Megan Hunter
Welcome to It’s All Your Fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you deal with the most challenging situations, those involving high conflict situations. I’m Megan Hunter and I’m usually here with my co-host Bill Eddy, but he’s on his second week away with his wife for her birthday, so we’re giving him a little time off. And I’m really pleased to be joined once again by our esteemed senior trainer, Michael Lomax, who you’ll hear from shortly. Bill and I are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute and ConflictInfluencer.com, where we focus on training, consulting, coaching, and educational programs and methods in communities, all to do with high conflict. So, as I said, Michael is one of our senior trainers, and he is the co-author of Mediating High Conflict Disputes with our very own Bill Eddy. And he’s the lead trainer for our workplace training for leaders, managing high conflict behavior in the workplace, and our New Ways for Work coaches training. So we’ll hear a little bit more about that later. So welcome, listeners. Thank you for taking us on your kayak today. So Michael, let’s talk about you again for a minute. Last week you shared a bit about who you are and where you’re from, but for our listeners who don’t know you, let’s share that with them.
Michael Lomax
Right. Thanks, Megan. Great to be here. I’ve been in the field of workplace dispute resolution for 25 years. I practiced law for a good chunk of that time, but really outside of court focused on mediation, workplace dispute resolution mediation. And I’ve been a trainer with the High Conflict Institute for 15 years now and really enjoying it. And I really enjoy working with people and organizations around these challenging workplace conflicts and providing really practical tools that people can use right away to help really resolve, in a lot of ways, some very challenging, stressful situations.
Megan Hunter
Absolutely. And we’re going to talk about some of those tools today. But I’m really curious, how did you and Bill first meet?
Michael Lomax
Well, I was practicing law on Vancouver Island, West Coast Canada, and I was part of a group of lawyers whose focus was trying to stay out of court, help families in the world of divorce and separation, stay out of court, resolve things amicably. And we were looking for some training and I had heard of Bill. And I said, I think we should invite Bill Eddy up for some training. And so he came up. That was in 2009. And we would try different training options. You know, we might get maybe a dozen people to come, and when we had 50 people come to his training, we went, okay, we clearly hit something that people are really interested in. And then we had him come up again in the same year to teach New Ways for Families for everybody again, and we had another fifty people come. And so through that I really got to know him well, as a friend and a colleague, and we worked together over a number of years doing trainings together and things like that. So yeah, it’s been really great to have him as a mentor and a colleague.
Megan Hunter
Oh, that’s really good. And as you were saying that, what came to mind is hearing from some parents who are recently divorced in BC, in British Columbia, Canada. And we’re singing the praises of the family court system, which we almost never hear from anywhere. So apparently you guys are doing a good job up there in British Columbia and maybe there’s some real peacemaking, problem solving courts.
Michael Lomax
Yeah, they use mediation right at the beginning in the family court, which is, you know, over the last few years been something they’ve introduced. It has worked very well. That’s great to hear those folks have appreciated it.
Megan Hunter
We honestly never hear that. And that’s not all or nothing. It’s just the truth. It’s fact. We don’t hear positive things about the courts, but we did in that case. Although there’s great work being done in courts everywhere. Okay, so let’s get back to workplace tools that leaders can use and really how organizations can respond in high conflict. What should people do? We mentioned in the last episode a little bit about BIFF responses as a way to prevent emails, Slack, chats — anywhere where there’s communication going on in a written form — from spiraling. And I have an example from a couple of weeks ago where there was one that just was trying to be so helpful in the email, even under some kind of heavy conflict, or just kind of poking the person under their skin, just little jabs. And you know, that gets under your skin, especially if you’re dealing with it a lot. So the response was a BIFF response, as we’ll talk about here in a minute. And then the next one was just poking them under the skin a little bit more. And then it was really a lot harder to do a BIFF response. So the back and forth started. And then it was down to two words and hit send and now it’s on. It just spiraled. And then you have a person who’s feeling really badly about this and another person who is not feeling badly at all and feeling very vindicated and justified probably. Let’s talk about BIFF responses and how they can be so entirely beneficial in the workplace.
Michael Lomax
Yeah, well, no, that’s a great example. And, you know, sadly, probably the person who walks away feeling badly from that one was the one who started trying to use the BIFF response and then gave in to some of those feelings.
