those whose behaviours they see as "difficult", rather than up-skill to deal with those challenges themselves.

This sends the wrong signals to staff who usually have a fair idea of managerial competency, though they rarely tell managers the truth about their views even when asked directly. (Although they cite different reasons at the time, poor supervisory practices is the principal general reason staff leave for other employment.)

Jim Clemmer tells a story of his five-year-old son who at his sister's sixth birthday party, hit her on the head. As she cried hysterically, Jim asked him to apologize. He politely refused. When asked why, he replied, "Mr. Clemmer, I don't apologize unless I see teeth marks or blood." Clemmer points out that many managers don't realize the pain and problems they've created until they see teeth marks or blood on those they work with. He adds: "Human nature seems to endow us with the ability to size up everybody but ourselves."

Life-changing breakthroughs

Roughly put, interpersonal effectiveness around conflict requires you to manage the process with which to -

1. Speak up in ways that are easily heard
2. Shut up and listen in ways that make it easy for others to express themselves constructively
3. Know when to do which; and
4. Deal with the things going on in your head that stop you from managing these processes.

Many hundreds of my clients who've studied Hear and Be Heard - either by studying the publications or training programme, have made life-changing break-throughs when they -

• Find the strengths, incompatibilities and incongruities amongst their personal approach to these four practices.
• Understand the extent to which their own behaviours contribute to workplace challenges for which they have blamed others.
• Begin reducing the most common conflict of all - that which is within themselves.
• Realise that they can begin change immediately and easily.

They have been pleasantly surprised to find that relationships they previously thought were impossible or very difficult, are now manageable, understandable and confidently approachable.

Making common practice of commonsense

There is nothing magic about Hear and Be Heard and it won't change your competency around conflict unless you are determined to change and committed to the effort it takes. (Most people don't really want to change. They want the pleasure of progress without the pain of transformation.) But the material takes a helpfully commonsense and practical view of the topic, laced with good humour. The approach relies heavily on transforming commonsense into common practice.

On the basis that "Only through knowing where we are can we change where we are going", it begins with A Map of the Territory that helps you establish your current interpersonal communication strengths and weaknesses. With these vital reference-points you follow your own path through Workbook exercises and a comprehensive Guidebook, at your own pace. (If you attend one of our training programmes, the facilitator will direct some of this.) A helpful Planning Guide nudges you towards following-through on a development plan for the following 12-18 months.

Hundreds of practical examples help you quickly identify incremental changes you can introduce into your behaviours and (very importantly), the attitudinal corrections or reinforcements that will support improvements. You are encouraged to start changes wherever you decide you most need or want to: at work, at home, with adults, with children, with your behaviour or with your thought-feeling processes and attitudes.

It's worth the discomfort

Understanding our own part in the problem, although an uncomfortable process, is a highly potent source of workplace efficiencies and effectiveness in relationships. You'll be surprised, as other clients have been, to find how easily you can make immediate improvements to your approach to conflicts, and how much you'll gain from gradually implementing further change.

No-one can alone transform an organisation but we can start with ourselves. As we learn different behaviours our attitudes and practices change. Other people are immediately affected. When it comes to influencing others, nothing is as powerful as role-modelling.

Many people now occupying influential positions in New Zealand organisations have found this programme led them to the differences in their people-management practices that really matter: as judged by those they lead and manage.

© Copyright 2002 - 2007 Tom Watkins Group. All rights reserved.

Select and contact a Mentor if you'd like to discuss these ideas or want support to make progress with your own issues.

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