This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 115 / Unresolved Conflict with Julie Holunga

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

My guest on this episode talks about something so messy and so uncomfortable, but also so important as it’s something we’ve all experienced; unresolved conflict. Julie Holunga is a Leadership Trainer, Executive Coach and contributing Author to the leadership book for women, On The Rise. Julie walks us through the biggest challenges we face when it comes to conflict, and she gives beneficial tips to help you work through it. There are people in your life you can and should have conflict with, knowing it’ll get resolved because they are in it with you. They are equally invested in resolving it together. Those are the people you fight with and fight for. And there are some people where conflict may be better left unresolved, leaving you to move forward and create your own closure. Knowing the difference? Well that is woman’s work. To learn more about Julie and her work you can visit: Julieholunga.com or follow her on LinkedIn @julieholunga To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com. Get your copy of Validation Is For Parking.

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and give a gift that keeps on giving and teaches them engineering, science, and art. Give awesome this holiday season with KiwiCo. Get your first month of any crate line free at KiwiCo.com forward slash WW30. That's your first month free at Ki com slash W-W-30. I am Nicole Kalil, and you're tuning in to another episode of This Is Woman's Work. If you're a regular listener, you'll know that this show is all about redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work. And that my hope is that the new definition is doing whatever authentically feels right to you. Doing whatever makes you feel the sun from the inside. Do that.

And that seems pretty simple, right? So why have a podcast about it? Because my experience is that simple is not the same thing as easy. And most of us have been told, taught, influenced, trained, guided, governed, shamed, showed, and directed away from our authentic truth, toward expectations determined by nothing but the packaging that we come in, by our perceived gender. If you're a regular listener, you'll also know that I'm personally working through some old beliefs and patterns related to control versus detachment, falling back to perfectionist tendencies when understressed, and finding myself with oh so many to-dos that I would let self-care and stillness go by the wayside. I guess I am still a work in

progress and grace, forgiveness, and detachment are becoming my current biggest opportunities. All of this has led me to today's topic and today's guest. Today, we're going to talk about unresolved conflict. I mean, I'm not sure it gets juicier than that. And I don't care who you are. We've all experienced it. So let me welcome Julie Holunga, leadership trainer, executive coach, and contributing author to the leadership book for women on the rise. Julie, thank you so much for being here. And I want to dive right in because I have lots of questions about unresolved conflict. So let's start with conflict in general. I personally am more of a fighter. I wouldn't say I like conflict, but if I'm in it, I'll get in it. And then I know there are a lot of people who define themselves as conflict avoiders.

So my first question is, does anybody actually like conflict? Is anybody actually good at it? Right. It's such a great question, Nicole, and it's a favorite topic of mine. So what I have seen in my research, but also having this conversation over the last couple of decades around conflict is that I see people fall into typically three groups when it comes to conflict. We have people who avoid it or that's their words, but I'm going to tell you what I have seen elsewhere, but they're the avoiders. There are the ruminators, right? Who we all wake up at three in the morning or not all of us, but a lot of us, myself included, wake up at three in the morning. Oh, I should have done this. I could have done this. I could have

done this. What did he mean by this? I shouldn't have said that, the shoulders. And then a smaller group, but I bring it up because we don't always understand what's going on, but we have our instigators. And the instigators have never come out and said to me, I love conflict. But what I noticed, whether it's in a retreat setting or in a leadership meeting or even one-on-one, the instigators are those who sort of drop this grenade into the conversation. And it typically happens because they're bored. These are my words. They may not say that, but this happened with a client of mine and she was the CFO, the CEO, another amazing woman, you know, groundbreaking

in terms of what she had done professionally, but also the company that she had started would do this. And it turned out after a few conversations, we figured out she was bored with the conversation. She liked to fast pace and she wanted to move on. So she would love these comments that for some people would just sort of throw them into silence and like kind of, you know, crossing their arms and leaning back and disengaging because of the comment. Her purpose was not to push people out of the conversation, but rather, let's get this going. Let's get some innovation or some innovative thoughts out on the table. And once people understand that there are instigators, then they understand what's going on in any given conversation. And they tend not to pull back.