Megan Hunter
Yes, indeed.
Michael Lomax
Right? It feels good for a little bit, you know. I feel better having said that, and then later I go, oh boy, what have I done?
Megan Hunter
Right. Now I have to see this person tomorrow.
Michael Lomax
Yeah, or just maybe this is not who I want to be, right? I’m not proud of what I did there. I gave in to some of those feelings. And certainly I can relate to that. And so written communication in some ways can almost escalate just as fast as verbal, or almost faster sometimes, because there’s no tone, there’s no facial expression, and so we’re reading into it almost, or the other person reading it through whatever emotional state they’re in, right? So this is where sometimes we really need to be thinking about how we’re writing to not trigger more responses, so that it lands the best that it can. And things are so rapid fire with written communication, right? Like with instant messaging, I could CC people. I can escalate conflict with email or other types of written communication very quickly. And so on the receiving end of some of that, or even when I’m frustrated, using BIFF response as that structure as a communication tool, it gives me a structure to de-escalate myself to a degree and help de-escalate this conflict with this other person. And it stands for Brief, Informative, Friendly, and Firm. And so we’re talking about brief — fewer words means less for the other person to react to. It’s less for me to kind of agonize over what I’m writing. And on kind of almost an unconscious level, we’re saying to the other person, I don’t really want to get into this. Without saying that, you’re just giving them less to react to.
Megan Hunter
Right.
Michael Lomax
And then informative, we’re just sticking to the facts, we’re avoiding opinions or even advice. And amazingly, there’s lots of times they think, well, this advice is to help you, but in the world of high conflict, they don’t really respond well to advice. They actually get quite angry.
Megan Hunter
Defensive, right.
Michael Lomax
They think you’re talking down to them like a parent. And you’re like, that’s not what I’m doing. Yeah, but that’s how it is very often received. And we don’t need to defend ourselves. We just stick to straight, useful, neutral information. And we’re friendly, which is the hardest one to do when we’re feeling attacked. And I’ve had people kind of come at me when I’m doing the training and say, friendly, you know, and I’m like, I know it’s hard, especially when we’re feeling attacked, but very often the person who sent that email to us, they don’t realize how they sound. They are in distress and they’re just offloading that onto us. And they’re going, oh, I feel so much better now that I said that.
Megan Hunter
Yes, it just feels good.
Michael Lomax
And so they don’t realize how they sound, but they sure see how we sound. And so in order to keep it in the middle, keep that conflict small, we want to focus on friendly opening, friendly closing. If there’s a way to use some empathy or respect in the email, find a way to do that. And then firmly end the conversation. Not firmly harshly — firmly say, that’s all I have to say on the matter. A clear closing, a clear firm closing, again prevents further back and forth. Through that, that email — we don’t know where that thing might end up. It’s permanent. So you’re protecting your credibility by staying in that zone. You actually reduce the chances of this escalating, more emotional kind of fuel to the fire. It might even help get us back to problem solving.
Megan Hunter
And pass the front page test.
Michael Lomax
That’s right. And people will show these things to other people and they’ll go — and sometimes it may not land with them. They may go, I’m still angry, but then they’ll go show it to someone else. Can you believe what so and so wrote back to me? But then that person might go, actually this is not that bad.
Megan Hunter
Yeah, and they screenshot it and all kinds of things.
Michael Lomax
This is actually pretty good. And so in that sense it’s not passive. It’s actually quite strategic. And people have said to me too that using that BIFF structure — I remember somebody saying to me, this is like a pilot’s checklist. And pilots use these checklists when there’s some really difficult things going on to remind them not to skip certain steps and ground them, like I’ve got to do these things. And that’s what I find. Instead of like, I got a blank page, what am I going to write back to this person when I feel like the floor is falling out from underneath me? Brief. Three to five sentences. Information, friendly opening, friendly closing, firmly in the conversation. I have a plan. And the other thing is it’s really memorable. And what I’ll say about that, the memorable piece is when we work with teams or groups that practice this together, now they have a common language, they have something they can use with each other. I’ve had people come up to me two years later and say BIFF, and I just did one presentation on it and they say I use it and I still remember it. And that’s pretty amazing for adults in adult training to walk away and go, I remember that years later.
