Conflict – Use It, Don’t Defuse It | CrisMarie Campbell & Susan Clarke | TEDxWhitefish

let's welcome Susan Clark and Chris Marie Campbell conflict it's a source of pain on any team or even any relationship but what if conflict wasn't good or bad what if conflict was an energy source for creativity innovation and transformation susan and i has spent over 15 years working with hundreds of business leaders and their teams our clients actually call us the team doctors because we focus on the health of the team in order to get to smart business results well there is the one that refers to us as the dentist that's true I think it just takes conflict not else that's what's hope so she keeps bringing us back so have you ever been on a team where two people wouldn't deal with each other so you had to manage around them or have you ever worked with someone where you just wanted to be able to have a good debate and they kept taking it so personally or have you ever worked with somebody who has always got to be a battle I can't we just get along in these situations you might think complex the problem conflict isn't the problem it's the choice to diffuse it rather than use it that's the problem so today we're going to introduce you to two magic ingredients that if you use them in a conflict situation will turn conflict into creativity in an instant so just a little bit more about us well we are a team we've been business partners and life partners for over 15 years let's just say we've gotten into a lot of confidence oh yeah and we do conflict very differently we approach it differently and we have different styles and what we can all agree on what we can't agree on I forgot my line what we can't agree on is that conflict and but getting your lines is a natural and healthy part of any relationship yes it's a natural and healthy part but that doesn't mean I like it conflict terrifies many people and I've been one of those people I grew up with an army colonel father and as a little person my dad was big loud and scary and the only thing predictable about him was he was going to get upset so every night at dinner it was like running the gauntlet hoping he wouldn't blow up one night we were stationed in Georgia we lived in this old historic house it was a big kitchen white kitchen red red curtains over the sink and my we're all sitting around the table my dad was across from me and they were making one of fun of one of my teachers and I was 13 at the time well I had just gotten to that place where I had had enough so I stood up and I said shut up shut up shut up a little louder than that though I didn't want to blow you guys out with the mic in a nanosecond my dad was around the table his hand was on my shirt and I felt a fist in my face it was a terrifying moment I froze he kept punching my sister finally pulled him off and I fell to the floor in a puddle of my own pee that was a life-changing traumatic event for me I decided then and there whoa it is not safe enough it's too dangerous I'm not going to be vulnerable and say how I really feel or show my emotions or my anger no way my body made a decision anytime there were disagreements it would flood with fear and I started to actually seek safety by tracking and managing my external environment all the people around me so if there was any tension in the environment I would ask a question or change the subject or rephrase somebody's inflammatory comments so the other person could hear better I always made sure I nodded and smiled and kept eye contact but I took it a step further because I wanted to make sure those power people in my life that they were happy so I decided I wanted to focus on what they wanted me to become and I would do that so I had been a C or D student I went to getting all A's I wasn't an athlete I went all the way to the freakin Olympics I was a Boeing flight test engineer the most macho part of Boeing this is not an engineer and I wound up at a top five consulting firm ironically my expertise at that consulting firm facilitating tough conversations no surprise I had spent the requisite 10,000 hours around my dining room table defusing tension I had become a professional conflict avoider facilitating conversations but never really showing up in them and while I looked good on the outside I was terrified on the inside and I felt like a freakin fraud and then I met Susan Clark and I saw her work with a group in conflict but she did it completely different than I did I mean she had an opinion she was passionate I was like oh my god but I knew I wanted to do that and I'll let her tell you about her so for me surfacing conflict saved my life when I was 23 I had my dream job I was teaching life was good and then I got sick I started to lose weight I couldn't keep any food down I had no energy I ended up in the hospital and the doctors kept asking me over and over about my past they kept wanting to know about my past and I kept saying I had a healthy I had a healthy happy childhood well apparently there was a difference between what I was saying on the outside and what they were seeing on the inside they were seeing a lot of evidence of scarring and sexual trauma and basically what they said to me is you need to go get some answers you need to go ask your family some questions or maybe go see a psychiatrist well I did and it was like opening Pandora's box all the sudden my happy healthy childhood came a nightmare I started to remember these horrible vile attacks mostly at the hands of a charismatic camp director who no one including my family to rattle or disrupt or mess with that image well my life depended on it so I kept going