And they tend to say, okay, this is what's going on. Nicole's instigating because she wants to move the conversation along, or she had this wild idea. It's not about me. It's really about the product or the service or whatever the conversation is about. So those are really the three groups. The reason why I said the avoiders, there's like a little asterisk next to that is through work that I do on an assessment tool called Emerge Genetics,

which that could be another whole podcast, but really it looks at how we prefer to think and behave and simplifies human interaction. And what we've learned through this profile, giving it to over a million people around the world is that we have people who like that fast pace. So they're going to address conflict when it happens. It sounds like maybe you're in that group. You find out that I'm annoyed with you about a decision you've made. You're doing everything they can to prevent it from escalating. And there really is a difference. And once I say that to people, they say, yeah, you're right. I don't want to deal with conflict.

But my avoidance is not, I'm not dealing with it. I'm turning a blind eye. I'm going to do everything I can to build consensus, to make sure that all voices are heard, to bring everything to the surface that needs to be brought to the surface, all with the goal of de-escalating conflict. Okay. So all of that is really good. And it's tied into my next question. You might have already answered it, but what are the common responses when people experience conflict? Yeah.

So I see it's either, it's either passive or active, right? Passive meaning I'm not going to talk to you anymore. I'm going to avoid you. I'm not going to respond to your emails. I'm not going to attend a meeting you're going to be at. I'm not going to go to this event I know you're going to be. So we have those kind of passive. Sometimes it's withholding information. And then we have active responses. And they can be both can be good or bad. But the active responses, it might be, you know, saying, talking about you behind your back, or it may be reaching out to you in a positive way to

say, Hey, Nicole, I noticed that you weren't participating in the conversation this morning. What's going on? How are you doing? So these active and passive responses. So what I always tell people is when you feel that moment, you're in that precipitating event, like a lot of people, they feel maybe some anger in their body or they feel heat rising, right? Like, oh my God, I'm going to start blushing any second now because I'm angry. I know that for me, I often will clench my hands. And that's when I know, oh, I'm feeling that I'm entering conflict or I'm feeling some escalation of some kind, that they have one choice to make. They can choose to focus on the person, which tends to be pretty destructive. You're doing this to me. You don't like me. You're getting in my way. You're preventing

me from being successful. Or you can focus on the task at hand, which is more constructive. And that's when you can have those more positive, passive, or active responses to conflict. So an active, constructive response is, hey, like, I'm going to hold, you know, I'm feeling some anger, I noticed what's going inside of my body in my mind, and I'm going to wait 24 hours. So for anyone listening who has kids in youth sports, we've seen on every court field rank, you know, this sign that says, give it 24 hours. Don't talk to the coach. I would even say, don't talk to the kid, give it 24 hours.

There's a reason why we say, don't talk to the kid, give it 24 hours. It's there's a reason why we say, you know, sleep on it. Right. So because we often then are able to be much clearer about what's really going on, what's really upsetting me as opposed to a letting the emotions talk. And this works comes, comes out of Eckerd college in Florida this whole idea like this passive and active responses and that you have this one choice are you going to take the constructive path focus on the task at hand not take it personally or are you going to focus on that destructive path where it's all that finger pointing blame game you know denying any accountability we've all seen that in people we've worked with.

And let's be honest, we've all had moments where we've been ourselves on that destructive path. Absolutely. And I think acknowledging that this is a challenging thing because yes, conflict is inevitable in all of our lives. Every single time I've experienced it, it feels super challenging, right? So I guess the question is both, why is it that, why is it so challenging and any tips that you can give us to experience our emotions? You already gave us one, but how to like set it aside or separate our choices from our feelings. There's a quote that I love that says, it's okay to have your feelings. Your feelings just can't have you. And I feel like that in those moments, but like how to do that can be really complex. Absolutely. And you know, the

thing that maybe we should have started with this, that conflict is a good thing. We need conflict to be innovative, to be creative, to come up with different ways to help, whether it's clients or customers or our colleagues or our teams, we need that conflict. We're not going to go through life. Like I'm going to agree with everything you say. And you know, we're going to be able to be innovative, right? So we need conflict. And there are, the way I look at it as is, and I mentioned this before, this de-escalation that there are what I call sort of the first three levels of conflict is misunderstanding, a miscommunication, you know, a disagreement, right? So my, one of my favorite cousins is a huge Yankees fan

