Love and tough love are both important in conflict coaching.
Conflict coaching is one of my favorite ways to help clients resolve or manage interpersonal conflicts at work, or anywhere. While mediation can be immensely valuable, I find that mediation is more likely to work if proceeded by one on one coaching. In my experience, without that individual work, I spend far too much mediation time and energy getting clients just to sit still and listen to each other at all (without flying out of their chairs), rather than understand each other better, get to the essence of the conflict, and figure out how to resolve it. I won’t do mediations at all any more unless individual coaching comes first.
Guided by intuition
Although I studied two different systems of conflict coaching and deeply respect my teachers, their approaches didn’t quite work for me. I started creating my own way, guided by my experience and intuition. At first, it was a leap of faith, but every time I followed this inner guidance and was successful, it built my confidence in what I was doing.
Then I began to figure out how to describe what I’m doing! I use a variety of techniques, but when I reflected deeply, I realized the heart (double meaning intended) of what I do can be summed up as love and tough love.
Love
I come from a place of compassion and love for my clients. I know they’re struggling with genuinely difficult situations, some of which I’ve grappled with myself. I know that every one of them is doing the best they can with the tools and awareness that they have right now. Their awareness and current skills are generally inadequate or they or their employers wouldn’t have been calling on me for help. As I often tell my clients, almost none of us take classes in schools or training programs as adults that show us how to deal with conflict. But, these skills are completely learnable with willingness, persistence, and practice.
In coaching sessions, I first listen deeply to my clients and demonstrate my understanding of their feelings: their rage, frustration, anguish, and bewilderment. My clients soon know that I am there to support them, to teach them, and not to judge them. One of my goals is to help them forgive themselves for the past, for doing the best they could at the time, however flawed the result.
Tough Love
Once I have established this compassionate and trusting connection, I can begin to gently explore ways they’re behaving that could be misinterpreted or seen as harsh or wrong by the other person. And how they may be misinterpreting the intentions and behavior of the other person. I encourage them to accept the responsibility to change their own thinking and behavior. My clients rarely get defensive about this, because they know I’m on their side. Then I help them learn and integrate a robust conflict management tool kit to manage or resolve the conflict.
Inner resolution
Sometimes the love and tough love, along with inner spiritual and practical exercises, is enough to shift the dynamic of the problematic relationship even when the other person doesn’t have a clue what exactly has shifted. Sometimes I’ve coached both people in a conflict and then the three of us come together in a dialogue coaching session. I have seen miracles of healing happen from one or two dialogue sessions. But those miracles don’t generally show up unless the clients do the hard inner work first.
As I tell my students in the Conflict Management Certificate program I teach at Sonoma State, my learning objective for the class is a simple but ambitious one—to change their hearts, minds and behavior. When my clients shift their hearts and minds, a positive change in their behavior and an increased ability to successfully navigate conflict are beautiful results.
Lorraine Segal has a deep passion for helping people in organizations and corporations communicate better, resolve conflicts, let go of resentments, and deal with bullying. The goal: to create a more harmonious and productive workplace.
Through her business, Conflict Remedy, Lorraine creates customized training and coaching programs for non-profit organizations, corporations, and government agencies. She is also lead instructor for the Conflict Management Certificate, a professional development program at Sonoma State University. She is a contributing author to the recent book, Stand Up, Speak Out Against Workplace Bullying. She writes a blog through her Conflict Remedy website and was recently listed as one of the Top Conflict Management experts to follow on LinkedIn. Contact Lorraine at https://ConflictRemedy.com for more information, to request a free consultation for you and your organization or to sign up for her newsletter.
