Start With A Win - How to Handle Conflict with Confidence with Zach Schaefer

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Start With A Win. Producer Mark, you're killing it this morning. Oh, you know, there's only so many dance moves you can do from like the waist up. So I... Seated dancing. That's right. It's a new sport. The seated dancing sport.

Starting point is 00:00:41 There you go. Well, hey, how are you doing? I'm great. I could use a little doctor to talk to today. Oh, yeah. Well, you're in luck because we have Dr. Z in the house. Right on. Yeah. Zach Schaefer is the founder and CEO of Spark the Discussion. He is an entrepreneur, executive, mediator, and leadership coach who works with growing companies to solve people problems from hire to retire. He also owns businesses in the restaurant and real estate industries. He's an international

Starting point is 00:01:09 speaker and a retired professor. Dr. Z, welcome to Start With a Win. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Yeah, it's great to see you. You've done a lot, and we're really honing in a lot on the people problems part of life right now. So we thought we'd go to the doctor for this and find the expert on it. So I want to jump right in because as a CEO of a company or former CEO of a company, I'm a CEO of another company now. We build companies. It's always people that are either making or breaking a situation, it seems.

Starting point is 00:01:44 The structure on stuff generally is sound. Otherwise, you wouldn't be at the point where you're discussing it with people. But it seems like it's always people. There's bound to be conflict in organizations. How do we recognize that to begin with? I want to just dig right into this and start unpacking some conflict that some of our listeners may be experiencing, but they're just like, this is noise in my life. But no, it's truly something you can fix. So help me understand, what is the conflict we're talking about, the people problems? Right off the bat, everybody had, with the big C word, conflict, it's a negative connotation. And people should reframe that. If your businesses or

Starting point is 00:02:21 your relationships are conflict-free, those are dying. All conflict is, is disagreement. And companies and partners can do that more structurally and effectively or more in a dystopian way. So the first thing is to acknowledge we're going to disagree and to have a strategy or playbook for success for how we should disagree effectively so that we learn from it and move forward together. Awesome. So we disagree with something. I see a lot of different perspectives on this. It seems to me like people are a lot less patient in this day and age for some reason, or maybe we're just shorter in giving grace to people. Have things changed with that? Have we seen an increase in conflict? Are people more on edge since call it the pandemic or last five, eight years, social changes, things like that? Is there an increase in this going on?

Starting point is 00:03:11 Well, I would think with the medium we're on, with this in our pocket, with our Apple watches on, we're totally distracted. And with conflict, when there's overt disagreement, most humans don't have training in how they should deal with that. So they kind of revert back to fight or flight oftentimes, and that's rarely useful. So when your focus is being pulled in 10,000 directions and there's something really difficult you actually need to focus on, people don't know how to do that very well, especially in person. And then they tend to hide behind the Zoom call or a phone call or a text message or an email. Those are terrible media to try to work through disagreements. So the first thing is really get out on the table what needs to be discussed and so you can start wrapping some clarity around it.

Starting point is 00:03:55 Right. It seems to me like we see some, who was I talking to like last couple days, and they were showing me some text messages from someone else. They were very passive aggressive. And it seems like that person wants conflict. They want to stir things up, but they want to avoid solutions. Correct. I'm seeing a lot of that. Help me out with that thought a little bit. Passive aggressiveness. Well, first of all, anytime there's a difficult message or people aren't quite on the same page, which I would say is most of the time in life. Right. We have a text message voice

Starting point is 00:04:26 or an email voice. When something comes across, we start reading it in that voice. So if there's conflict involved, you can be sure that that voice ain't positive, the style and tone of our voice. So if you want to grant people grace and have a little patience, actually having that call or having a face-to-face discussion is going to be uncomfortable in the moment, but for the best scenario or solution that you're looking for in your business, you got to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And CEOs that aren't there, they're not going to be around very long. That's interesting. People, you hear that, all the listeners, don't discuss your conflict or try to unravel your conflict on text messages or emails. It doesn't work. I mean, just have the conversation. Pick up the