I Nicole am a Red Sox fan there's a lot of disagreement as to who is the best baseball team of all time similarly there's a disagreement about who's the greatest quarterback of all time you and I both know it's Tom Brady, but that's besides the point. Objectively speaking. Yeah, right. So if we're in those first three levels of disagreement or, you know, a misunderstanding or miscommunication, it's okay. It might feel a little bit uncomfortable, but this is a place of learning. I'm never going to agree that the Yankees are the best team in baseball, but it's a place of learning, appreciation, a new way, a new approach to how things get done. Like I remember when our kids were infants and my husband would change the diaper one way. And I

thought he should change it a different way. The diapers on it stays on. It does its purpose. Right. Right. Oh yeah. I always think of this as the, the agree to disagree category, or like what I ask myself, is this the hill I want to die on? And more often than not, this is not the hill I want to die on. We all know Tom Brady's the best quarterback, but it's not the hill I want to die on. If. If you can't see it, oh, well, right? Right, right, right. And there are probably like, we're joking around with Tom Brady, but there are things even in the workplace

or in our personal lives that we're like, yeah, this is, you know, agree to disagree on this. Where it becomes really challenging is when we get past that, those first three levels into level four and five. And level four is discord. And level four, if not addressed, right, and kind of like you were talking in the beginning of this idea of detachment, if we don't address conflict in that discord level and discord is okay fine we agree to disagree but i'm holding on to it so i'm not talking about it but it's still affecting the decisions i make it

might be affecting how i think about you it might be affecting if you ask for more budget i'm going to say no no matter what if we don't address with that at that Discord level and it continues to escalate, it goes into polarization. And polarization is the end of relationships. People leave. People get fired. Clients leave you. Customers stop using your brand.

So if, I mean, I sometimes wish we had like a little barometer that we could, you know, on our shoulder that could tell us, oh, we're going into level four discord, red flag, red flag, you know, alarms going off. We need to bring things down. And what I find is for everything is when you are aware, like you're asking for tips, when you're aware of this individual, this situation, or these circumstances tend to trigger me into heightened misunderstanding or heightened conflict, then you can prepare.

So you know, okay, you know what? Every time I'm in a meeting with this individual, I feel triggered. I feel put off. I feel that I'm not at my best. Then in anticipation of that, you can then step back and say, okay, I'm not going to control how that person reacts, but I'm going to control me. And I know that that person's going to do something to irritate me or to trigger me, but I'm aware of it. And this is what I'm going to practice and focus my attention on instead. And so maybe it is being prepared with information because this individual always is asking for more detail or asking, you know,

what does the research show? So having that awareness, and we all know that, right? Like being aware is the first step, but really that's key. And then preparing for how you want to respond. When someone loves a comment, right? Like I get kind of that sick feeling in my stomach and I get really hot. Like I thought I was having hot flashes in my twenties and I realized, no, this is just conflict. This is what happens in my body. Okay. So I want to make sure, because I think this really resonated with me is this idea of that fourth level discord, right? Yeah. I think a lot of us as women spend a lot of time in that fourth level. And what I'm hearing is we basically have the opportunity to deescalate into the first three, or it's ultimately going to go into the fifth level, which is the ending of a relationship. And I mean, you may disagree, but I think in some cases that discord is about deciding which direction is the right direction and sort of

like not wanting to live in discord for too long. And then like, I'm thinking out loud in order to deescalate, at least in some situations or in some relationships, the other person is going to have to want to deescalate as well. Yes. Because if you're deescalating and they're doing the things that will damage and end a relationship, like that is an awful place to be. Okay. So all of that brings me to the thought that keeps popping in my head closure. Yeah. I have been told how important closure is, and I have done the, I need closure to move on. And I'm curious your thoughts on it. I have a new working belief about closure is closure important. Is it a myth? Is it a way of controlling? Is it an excuse? Is it valuable? Will we ever get it? Like, what are your thoughts on closure?

