Katelyn Carey does a fabulous TED Talk about conflict. As an A&E doctor on the frontline, she has to deal with it a lot – having to tell families their elderly relative can’t be seen for hours, for example – and has a unique take on how conflicts should be managed.
Katelyn describes the moment in a conflict when you are talking, and the other person becomes a blowfish. This is the moment when they stop listening, become emotional, and begin assessing the threat facing them. They are now feeling attacked, and the fight, flight or freeze response is taking over. This is bad enough when it happens to one person in the conversation but, as she jokes, two blowfish spell nuclear. Now neither party is listening: both are assessing the other for threat, and deciding how to respond.
We’ve all been there: you wanted to deliver a piece of feedback, thought a little about how to approach this difficult conversation and before you know it, boom – blowfish. And then you reacted. What was a tough conversation is now really tough, and managing this issue and the relationship is going to take hours, and even perhaps months, to resolve. All the while, you are constantly wondering how we got here.
According to Myers-Briggs, we spend between two and three hours in conflict each week. And yet it is a skill we are woefully ill-prepared to manage effectively.
I have created a template for approaching a difficult conversation (search ‘MBM Mind the Blowfish’). I know you haven’t got time, but you don’t have time not to have time. Here are the 10 parts of this one-page A4 template that will help to prepare you better for a difficult conversation:
- What is the outcome you want?
- Your baggage. For example, every time you speak to Bob, what do you feel?
- Your ‘I’ statement (Google the structure of this)
- Your irritators: What you do that annoys others
- Their irritators: The things that wind you up that you must ignore
- Learnings from last time: For example, show more empathy
- Reminders for you: For example, ‘mind the blowfish at all costs’
- Common ground: One thing you both share
- OPV: This is an Edward de Bono technique, which stands for other persons’ view – what do you think are they thinking?
- Practice: Do this three times
Good luck and mind the blowfish!
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