Is it really possible to trade ineffective conflict and negotiation habits for better ones? Can people really change ingrained patterns of conflict and negotiation behavior and increase their workplace influence?
A grad student in my Lipscomb University course, Interpersonal Conflict, posed those questions to me last week. Yes and yes, I replied. Here’s why:
Imagine you’re standing at the edge of a woods. The woods are filled with briars, tree roots sticking up from the soil, low-hanging branches. On the other side of the woods is a sunny meadow filled with fragrant flowers.
I ask you to get yourself to that sunny meadow as fast as you can. You have two choices for proceeding: One is through the woods I just described; the other is a well-worn footpath that leads to the meadow. Both are about the same distance.
Which should you choose, given my request? The well-worn path. It’s easy. It’s fast. It’s efficient. It helps you complete the task most readily.
Now imagine this: I ask you to get yourself to the sunny meadow, without benefit of the well-worn path, every day for a few months. You traverse the same section of woods again and again, back and forth.
What happens? You create a new well-worn path. The more you use it, the more worn it gets. It gets easier, faster, more efficient. Eventually the old path, unused, turns once again into thick woods.
This is the experience of adopting new habits for resolving conflict, negotiating and becoming more influential in your organization. It’s the experience of unlearning your old, less effective habits. The neural pathways in your brain are like the well-worn path in my story. Adopting a new habit is the act of creating new neural pathways and letting the old ones wither.
Nice imagery Tammy. And the path as a metaphor for your brain connections is so easy to grasp. Your story also reminded me of a recent TED presentation by Sebastian Seung <a href="http://(http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung.html)” target=”_blank”>(http://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung.html) that I watched. In it he uses a flowing river (that shapes and is shaped by the river bed) as a metaphor for how the pathways in the brain can change over time.
Hey there, Ben, how are you? Nice of you to stop in. I think I'm going to like that flowing river metaphor and since I downloaded the new TED app to my iPad this morning, I think I'll go test it out with the Seung presentation you mentioned!
Tammy: Any thoughts on how you can convince a City Council to accept the responsibility for the fraud, lies, and incompetence of its city officials, e.g., police chief, city manager, and members of boards and commissions they appoint?
They act surprised, always reactive rather than proactive, and rather than seeking one's termination, they avoid the matter and place their heads in the ground.
Tazewell, I think I'll write a blog post on this in the next week or so — if you're subscribed, you'll get my fuller response automatically.
In the meantime, a few thoughts:
I urge you to unhook your own strong emotions about this from the way you talk to this group. From the little you've written here I can already see such frustration — that frustration is leaking out and probably not helping you.
Pushing hard creates resistance, so stop pushing. Spend almost all your energy understanding first — that's what really good negotiators do. When you're as open to fully understanding their view, they're likely to then be more willing to listen to yours
Learn how to listen. Even if you think you already are.
Work with them to identify a problem they're also interested in solving and name it in a useful way.
Tammy