Megan Hunter
Yeah, in fact I’m just looking down at my notepad in front of me and it is the “Use a BIFF Response” notepad. People love BIFF. It’s very memorable and we often only retain a small percentage of the information we learned at trainings, and this is usually the one thing that they really do remember, in addition to EAR statements as well. But back to email conversations, do you think that they do spiral sometimes more quickly than face-to-face conversations?
Michael Lomax
Yeah, because in face-to-face, in a lot of ways we naturally co-regulate with each other, right? We adjust each other’s tone or body language. There’s all kinds of other things that we’re scanning for and receiving. And that can help us. Like if the person’s saying, the words aren’t perfect, but there’s other stuff going on with their tone and their body, and okay, I know they’re doing their best and it just kind of helps calm me. And we’re in a relationship with each other. We’re there together. Whereas an email or a text is just me. And sometimes that might be good. Like now I have time to think about this, time to process, time to decide what I want to say back. I’ve had lots of people say that to me. And in those situations, no, it’s not going to go off too quickly. But in other ways, we don’t have those things to go by. And so if we’re tired or stressed or already upset, then we read into it. Can you believe what this person just said to me?
Megan Hunter
Right.
Michael Lomax
And another person’s like, I’m not seeing it. I’m not seeing that at all. No, that’s what they meant. And so those words — it’s very quick — our brain fills in the tone, the missing pieces, and then it’s very quick to hit the send button and react back, right? And off we go. And people are gonna be firing off messages in seconds, things they would never say out loud.
Megan Hunter
Exactly. And then you get that and it’s on your shoulders and it’s ruined your day. So you respond something back, you don’t BIFF it. And my experience is when you haven’t BIFFed, right? You just — you’re either upset or you’re just trying to respond in some way without a lot of structure to do it. What you get back in response to that is something that’s going to make you feel yet a little bit worse. Someone who maybe wants to put you down just a little bit more. So you just keep opening the door. If you don’t BIFF, you open the door to more put-downs, more insults, more demeaning language. And I think that was a big game changer for me when I realized that it’s not just about de-escalating conflict, right? It’s about, hey, this is going to impact me. I have the power to let this impact me or not. And by responding with a BIFF, I’m taking out and extracting anything that’s going to potentially get me something pretty hostile back. Now once in a while you will. But I’ve found that more often than not, it will remove that kind of nastiness and hostile reaction that you might get otherwise. So that is a real win for yourself. You don’t have to think of it as just a tool or technique, but actually, hey, I’m going to have a superpower where I’m not going to get put down yet again. So it’s very, very helpful.
Michael Lomax
And I’ve been in some situations where I’ve had to respond to people that I thought, this person, I don’t know what this person’s capable of exactly. And so I want to give them a way to save face and withdraw so we don’t have to continue doing this. And there’s been a couple of instances where I’ve used a BIFF to correct something or say, here’s the choices right now. And it’s ended okay. And I know that if I gave in to my emotions and sent something that I really feel like saying, I could end up with that person on my doorstep.
Megan Hunter
Right, right.
Michael Lomax
Or just way of litigation. I could end up in a litigation that I never wanted, or a professional complaint that I never wanted. And so it’s again, it’s not about being passive. It’s about how do I manage this and stay calm and walk away from this feeling good about what I wrote and confident. But also sometimes this is the way to kind of allow the other person to kind of back out and stop. You know, whereas sometimes otherwise we’re just gonna egg them on and they’re gonna do more.
Megan Hunter
Yep. Yep. So let’s now kind of shift to meetings, like maybe a team meeting. When you have one person that’s consistently being that disruptive voice — they’re talking over other people, they’re interrupting, they get upset if they don’t feel heard. But yet, you know, they might say, no one ever listens to me, and everyone else in the room is thinking, all we do is listen to you, there’s no time to do anything else. So those meetings really can get hijacked. So what’s a leader to do?
Michael Lomax
And those are very challenging because then it really does reflect on the leader if they’re the one managing the meeting, chairing the meeting, their ability to kind of manage those meetings. And I can tell you, I remember a workplace process I was involved in with a team of about 25 folks where they had stopped having meetings because they got so out of control. There were a couple of characters that hijacked those meetings.