Right. So closure for me is, is it comes to that control piece and we can control ourselves and that's it. We can control our thoughts. We can control our actions. We can control our behaviors, but we can't do that for someone else or for other circumstances. So when I think about closure, and I, as you were just saying that I was thinking about different relationships, you know, from decades ago, right. When, you know, in college or just after college where we weren't as mature or, or as thoughtful as we are at this point in life. And yeah, I would have loved to have closure on some of those relationships, not going to happen. And at a certain point, we have to decide what's our closure for it. And what are we going to decide? Whatever the circumstances were,

whatever the relationship that potentially ended, or isn't as healthy, what are we going to decide how we're going to deal with it? So again, that it's raising that awareness. Like, why do I feel that I need closure? What am I trying to control here? Right. Yeah. I, um, I've been kind of noodling on this for a while. And I thought for a very long time that closure is something that someone gives to us. And I've come kind of full circle on this, that closure is something we create for ourselves. That's right. The other person may or may not be involved, but we are the only people who have any thing to say about or any control over our own closure. Right, right.

And I would say that for anything, right? Like whether it's closure or conflict, you know, to your point, what if someone else doesn't want to give you that closure? Or what if someone else wants to escalate conflict? And this is the question I get every single time. So I'm so glad you brought it up. What do I do if I want to stay on the constructive path and focus on the task at hand and someone else is in that blame game and denying accountability? What do you do? And it's so funny because I've, this question

comes up so much. So I always have my, you know, two cents on it, but I always ask the room, you know, what are your thoughts? I've asked colleagues of mine or other people who are experts in conflict. And there's, I wish there was one clear cut black and white answer. And there just isn't. And it's, it's what I always say to people, it goes back to the control thing. You can control yourself. And there is a certain point, like, that's what we can control. What am I going to put up with? If there's a toxic person you work with, and you're really good at what you do, or you have that confidence in you, like, get out of there. I hate to say that, but when you've

given it your all, and you really, when you really know that you've reached that point, there's a certain point that it's not healthy anymore. Right. Yeah. And so many of us as women, whether it's because of control or fear or excuses or whatever, we stay in that discord space so long. That's really fascinating for me. You make such a good point, like that the women, we hold it it like we take on that responsibility any tips or insight when we're in it i always find it's easier to see something from the outside looking in that it is when you're in it how can we identify or determine if the conflict is worth resolving it's worth putting the effort in to de-escalate or when we should just walk away, move on, let go, whatever terminology you want to use. Yeah. So I'm going to separate this between

work and personal because I often find in these conversations, especially with women, that they say, you know, at work, I feel really good about how I deal with conflict. I feel proud of myself and I feel very professional at home. It's a totally different story, right? Like, and, and part of that is a comfort. Like if it's with a partner or a spouse or a family member, right? Like you can be a little bit more free. What I always say, especially in the work sense, is how important is this individual to your success? If they are not, it doesn't matter, right? So you can agree to disagree.

And as long as you're being honest with yourself, you're not in that place of discord and holding on to something. And if you can say, okay, you know, we don't agree on this, but I'm okay with, with, you know, kind of giving you the win for this. It's okay. So really thinking about how important is this person to my success? And then thinking about if I'm not in relationship with this person, so I'm not avoiding them. I see them. I say, hello, but you know what? I'm not in relationship with this person, so I'm not avoiding them. I see them.

I say hello, but you know what? I'm going to step back a little bit. Does that affect your life significantly? And this is the bridge between, you know, I think of this both personally and professionally. So personally, I find that it's really important to especially as women as we get older, like we know what makes us feel good, who makes us feel good and who doesn't. And knowing that this person isn't that important to me, or whatever the negative feelings are, or the conflict that isn't working for me, that energy, I don't want to deal with

anymore. So I'm going to step back. It doesn't mean you have to be rude. You don't have to have a big blowout fight, but maybe you're just going to step back in terms of how often you engage with that person. But it's really sitting. I loved how you said in the beginning, like being still with yourself and noticing how am I feeling after I interact with this person? So I'll give you an example. So I had a friend, we had known each other in college. We'd been friends, you know, had not been in touch for 20 years, got back together again, started hanging out and the

behaviors she was exhibiting didn't really line up with mine. Just leave it at that. And we went to brunch one day and I, and our daughters came with us and they were, my daughter was maybe seven or eight at the time. And we were driving home and I started to fall asleep at the wheel. This was, I hadn't been drinking, you know, it was one o'clock in the afternoon. I slept well the night before. There was no reason for me, we weren't driving that far. There was no reason for me to be falling asleep at the wheel, but it scared me quite a bit. Having one, obviously being on the road, falling asleep is not a good thing, but having my daughter in the car with me and I came home and I was really upset that this had happened.