I went back to my doctors and so I say now had resolved the conflict from the past so they were able to diagnose me in the present and they diagnosed me with stage 4 non-hodgkins lymphoma you might be thinking that sucks but actually believe it or not in that moment it was sort of a relief suddenly I had something to focus on I had something that the treatments were distracting me from these crazy memories the conflict in my family and that was that was actually good until the treatment stopped working I can still remember the day well when I set across from my doctor and she said to me we don't have any more options you have about six months to live suddenly I found myself with this dying body these crazy-ass memories that no one was really validating or acknowledging and I realized I was at a critical choice point I could quit which actually really frankly seemed like the best bet at that moment I could keep fighting with my family with my doctors with my own memories or I could get curious and while that led me to the Haven all right ironically to a program called come alive and it was there that I discovered the amazing energy source and aliveness it comes from really surfacing dealing with in using conflict I won't kid you it was helped but that experiencing of surfacing conflict changed my life saved my life so you just heard our two very personal stories which we don't tell all the time and I want you to think about your story what you learned about conflict growing up now think of a team you're on now or a significant relationship how do you deal with conflict today conflict isn't good or bad but I'm not kidding you you're not crazy it's hard and uncomfortable and that's because our nervous system gets fired and we go into fight flight or freeze and we all have our own personal triggers mine is anybody getting upset in the environment and I get really anxious my body floods with fear and I want to run well mine if I'm around people who are really nice and polite and not saying stuff I actually start to think they're up to something dangerous and I go to fight so the guard into a little trouble a little bit you know the question I had to ask and you may want to ask is do I want to let my nervous system control me and limit me so you probably are wondering why are we talking about all this personal stuff and let what you know how does this relate to business and teams well business is personal and we still have business to do so q lego movie because this is what people think a team's gonna be like everything is awesome everything is cool when you're part of a team everything is awesome I think singing but that's not what happens really know what really happens on a team is you do start out with an awesome vision great so you gather some smart people and they are passionate about your cause and all of a sudden these smart people start having very different opinions and then those different opinions come with strong emotions because they've got a lot of passion and you're stuck in I'm right you're wrong and we're smack dab into conflict now we don't like conflict so most people choose to defuse it and it could be you might have a style like me like well okay we'll do it your way a peacekeeper style or it could be I'm gonna take charge I'll do it my way you guys are gonna thank me when I get done it could be hey I'm out of here until you guys get done with all that messy stuff and then I'll come back and do some real work so teams that do this they stall people get disengaged worse they start to undermine each other and that the teams like this don't get to great results I get to mediocre at best this disengagement is because because people are not using conflict they're avoiding it or defusing it and here's some data from Gallup and they talk about the different engagement levels so look at me when you see this a court 1/3 of a company is usually disengaged and let's just talk about that 17.5 because they say actively disengaged that's sort of nice and polite for something really bad is going on there let's just say you know those people something's going on for them or they're you know they're very dissatisfied with where they are and we do think this disengagement is because people are not dealing with and surfacing conflict so we want to talk to you about the two magic ingredients that actually transform conflict into creativity and instant they are vulnerability and curiosity so the first magic ingredient vulnerability I don't know anybody who actually likes the concept of vulnerability except for maybe brynee Brown but in business you've got to be kidding business is a realm of invincibility and you know but we're talking about on a team where relationships matter and the vulnerability is a key vulnerability is not about being weak vulnerability is the willingness to expose oneself to danger to take a risk and be honest about what's really happening to say what you think feeling want and I've got to tell you I do not like this concept at all I still say God why do I have to be vulnerable should I tell him you were actually arguing about it about an hour she wanted me to take this hard but the benefit when I have the courage to actually stand up and say what I really think and feeling want even share my anger which you know didn't go well earlier in my life I actually stopped managing you guys and I land inside my own shoes and I can connect from there and I reclaim more of me my voice my emotional and creative expression and I'm actually pretty good in conflict these days I'm gonna vouch for that so let's talk about that second median curiosity so what curiosity doesn't