Starting point is 00:05:11 phone. It still works. Pick up the phone and have a human-to-human talk and share some of the emotion and grace as part of that. Because I like to think that everybody's a nice person down deep inside, and they want to be known as a nice person, but it's weird. You get the harshest comments from some of the nicest people sometimes. It's bizarre. Yeah. And people, we have different conflict styles, okay? And this research was from like the 80s, so it's all pre-pandemic and I think it's a little outdated. But when push comes to shove or a pandemic pops up, we rely back to our primary style. And I bet you guys can guess what most people's primary style is, avoid. So we avoid conflict as a primary style. And that is terrible because then they just build up and build up over

Starting point is 00:05:58 time. And then eventually somebody explodes or gets overwhelmed or we lose key players, or we misallocate capital and people to projects that aren't really going to be successful. So for me, I view communication and conflict management or conflict resolution, it's the oil to the machine. If we don't have a clear communication cadence or what I call conflict competence in your organization, you're missing out on opportunities. People aren't speaking up with good ideas. You're really not tapping into your team to the level that you could. I like that term, conflict confidence. Give us a clear definition of that, please.

Starting point is 00:06:33 Absolutely. From a leadership team perspective, how effectively is our team able to grapple with disagreement? If we don't disagree, that is a perfect indication we have groupthink going on and people are self-censoring. If we're throwing things at each other and flipping out and leaving the room, well, we probably need to turn down our volume a bit. But when we can be blunt, candid, disagree with vigor and with energy, and then good solutions are built from that, your team has conflict competence. I like that. I've heard the term disagree, but not be disagreeable. Yep, absolutely. And it's hard. All of this, let me be clear. I used to teach all this stuff and have written a lot about it. This is an art. This stuff ain't a science because it's humans. We have patterned behaviors. We're

Starting point is 00:07:20 subjective. We could do the same thing nine days in a row in the office. And then day 10, we change it, and our actions mean something different. So with conflict management from an executive or leadership level, it is much more of an art because you constantly have to be thinking not just about yourself and the issue, but everyone involved and what their meanings are that they're taking from that experience. Awesome. So you talked about probably one of the key ways,

Starting point is 00:07:46 the, I guess you could call it the easiest but worst way of handling conflict that people use is avoid it. What are some practical ways that we can handle conflict better with our teams in the office? Well, the first thing, if you're a leader, have a discussion about it. Like discuss, how are we going to handle conflict before it pops up? Because it's going to pop up if you're a successful team in a growing company and you want to have some clarity around that. Because then when it occurs, you can point back to that team, how does our team, because the team could do it very differently and they usually adopt the style of the lead of the team. And then the company-wide culture. What is conflict like? In my Fortune 500 construction company, you can bet it's a bit different than in my hedge fund company or in my IT managed service provider company. And that all needs to be taken into account together. I love how you started this whole thing. You talked about dealing with conflict before there was conflict. And I think that laying that groundwork is incredibly important.

Starting point is 00:08:58 I remember when I was in my MBA program, we all did this little thing where we got on sailboats with four other people that were nothing like us. We went to the opposites in the personality spectrum from everybody. But we created a social contract of how we would handle conflict amongst this group before we had any. And then we had to revert to that in order to handle conflict. It was fascinating. Can you tell me, how have you taken some companies through establishing those rules around that conflict management? Yeah, absolutely. And it totally depends on the company and the goals of the company. So an easy

Starting point is 00:09:36 one that I use all the time is in our sports bar. So I'm one of the owners and leaders in a growing sports bar chain here in St. Louis, four locations, over 100 people. You guys can imagine the challenges that the restaurant industry has had post-COVID. Oh, yeah. And when you have young people and liquor, it's an interesting environment for conflict. So it's all about being proactive and not letting things fester. So I instituted what I call informal huddlesdles where our assistant general managers and general managers, as soon as something pops up, in theory, they're supposed to

Starting point is 00:10:09 pull somebody off the line and go have a one-off conversation rather than screeching in front of people in front of their peers. One thing I have learned is people do not appreciate being called out for things in front of a large group of people. A quick side note I'll share. Are you familiar with who Robert Gates is, Bob Gates? I'm not. So he was the former Secretary of Defense, former president of Texas A&M, former head of the CIA, president of the Boy Scouts of America. Unbelievable leader. Republicans and Democrats love this guy. I got to attend a dinner when he was at A&M and I was down there. And he said, the number one piece of leadership advice is praise loudly and publicly

Starting point is 00:10:50 often, blame privately whenever possible. And for me, that goes right into conflict management 101. When you have to have those offline parking lot conversations, do it quickly and make sure there's as much clarity as possible on the agreement in the moment and what the next steps are. That's where people fall off is what's the next step after this conversation. Totally. And that's a great point. It takes me back. I mean, I was a police commander, SWAT commander, and I had my mentor riding with me one day in the car. And I actually texted one of our officers and said, meet me in person. And he said, why can't you just do it over the phone or over the radio?