Megan Hunter
Wow.
Michael Lomax
And there was conflict. There was disagreement that needed to be surfaced. But the manager said, okay, we’re not having meetings anymore. And the conflict didn’t disappear, it just kind of went underground, and there was more gossip, more alliances, and more stuff happening by email. And so it’s not about trying to stamp out disagreement or these challenging individuals or challenging behaviors. It’s about how do we create some healthy structures in the way we run our meetings, in some ways to allow for different points of view respectfully. And so we need a solid platform. And for me, the meetings that derail — it often happened long before that disruptive moment actually happened. In my experience, the meetings that I’ve been in that went off the rails, there were a couple of things that were always in common. There wasn’t a clear agenda and there weren’t clear guidelines. Sometimes I didn’t know who was in charge of the meeting. But there was no agenda and there were no guidelines. So when those aren’t in place, it can be the loudest person. I’ve been in professional meetings with other lawyers and even psychologists where you have a person who is the loudest or the most upset who decides what we’re going to do for the next three hours in that meeting. And everyone else is reacting. They don’t know how to intervene. And so that person ends up dominating. And you have other people just kind of like in shock, like, what do we do? Or maybe they’ll find it entertaining, I don’t know, watching the chair flounder. So I’ve seen this happen with very experienced professionals who just don’t have the platform to intervene because of those things that are missing. So to prevent it, ideally, we issue an agenda in advance.
Megan Hunter
I love agendas.
Michael Lomax
Great. Place for new business. And that way if the person says, I want to talk about this, I don’t want to talk about any of the things we’re talking about right now, okay, there’s a place for that, and that’s coming later. So hang on.
Megan Hunter
This isn’t gonna work right now.
Michael Lomax
Right. That’s not gonna happen right now. And then set those expectations from the start. It can be around respectful communication, but it’s also around the group supporting whoever’s chairing the meeting. So if the chair says we’re moving on to the next item, the group backs that up. And without that shared norm, otherwise, the chair is kind of left alone to manage the disruption, and then it’s now the chair and that person kind of going at it, right? So agenda, group norms, including back the chair. But as well, there’s ways to intervene. And so if the person is saying, I don’t want to talk about what we’re talking about right now, I want to talk about this thing — when someone is in that sense derailing the meeting, the key is to redirect, not confront or tell them to stop. So telling the person to stop, you ask for a better behavior, right? Like which is a lot of what we are taught to do as parents or even with a pet. You don’t say stop it. You say get down, go on the floor, right? So we really need to give people, here’s what we’re looking for you to do. So it can be, your concerns are important, but we’re out of time at the meeting right now. So please send them to me in writing before the next meeting so I can think about it and we can talk about it.
Megan Hunter
It’s perfect. I mean, right there. That’s just perfect because so many people get stuck with that and then it’s really off to the races, right?
Michael Lomax
And so thinking about those ways of responding. And then if the agenda — this isn’t on the agenda. Right now we’re focused on this. If you have something to say about this, please go ahead. Otherwise, you’ll need to wait till we’re talking about new business. So that really kind of structured way of engaging can help. And then you’re not in a fight with this person. You’re actually saying, you know, what you’re talking about, that might be important. We’re going to get to that. Right now we’re here. And so that way you’re protecting the group and you’re keeping the meeting on track, which are some of those kind of calm responses.
Megan Hunter
Structure, structure, structure, structure. And then just bring them back to your agenda.
Michael Lomax
Yeah.
Megan Hunter
Yeah, absolutely. So now let’s talk about chronic complaining and persistent negativity. We’ve all been taught that people want to be heard. But there comes a point where, yeah, we are also here to do some work instead of just a lot of complaining or being negative and not getting work done. So can we validate what’s going on and make someone feel heard and yet not let the chronic complaining and long conversations and long storytelling go on forever?