mean is letting go of my judgments I often hear people say to me I don't want to be judgmental really your judgments your ability to a discern to imagine that's one of your greatest gifts you want smart opinionated people on your team you hired them for that the problem isn't our judgments the problem is we get stuck to them we get married to we get attached to them we think we're right I do this all the time I know this she does and it's very sticky you know the what curiosity does mean is the willingness to own my judgments and then get interested and curious about a different perspective to be willing to consider that there's more than one right way more than one truth more than one possibility and to get out get over my need to be right now for me that meant that I had to get curious about cancer I had to consider that cancer wasn't just an enemy there was something there for me to learn from it I had to get curious about those memories and quit just burying them down and I even had to get curious about the difference between my story line about the past and my families so when you combine curiosity and vulnerability in the midst of conflict that's when you start to use the energy of conflict rather than defuse it so let's give you a business case scenario of this we were working with an IT company and they were pretty successful that's successful enough that they were able to but uh accurate get acquire that's the word I'm looking for acquire a smaller company and with that acquisition Jane the president of the smaller company got planted on the executive team now three months into this new deal the CEO Frank of the IT company called us I'm pretty sure he just wanted us to help him fire Jane but we came in and we started working with them over two day period they got to the part where they were talking about their strategy Jane was vehemently opposed to what the team was proposing three of the guys from the executive team got up worse pointing at her screaming at her I actually thought we were going to have to be real medical doctors I was a little concerned and but then we said timeout do you remember vulnerability and curiosity and one of the guys one of the really angry guys said in an angry voice but he started there he said look I okay I'm gonna be vulnerable I'm going to tell you Jane I have been angry and frustrated with you since you joined this team and I really haven't listened to anything you've said now then you want any set and he got curious he said I actually want to try to and he walked over and he sat next to Jane now Jane she took she took the path which I should do and said she said this has been really hard but then she launched into her idea and you could see light bulbs go off with Joe and the rest of the team because they knew she had a good idea and they step back redesign their entire strategy to include Jane's idea that new strategy took them in catapulted them into the number three spot in their industry so we find this all the time on teams high-caliber people that can't work together and it's our job to help bring them together and recognize the time my way or your way it's a whole new way and teens and relationships that do this that utilize vulnerability and curiosity come up with innovative solutions not just once but repeatedly they bounce back from setbacks and failure and people involved feel engaged and alive so I want to take you back to when I had just six months to live to the last morning of that come alive it was a transformative moment for me the leaders of the workshop wanted to do a healing to a feeling circle for me after admit I was a little skeptical skeptical of that and they invited their friend father Jack a Roman Catholic priest now when he walked into the room in his robes all hell broke loose there were some people in that room that had some pretty serious really issues with organized religion that loving kind healing circle chaos mayhem it was but it was it was it was not pretty until father Jack said something he thought he got vulnerable he said you know I realize I'm representing the church here and I have made some mistakes my church has made some and I and then he got curious he said I am interested in hearing from you well suddenly it got very real very quickly and people you know it was a changing moment because I'd never seen conflict get dealt with like that such a contentious as you get dealt with with vulnerability and curiosity as a matter of fact that was the healing I went back and had to have surgery to remove tumors they opened me up the tumors were gone now I really believe that in that moment that experience of being in a situation where there's there was that kind of conflict and people dealt with it differently saved me so we'll leave you with this conflict is an energy source for innovation creativity and transformation it's time we stop looking for safety and magic outside of ourselves and recognize the resources we have within and between us to bridge our differences and tap that unlimited renewable resource so you are capable of amazing things I know we're out of time now so you know wrap this up quickly you are capable of amazing things so the next time you get stuck in conflict remember diffuse it I mean oh god I believe in the bunch like it we're gonna be fighting about this use it don't diffuse it cuz you too can change the world one team one relationship one conflict at a time

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 541,562

Rating: 4.5709929 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Business

Id: o97fVGTjE4w

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 13 2015