Starting point is 00:11:31 And I said, because I want to talk to them about a challenge they're having. Instead of being public with it, I need to be face-to-face. And it made all the difference to these people. It still makes a difference to people that you care enough about helping them solve their problems that you're willing to do it face to face. So I think that's a big deal. So thank you, Dr. Z, for pointing that out. So let me ask you this. What's the biggest mistake a leader can make when navigating conflict and how to avoid it?

Starting point is 00:11:59 OK, so the preface, the biggest mistake is not thinking that conflict's going to pop up and having ready how they'll do it. But let's say it pops up. Right. Shutting it down too early and then not revisiting the conflict once it's shut down. Because that's a big red flag that's saying, uh-oh, there's something here beneath the surface. I better dig in.

Starting point is 00:12:18 It's an opportunity to learn, do something different. And people get uncomfortable because they don't like conflict. So they just shut it down because that's the control. That's easy to do. I'm the authority figure. This is, oh, people are getting uncomfortable. Fair enough. So I say, let it go a little longer and just shift from, I need to control this to what can I learn from this? What's going on in the room here? And then make sure we revisit it if it does get to that level where it's unproductive. Gotcha. Very good.

Starting point is 00:12:46 I would say that one of the things that I see cause conflict is change. You know, people, they fear change or they're comfortable where they're at and change is uncomfortable. So you get this fear response, fight, flight, or freeze, which creates conflict. Last three years have been filled with change. And it's funny because even if you go back three years before that, you can say there's a lot of change in those three years. It's just different change. This one we're a lot more aware of. What are some conflict resolution strategies that leaders can use during these seasons of rapid change? So I always break things down into strategic

Starting point is 00:13:23 level versus operational level. I define strategy as a game plan for success that gives you a framework to say yes and no to opportunities that present themselves. It's about laser focus in the direction you're going. Execution is, that's the easy part. Execution is the hard part and actually doing that over and over and over. So the first part is more strategic. Having those conversations with key leaders around the CEO to say, how do we want to deal with change and conflict? Change sucks because you said people get comfortable, they've established processes and routines, and people grieve loss. And some people get angry. Some people pipe down and disengage. So really creating that space to know people are going to experience change differently, definitely conflict differently. You mentioned something earlier on that I think is also extremely useful, and that's assessments. So I use a variety of different

Starting point is 00:14:23 assessments in my work. Having that data and knowing how key people around me will naturally want to respond to that stuff is gold. Because then I can alter my communication style, my messaging, you know, to give them a little more time to process things if they are that process-driven thinker. Whereas I'm a weirdo, you know, shiny metal object. Oh, we got to change and do this. Okay, how fast? When do we need it? Wow. Yeah. So really understanding your team can help better set them up individually for change and conflict, not just for how you deal with them as a manager or leader, but also how they will fill into the strategy that is being built for the change itself. This is a fascinating topic because, I mean, it just plays into the de-escalation of conflict leads to the creation of solution essentially in life, generically, if that's how we describe it. And I remember in law enforcement, still to this day, I'm still involved in it. We put people in conflict artificially to get them

Starting point is 00:15:25 used to solving problems in conflict. So they learn how to give grace, how to deescalate, how to not use unreasonable force or take things a direction that doesn't need to happen. But we don't do that in business. We don't train our people in business how to deal with conflict. Maybe in sales we do, but we certainly don't in a planning meeting or something like that. Do you have any recommendations for how we can help our employees? Is it scenario planning or acting things out? Or how do we get our employees better at dealing with conflict? I mean, generally, we're talking about professional development. and then there's a couple different buckets underneath that. Okay. So right off the bat, to toot my own horn, I actually have a workshop seminar called Start

Starting point is 00:16:12 Conflict for Smart Conflict, where we do exactly that in the business setting through a variety of simulations to figure out the most common ways people will respond, and then to start to illuminate the different choices that people could have when those disagreements do pop up. So you can do the traditional training, which I view training as choice elimination, going through the motion so you're not thinking and you can just react over time. We don't tend to get to that level in the business world because we don't do enough training. I view development as the opposite. That's choice illumination. Something pops up, and instead of not thinking because I just do my habit, it's here's the 27 different things I can do and then knowing which one to choose. And to me, that's much more of a coaching approach. So

