The CEO's Guide to Solving Conflicts Without Making Enemies

You're not saying you always do this, which would give you a negative attitude back, or this was six weeks ago, or you're an idiot because of whatever, right? If you use the proper model, it often gets the person where they're like, well, you're right. Like there's not. There's nothing they can say because it was factual, it was specific, it was about the issue, it was recent, and you show them how you need them to be and then you give them time to speak. So a couple of things that I've also noticed around conflict and tough conversations. It's always been very easy for me as a CEO or a coo, to tell all of my direct reports and to tell all of my team the areas that they need to improve and the areas that they're not doing well and the issues that I have with them. But if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander, right? So how come it's so good for me to give them feedback and it's not good for me, they'll receive it. I had to learn how to receive constructive criticism and not take it in a conflict way and not get my back against the wall. So sometimes that takes the conflict level down where it's really not a conflict at all. It's just me being open to feedback and open to growth. It was Ray Kroc who built McDonald's that said, when you're green, you're growing, and when you're ripe, you're rotting. So I do not have it all figured out. I've clearly got stuff that I make mistakes at, but I've had to learn to be able to receive that negative feedback or that constructive criticism. I used to call it negative feedback, and now I do more constructive criticism. So there's a big lesson that I learned over the years. This is I'm going to go back to the time when I was the COO for 1, 800, got junk. You know, we were on a pretty fast growth trajectory from 2 million to 106 million in revenue in six years. And during that growth, when I was the COO, I used to argue and debate and deal with conflict situations with the CEO all the time. And I started to identify and he started to identify that it was all of the time. And what we realized was I was no longer addressing conflict for the sake of a big issue. I was almost finding issue with too many things too often, and it was starting to get frustrating for him and for me. And I was also taking it a little bit out of when it should be best delivered. So it's really best to have a conflict situation with somebody or addressing a conflict with someone per emotionally one on one, not in front of the rest of their team, not in front of the board of directors, not in front of their direct reports. So that was something that I found was interesting, was realizing that am I arguing to be heard or am I arguing to be right? And do I really need to argue? Like, does everything need to be a damn conflict? Or sometimes can I just have the idea and sit on it for a little bit? So I tried to learn to sit on my opinions and to sit on my ideas and sometimes to let the rest of the group share. And often what happened was with a little bit of time and a little bit of quiet and a little bit of listening, sometimes my idea wasn't valid anymore or it didn't really need to be said after all. And that was a big learning for me that not everything had to be a conflict just because I was comfortable with it and he was comfortable. We almost became the bickering couple that loved each other, but no one else realized that we loved each other because we were bickering all the time. It's funny, I do a lot of work with a marriage counselor and have since the day that my wife and I got married. We hired a marriage coach because we wanted a high functioning marriage. So one of the things that my marriage coach says to me is, are you fighting to be right or are you fighting to stay in the marriage? I'm like, whoa, that's pretty insightful. Like what is this conflict really about? And sometimes that's a nice way to approach the problem too. John, I agree on the whole, like self regulating or regulating your own emotions. I talk about race to the conflict. Well, you have to handle the conflict quickly. Like you don't want. If you have a conflict situation, say last month, 45 days ago, when you did whatever it's done, like forget about it, you can't bring it up from 45 days ago, but you don't want to bring it up 12 seconds after it happened, you need to calm yourself down and say, hey, this morning when you did this, or an hour ago when you did that, or right when that issue happened. So it's a race to the conflict in a way. But you can address the conflict after you've regulated, after you've counted to 10, after you think about the kind of what you're going to say and how you're going to say it, and also to remember the person that you have the issue with is it's what they did. And they're showing up every day trying their best. They also have something happening in their personal life that is impacting everything that they do day to day. We're all struggling with that human condition. I was in a laundromat today in London in the UK doing our laundry because we're getting ready to go on a boat for the next 10 days. And I was talking to the shop owner, and the shop owner saw me say goodbye to my son and we both started to cry because I'm not going to see my son for the next two months. And the shop owner kind of got choked up and he said, you know, I haven't seen my dad in five years. And the humanity of realizing that he hasn't seen his father in five years really touched me. And it made me remember the situation that he's showing up day to day. So when I walked out of the laundry an hour later and I gave him a hug and I said, this hug is from your dad. And he kind of started to cry and I got a little bit choked up. But when we show up with that level of humanity for other people, it allows us to have that conflict situation in a much more relaxed, comfortable way. Because at the end of the day, none of this actually matters. This is just what we're doing to make money. And it's probably the same for your boss and the CEO too. So I tried to follow some of what I talk about in my invest in your leaders course in the modules on situational leadership and coaching, but reversing that. So I was using situational leadership and coaching up. And one of the steps is to catch people doing something right and to find things that somebody is doing right or the organization is doing well and starting to call out the things that we're doing well. So I'm not always calling out the problem. I'm not always calling out the conflict, let's say the conflict I had with a direct report, if it was Simone as an example, and I had an issue of something that she was doing wrong or I was frustrated with, I have to make sure that over the course of the week, I tell Simona 10 things she's doing great or 10 things we're observing that are going well. So that the one or two times that I have issues, she already knows the love is there because of all the stuff I'm calling out. But if I don't shout out on how well she lives, the core values, and how Much she cares and how much everything's going well. When I get frustrated about a problem issue, I haven't built that bed of trust from everything else. So there was a little bit of learning there too, as a leader is to catch people doing something, right? To celebrate the core values, to celebrate the wins, to do shout outs around projects being delivered, to say, hey, you know, thanking people for the easy conversations that we're having. So that one conflict thing is easy because it's built off of a better trust. That would be one thing I learned. A model that I use that's been quite effective is four phrases. And the phrases are when you, I feel, I need. How do you feel? So the when you. Is when you did this specific thing, right? And it was recently, it was like this morning or yesterday, right? Because you're going to race to the conflict. So when you did this specific thing, this is how it made me feel. I was frustrated, I got pissed off, I was angry, I was disillusioned, I was just confused. I didn't know. So you get your feelings out and then you say, what I need from you is. What I need from you is for you to deliver this way, right? So when you showed up late for the meeting, I was pissed off, I was angry. I need you to show up on time and here's why. And then how do you feel about it? And often when you follow that model, it doesn't have the person coming back with a bad attitude because you're not attacking them as a person. You're not saying, you always do this, which would give you a negative attitude back, or this was six weeks ago, or you're an idiot because of whatever, right? If you use the proper model, it often gets the person where they like, well, you're right. Like there's not, there's nothing they can say because it was factual, it was specific, it was about the issue, it was recent. And you show them how you need them to be and then you give them time to speak. So for me, that's always the starting point, is address the issue, not the person. Don't go in a general and say that you always do it. Because I could probably give two times when I didn't, even though there might be 32 that I did. So you don't say you always do something. So it's the specific versus the general. And then always for the good of the company and the good of the core values.