Michael Lomax
Yeah, and it’s again — some of this we may not be able to resolve for this person. If they are invested in — kind of this is what they do — they really do believe the world is kind of out to get them, or they’re supposed to get all these things and they’re not happening and it’s everyone else’s fault. Like those are not necessarily things I’m going to be able to talk this person out of, saying you shouldn’t think that way, you shouldn’t feel that way. But let’s just say that chronic complaining on some level is a bid for attention or control or validation in some way. So we want to acknowledge it and say, I see it and I respect it, without reinforcing it and kind of giving the person more airtime to continue to do that, right? And I think that’s where people get stuck. They maybe are good at sometimes doing empathy or saying, oh, tell me more, but they don’t know how to kind of shift it to, well, what is it you want to see happen that’s realistic? Or they might go, well, I’ll try this. Would this work? No, or even that failed. It’s all your fault. I can’t believe I trusted you, you know, and you’ve betrayed me. And so even when we try really hard to solve it for this person, if they are invested in, kind of, this doesn’t work, things never go my way, then they may reject what you’re trying to do to help, even if what you’re offering is really good. You know, it might be the best thing for them. They’re just going to reject it. So EAR statements, again — that empathy, attention, respect is our friend here. We’re acknowledging, we’re connecting. I see this is frustrating. I can respect how important this is to you or how distressing this might be. But then we very intentionally shift from past pain to future choices or proposals. What puts the responsibility ball back on the person? What do you want to see happen next? What’s a step you can take? Do you have a proposal for how we could deal with that?
The example I’ve got here is I was working with a manager who had a person who was a very high performer, but also I would consider had some traits, some high conflict characteristics. Very quick to file grievances when things didn’t go their way or complaints. Recruit people. They were very charismatic and well liked, and they were very good at their job, very competent. And so they would get people who thought they were great and they would say, oh, this manager’s terrible. Other people go, yeah, maybe they are. When everything was going great, they’re great. But when things weren’t going their way, everybody else is undermining me, it’s everybody else’s fault. They could get very intense with their tone and their body language. You could feel this kind of emotion. You could feel it in yourself. And this manager, when I was working with them, said, if I get into it with this employee, it could be a two-year war and I could lose. Like they’ve got enough friends and allies at different levels. I don’t know I’ll win. And so where it came to a head was the employee had gone away for several months and was coming back into the work unit. And there was a job they wanted, but somebody else was filling that job. And so the word got to this manager that they want this position when they come back. The manager meets with the employee and says, look, you know, I can’t offer you that position. I have two choices I can offer you. And the employee was very angry, very upset. You’re terrible. You’re awful. You know, you’re a terrible manager. You’re ruining my career. This kind of stuff, right? And so the manager in that meeting just sticks with using empathy, attention, respect. No, I know it doesn’t seem like it. This is actually to help you. I respect where you’re coming from. I respect how important this is to you. And the person says, I want that job. And the manager’s like, that’s been decided. Right? I’m not getting into an argument with you. That’s closed. I’m open to any other proposals you have or these two choices. And basically through that, the employee actually did accept one of the choices, and it kind of worked out in a much more smooth outcome. And actually the other leaders that were observing this manager, how they dealt with it — okay, you dealt with it. You dealt with it, but you didn’t give in, and it didn’t end up being this huge conflict either. So it really is about how do I use EAR to calm — EAR statements to calm the person — and then shift from that past pain to future choices and really even ask them for proposals to get them to take responsibility. What is it you want? And what might work here?
Megan Hunter
Absolutely. So let’s shift now into talking about what a healthy conflict culture looks like. Work is all about performance, right? We need results. So we’ve talked a lot about what high conflict looks like and things we can do about it. Because high conflict situations really can be a big time drain. They can provide risk, right? So how do we build a healthy culture that isn’t being sabotaged by high conflict?
Michael Lomax
Yeah, and I would say there’s a couple of really important pieces here. To establish, let’s say, what does a healthy conflict culture look like? If we can envision that, then what is it we need to do to support that? So a healthy conflict culture, a conflict competent culture, if you will, a culture where people are competent and effective at dealing with conflict. We’re accepting that conflict occurs between individuals on teams. It’s not good or bad. And sometimes it’s actually — again, it can be healthy. Good things can come from it, we can get better relationships. Like, can we do conflict? You know, like again, Tammy and I, we went on a big trip together for about a month, and at the end of that, we learned we can do conflict.