Starting point is 00:16:55 get people either coaching or put them through training because most people just revert back to their natural style of how they deal with disagreement, and that might work at an individual level. But once you're on a team, especially if that team's charged with millions or billions of dollars of budget, thinking about how we deal with conflict is extremely important. Right. But here's the reality. You are being real about conflict. You're telling people, you're going to have conflict in your business. Let's learn how to deal with it. Whereas I can't tell you how many times I've seen businesses, and I coach CEOs also, they don't even talk about it. It's crazy. There's like this, you know, you used it before, the big avoidance of the whole thing. So what is conflict radar? You know, you have that term conflict radar. Yeah, that's a tool, a metaphor I created and a tool we use in our toolkit when we're doing this type of training or coaching.

Starting point is 00:17:48 Again, research is very clear. Most people hear that, the C word, and it's instantly they get a knot in their stomach. They're like, ooh, I don't like that. I hear it. I'm a weirdo. I'm like, ooh, awesome. I view conflict almost as manure. It's stinky.

Starting point is 00:18:02 It's dirty, but things grow from it. So the conflict radar is both a metaphor and an acronym. I want people to turn up the sensitivity of their conflict radar so that they can start anticipating in a workplace or a personal relationship, where might the disagreements pop up? Which ones are going to naturally make me uncomfortable? So it's that know thyself piece. But then the actual acronym is reflect,

Starting point is 00:18:27 analyze, describe, apply, respond. Whether people remember that or not, it's all about creating a space between stimulus and response. Viktor Frankl, very famous author, wrote Man's Search for Meaning. He was in concentration camps and was able to live through that and live a meaningful life. And he says, for humans, there's a space between stimulus and response. In that space, we have the choice to choose our response. In that response is our growth and freedom. How I think about conflict, that's our opportunity to grow. That's the obstacle. Let's lean into it, hug it, and move forward with it rather than be scared of it. Awesome. I love that.

Starting point is 00:19:09 Inside of that space in conflict is that growth and freedom. That's so true. Dr. Z, where can we find you online? Where on the social medias can our listeners find you? Yeah, you know, I'm kind of boring. I'm a traditional consultant in that sort of framework. So LinkedIn is where I'm usually at. So you can find me, Zach Schaefer at LinkedIn. I am on Twitter. I'm not super active, but Spark Solver is my Twitter handle or just by email, Zach at sparkthediscussion.com. Spark, all right, sparkthediscussion.com. And you also have podcasts. Yeah, I do. It's not as cool and hip and big as yours. It's a small passion project, but we're at about 108 episodes now and it's called Life Lab.

Starting point is 00:19:53 Awesome. Not business oriented. So it's looking at principles to live the good life. Awesome. Well, everybody check it out. 108 episodes is very respectable. That means he's been at it for quite some time. So probably some great content on there. Zach, Dr. Z, I have a question I ask all of our amazing guests on Start With A Win, and that's how do you start your day with a win? Yeah, so I've probably been doing this for about 10 years now, but I like to own my morning rather than let the morning own me.

Starting point is 00:20:23 And the pandemic really gave me the gift to drive that home. So there's a couple of things. I do box breathing, if you're familiar with that. Yep. So that's, yep. So I do box breathing. I have a set of four different meditations that I go through. I do a series of pushups or squats to get the blood flowing.

Starting point is 00:20:42 And then I do journaling every day, two times a day. I've done that for many years now. And then I see the kids off to school. And I do all that because for the previous 10 years to that, at 5 a.m., within 10 seconds, I was laying in bed looking at my emails, and it was just causing total disorientation for my whole day. Awesome. What a great way to start your day. Dr. Z, Zach Schaefer, thanks for talking conflict with us today and thanks for being on Start With A Win. Thanks for having me, guys.

Starting point is 00:21:12 Hey, and thank you for listening to Start With A Win. Head on over to adamcontos.com for more great content and to download Adam's full proof time system that will help you manage your time like a successful CEO. Remember, until next time, start with a win.

Start With A Win - How to Handle Conflict with Confidence with Zach Schaefer

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