Techniques for approach conflict are helpful but shifting your mindset from armoring up and defending to one of empathy and curiosity: game changing.
In this True Snack clip, Kristine Scott shares what she’s learned about conflict resolution from her firsthand experience, first while growing with a lot of conflict, then in her early career learning from youth living on the streets who had to learn conflict resolution skills to survive.
What Kristine has learned, however, is not only a set of techniques to resolve conflict, but she shares a perspective shift away from threat reduction and towards empathy and compassion towards someone who is hurting and who is searching for help.
In this episode, Kristine answers the following questions:
• What is conflict resolution? What is a Conflict Resolutionary?
• What are the principles of conflict resolution?
• How to change your approach to conflict?
• What is the role of empathy and curiosity in conflict resolution?
Watch the full episode at https://youtu.be/cSy96bV6PY4?si=nJjpoRa_LPYMemGF
Kristine's company, Seattle Conflict Resolution: https://www.seattleconflictresolution.com
If you like the conversation, please share this episode with one other person. Thank you!
Music in this episode created by Ian Kastner.
"What Do You Know To Be True?" is a series of conversations where I speak with interesting people about their special talent or superhero power and the meaningful impact it has on others. The intention is to learn more about their experience with their superhero power, so that we can learn something about the special talent in each of us which allows us to connect more deeply with our purpose.
"What Do You Know To Be True?" is hosted by Roger Kastner, is a production of Three Blue Pens, and is recorded on the ancestral lands of the Duwamish and Suquamish people. To discover the ancestral lands of the indigenous people whose land you may be on, go to: https://native-land.ca/
[00:00:00] When you are able to successfully walk them through these steps and get them to the resolution,
[00:00:10] what's the impact that you see on them that this has had? And what's the impact on you?
[00:00:17] It's the ones that's been working with me longer. They're just like ready for really advanced stuff and they see conflict kind of like I do.
[00:00:25] Wow, here's another opportunity. This is great. Whereas the folks that are still newer, they're like, oh no, no, no, these people are terrible. Oh my God, you're right.
[00:00:35] Like, they're still blaming and naming the the upset customers as the problem. And so we just need to kind of get them further through their journey
[00:00:46] and so that they can start sharing my analysis around. Actually, conflict is somebody really trusting you with an unmet need that they think that you could be an agent of help, right?
[00:00:59] This is your public service time right now if you're ready for it.
[00:01:04] I love that conflict is someone trusting you with their unmet need. That's a very interesting way of thinking about that because trust doesn't seem like a word I would naturally put into that sentence, but I can see it now.
[00:01:23] I thought of us have feelings of conflict is, well, I got made invisible. I got made wrong blah, blah, blah, blah. And so we have these unresolved conflicts that we know determined that that's what conflict actually is.
[00:01:38] It's not conflict is simply a single point in time where somebody has an unmet need and they see you as an agent who somehow could take care of that for them.
[00:01:49] And they might be really inarticulate about what that need is, but for some reason, you're the lucky person that they think could could make a change.
[00:02:00] So it could be a systemic change or an interpersonal change that they seek.
[00:02:05] And your job is just to be like that social anthropologist like what? What's going on here? I see this is really a burn your side. Let's see if we can figure this out together.
[00:02:17] I'm kind of blown away by the idea of someone coming to me with an issue, someone coming to me with, yeah, with a conflict being able to tell myself, oh, you know, like what a gift this person's entrusting me
[00:02:32] with their unmet need. And, you know, it again, it probably doesn't feel like trust. But if I could think about that, that's that that would be powerful.
[00:02:42] And then seen it's, you know, conflict that seems, you know, bear teeth and bear knuckle sort of like, you know, in your face, but it's that unmet need part.
[00:02:53] You've talked about the, you haven't used the word inner child, but the young one in me.
[00:03:01] And thinking about unmet need, you're able to visualize the young one in that person who's coming at you with, yeah, grand gestures and, you know, big eyes and loud voice.
[00:03:16] And that's, oh, it's, yeah.
[00:03:19] There's this little person in you that is feeling something really big at the moment. That's that's that's kind of lovely.
[00:03:27] And I love the idea of taking on this sense of, I don't know if, of stewardship or what the right word is here.
[00:03:37] I like to use the word chirpa because you're, it's their journey right there. They're the ones that are seeking resolution. But hopefully you're walking alongside of them because you have the flashlight.
[00:03:50] What do you know to be true about being a conflict resolutionary?
[00:03:55] If you start looking at conflict as it shows up in your life, as a way to increase your own self awareness, you're going to go far.
[00:04:07] It's just an amazing insight into every place that either you've been hurt, every place that you've bought into some really spruly paradigms around how power works.
[00:04:24] And you're like every place that you might not be listening to your body well.
[00:04:29] Like all of those three things are going to happen just in the honest and the tension of this situation.
[00:04:40] And the beautiful thing about conflict is because we do get raw and we do get like fully invested in its outcome.
[00:04:49] That's also where the greatest opportunity is because we're not, we're less likely just to play nice and say one thing and do another thing because it does feel really life or death.
[00:05:01] Is there something that you might have believed about conflict resolution early on that you've come to learn not to be true.
[00:05:09] Changing my definition of power I think has been the most critical critical thing for me just like constantly unwrapping and unfurling every layer of this crazy hierarchy that we've all inherited.
[00:05:27] And the bad news about our implicit biases is we don't think that they're running the show because they're always in the background.
[00:05:37] But when we get stressed, that's actually how we make decisions.
[00:05:41] When we believe that our survival is questioned or our social rank is questioned.
[00:05:50] And that's when things get ugly.
[00:05:53] And so we're seeing this play out a lot in what's going on right now when people are talking about the war in Israel, we see this play now within our law enforcement communities.
[00:06:07] And like all of these places where implicit bias that was just politely under wraps is now front and center right in our lives and on our front pages.
[00:06:21] And I just really encourage people like don't let that stuff fool you.
[00:06:28] Look a little bit deeper around the role that race plays, the role that class plays in these conflicts.