Megan Hunter
Yep.
Michael Lomax
It’s the same with work teams. You can come up with creative solutions or lasting agreements when you work through that. So it’s not good or bad, but it must be addressed. And when it’s not addressed, then we get these toxic sort of outcomes happening. And it can lead — I’ll just say — unaddressed workplace conflict can lead to complaints of harassment and bullying down the line. So in some ways, we want to create a culture that allows for — the term I use is good faith dissent. We are actually encouraging people to bring things forward that aren’t working, or have a different idea, or this process doesn’t work, or even this tool is not safe, it is not a good tool, we should get a different one. And as leaders, we want to be saying, thanks for bringing these issues forward. I may not agree, we’ll work that through, but again, that idea of if people dissent, they bring things forward, we’re saying, okay, let’s deal with it. And that creates the safe psychological culture, but also physical, physically safe. And if we’re in a workforce where we want diversity, where we have diversity of world views or cultures, again, with that comes conflict. So we’ve got to figure out how to work it through. And we are dealing with things at the lowest possible level and as early as we can. And the key thing now is leaders set the tone for all of us. From the top down.
It isn’t just individuals that can shift culture. Like you can’t say one leader, I’m going to shift this entire group’s culture, I’m going to make it happen, and they’re going to be conflict competent. You need a bunch of things at different levels to happen. High conflict behavior really does thrive in ambiguity, when there’s a lack of structure, right? How do we do things around here? Is it safe to report something? What are you going to do about it if I do? All of that should be really well known and understood. And so the more you have a clearly stated approach for how you’re going to deal with conflict and complaints, and then how those are going to get dealt with, and you have the training and the resources to support the approach. You need — just in a nutshell — you need organizational statements and policies that really do express a preference for using conflict resolution at the lowest possible level over filing complaints and over investigations, unless it’s clearly not appropriate. This is what we want to do. You’re saying we want to resolve things at the lowest possible level as early as we can, as informally as possible. And then you need senior leaders that clearly commit to that through their words and their actions. Otherwise, people go, well, that’s a policy, whatever, that’s not really how we do things around here. So you need that commitment. And then the other thing is you need training. Everybody — ideally everybody’s getting training in some kind of conflict resolution skills and saying, this is how you do it. Certainly for leaders and how to intervene effectively, and including dealing with high conflict behavior, because this can consume a huge amount of resources. So those are the things you need. You need a clearly stated approach. You need senior leader commitment. You need the support for it with the training for the leaders to intervene, and ideally skills for everyone. Then you can build that healthy culture. And then you have individuals that may not conform, but then they’re left with a clear choice. They can’t corrupt the group because the group is strong. And they’re on their own. And they either adapt or they leave, but they can’t have that same toxic impact in a healthy culture.
Megan Hunter
When you build that healthy culture and have all these components, you really can keep the flame low and don’t feel like you have to shift problem employees off to HR, right? And they become HR’s thing to deal with, right?
Michael Lomax
And HR knows, you know, they’re not magicians either, right?
Megan Hunter
Right, right. So let’s talk for a minute about the training. You know, that’s what we do at High Conflict Institute — a lot of that is training. You’re brand new with — not with us, but with the New Ways for Work for coaches training that’s coming up in March of this year, 2026. So I’m curious — I guess it would be good for our listeners to know what that training is about and who it’s for.
Michael Lomax
Yeah, so the coaching one exposes people to a lot of foundational material on understanding high conflict behavior, where it comes from, and around basically four big skills, really to help the individual who might be demonstrating some high conflict traits to shift their approach. And so flexible thinking, manage emotions, behaving moderately, and then checking ourselves to say, am I doing that? Am I thinking flexibly? Am I managing my emotions? Am I behaving moderately? And I think New Ways for Work is really — it’s how to coach someone in a highly structured way around those skills. And then if they really take that in and practice it, we can see some good results in the workplace because we can all learn skills. We may not be able to easily change our personality patterns or kind of reactions in conflict, what we want to give into, but we can all learn skills. And so when people do that well, again we’ve seen some good things in the workplace. And I think I could probably benefit from taking it probably every year myself. These are just great life skills. But not everybody comes into the workplace with these life skills. And I’ve seen managers who are like, I’m telling this person what they need to be doing, but I just don’t think they know how to do it. If they did, they would do it. They don’t have those skills. So these are skills.