I mean, we were fine. Nothing happened. I don't know about anyone else. I slapped my cheeks and, you know, luckily we were close to home. But what I realized, I sat with this for a couple of days and what I realized was that this friend had completely drained me of every ounce of energy over that lunch, that I fell asleep driving home. That was such a wake-up call to me that that friendship was no longer serving me anymore. And I shared it with a couple of people and they're like,

oh yeah, yeah, that's called an energy vampire. And that just rang so true to me that I became so hyper aware of my energy around other people. And that's, you know, that's something that is a distinction. Like sometimes I feel bad because, you know, my husband says you, you, you broke up with her and I'm like, yeah, I kind of did. But it's what I needed to do. Like, if I'm going to be potentially putting my life, other people's lives at risk, my daughter's life at risk, because you drained me of all this energy, that's a conflict I don't want to be engaged in. Well, and I think we all have these people in these relationships, whether it's current or in our history, where we look at

it and we're like, that mostly made me feel awful. It's really interesting. I think the stillness is important, really checking in. How does this person make me feel? What is my body telling me? What is my energy telling me? And I liked what you said too, like how important is this person to my overall success professionally? I think that's a hard question sometimes personally, because I think a lot of times these people feel really important, but it's understanding what life could look like without, without. Yeah, it's so true. And it's a hard, a hard I mean you know I joke around and say you know breaking up but that's a hard it's a hard thing to do but I can say at this point in life that I'm better off for it I'm better to the people that I'm around I'm better to myself

if I'm able to surround myself with people who energize me. Yeah. Right. And, and, you know, from the workplace, like there might be people who push you. And so you might say like, oh, wow, like this isn't really conflict. This is someone who's pushing me outside my comfort zone and I perform better there. Yeah, totally. Right. Like this isn't about comfort necessarily. It's more about there's a difference between being uncomfortable and being in pain. Totally.

There is a difference between being challenged versus having the energy sucked out of you. Right. Exactly. I have a colleague who gives a metaphor of a balloon, like it's someone filling up your balloon or sucking the air out of it? Yeah. Yeah. Julie, thank you for this conversation. It's so important and it's so messy and it's so uncomfortable.

And yet it's also like, and I'm so glad you said it's also so important and such a gift and such a blessing and relationships without conflict aren't really relationships. The difference is they either make it stronger or make it worse. And that's how, you know, at least from my experience, the one's worth keeping. That's true. Absolutely. I love it. If you're listening and you want to connect with Julie, you can go to her website, juliehalonga.com or follow her on LinkedIn. We'll put all of that in the show notes. Julie, thank you for this very important

conversation and for going all over the place with me. Yes. Thank you, Nicole. It's been a lot of fun. Awesome. Okay. I'm going to leave you with this thought. What if the most important question any of us need to be asking is whether or not this conflict actually needs to be resolved? Maybe not being able to get closure from somebody is closure. Maybe understanding that you deserve better than waiting for answers from somebody who's never going to give them to you. That time and space and stillness and choosing yourself is the best kind of closure. That actions really do speak so loudly that you can't hear anything else. So you listen and believe those actions and find comfort in the fact that the only actions you

actually have any control over are your own. There are people in your life you can and should have conflict with, knowing it will get resolved because they're in it with you. They're equally invested in resolving it together. Those are the people you fight with and fight for. And then there are people who demonstrate in every way possible that they're not that interested in doing or being anything different to resolve a conflict and if you're the only one doing all of the work anyway you might as well let them go and give yourself do the work to give yourself the closure you seek. With yourself, for yourself, let go. Move forward because that is woman's work.