Megan Hunter
So it gives people a chance to succeed and stay in the workplace rather than having to go through some big investigation or shifting to a different department or maybe even termination. It does give people a chance to make it work.
Michael Lomax
And then if the person is not successful, okay, well then we may be moving on to the next step. But it’s a step along the way that could save the organization a ton of money and resources down the line. As well, in that course, we’re also working on another one called CARS coaching, which is the CARS method. And this might be where you’re a coach and you’re working with a leader who is trying to incorporate a lot of the skills that we’ve been talking about in these last two podcasts. But it’s great to come to a workshop and sort of take in the skills, but then how do I actually do this on a day-to-day basis at work with employees or others that I find challenging to deal with and are pushing back? And so sometimes some coaching with someone to really reinforce those skills and practice them can be really effective too. So the course talks about that as well. So I would say the audience for that course is if you are someone who works with either leaders or with individuals who may be showing up with some of these challenging behaviors, and they are ideally wanting to learn how to do it differently. It gives you a really good structure on how to do that.
Megan Hunter
So we have the New Ways for Work for coaches and we have managing high conflict behavior in the workplace for leaders and you’re teaching both of them. And those are available to anyone in the world, as long as — if you’re on the opposite side of the equator, you might have to be up in the middle of the night. But anyway, these are great trainings. And we can come to you to do training as well. But let’s wrap it up with this, Michael. What mindset shift can transform how leaders experience conflict?
Michael Lomax
Yeah, okay. And I would say the biggest shift, because very often people — leaders — they pride themselves on being able to help people, see people succeed. And when those people aren’t able to succeed, I’ve certainly as a leader myself been told somehow that is a reflection on me. That’s my job to help people to be successful, give them the skills they need to be successful. And so sometimes I would say the biggest shift is realizing I don’t need to fix this person. And sometimes in my effort to fix them or transform the situation, I end up kind of banging my head against the wall and blaming myself. Why can’t I get through to this person? What am I doing wrong? And instead of focusing on the person and how they need to change — what they should be thinking, feeling, or doing — is focusing on how I show up, how I interact, and the structure I bring to that interaction. And with that, I am actually helping the other person to be successful in how I engage. And it is all about how to help that person be successful. We’re not talking about diagnosing anyone. We don’t need to figure that out. We’re not talking about rescuing them. We’re not talking about changing their personality. So the mindset shift is to focus on myself, to stay calm, to bring structure, focus on the future, and be prepared to shift it there when the other person wants to take me into the past and complain or blame. And guide that conversation towards problem solving. And even sometimes when they say I won’t, the best answer sometimes is, that is up to you.
Megan Hunter
Exactly.
Michael Lomax
Now I will need to do something if, when you do this, I’m required to do that. But that is still about me and how I interact and giving the person information. I’m not trying to control you or fix you. And when we internalize that, then everything changes. I am calmer. I am level. It’s easier for me to let things go and go home at night and think about what else I want to be thinking about instead of this. And it becomes less personal and less draining, far more manageable.
Megan Hunter
Absolutely. Well, good. Okay. Well, I guess we don’t have to go around fixing people. We can just look at ourselves and figure out what to do, focus on what to do.
Michael Lomax
I really think that’s the best place to start.
Megan Hunter
Yep, absolutely. Okay. Well, thank you, Michael, and thank you to our listeners for listening in today. You’ll find links to the New Ways for Work Coaches Training coming up March 3rd and 5th, and the training for leaders managing high conflict behavior in the workplace on April 23rd. Those will all be in the show notes and we’ll include links to our BIFF at Work workbook. You heard us talk about EAR statements today. Those are in our Calming People with EAR book. And It’s All Your Fault at Work. So we’ll put those links in there. And if you’re looking for any training or consultation about a high conflict situation for your organization, or to learn how to bring down the temperature and create that healthy conflict competent culture — not easy to say — find us on HighConflictInstitute.com. If you have high conflict in your personal life, contact us at ConflictInfluencer.com. Keep learning and practicing the skills. Be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing peace.
