Unravel Deep-Rooted Conflict to Improve Company Culture (feat. Dr. Amir Kfir)

Hi, I'm Susan Drumm. And welcome to the Enlightened Executive where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help executives and entrepreneurs get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. Today we're going to discuss mediating conflict and the use of constellation work. And I'm excited to introduce my guest, Dr. Amir Khfur. Amir is an organizational consultant who's been in the field of change management for over 30 years, helping companies from around the world achieve high performance and growth. He's the author of the Art of Everyday Peacemaking. Amir was invited to be a member of the Peace Action Network and moderated a forum of Israelis and Arabs and CEOs and between Greeks and Turks CEOs. Additionally, Dr. Amir was commissioned by YPO to develop and run chapter development programs all over the world. Dr. Amir holds a bachelor degree in psychology and a dual master's degree in social and industrial psychology. So welcome, Dr. Amir.

Thank you so much. Very happy to be here with you and to explore these fields that you just talked about.

Yes. So I said the word right off the bat. Constellation work. Can you describe what is constellation work and how is it used personally and professionally?

So constellation is a certain arrangement of events that took place and how they continue to resonate in our life as we move ahead. So something that could have happened in a previous generation still has an impact on our life and to the way that we interpret and read certain situations. In some places, people call it karma and they ask, what are you going to do about your karma? How are you not going to let what happened in the past impact your reality today? And that could be in any field in our life. It could be in our personal life, but it could also be in an organizational life where there is a certain constellation that is a derivative of earlier life events in the company. A strong founder that fought with another founder and created a battlefield within the organization, that created a certain environment, maybe a culture, we call it today, that has an impact in how people interact today in the organization. Then they might not know, like the monkeys that got a shower when they went up for the banana. Generations after the first banana and the first monkey have already disappeared and still they keep repeating a pattern of behavior. Being able to understand that and to read into the past and to understand the emotional impact these events have had on us could put us in a position to better manage these realities in our life today. And to choose once again. Got it.

So is it a bit like ghost work? And when I say ghost, there is A field of work that looks at the. Using the past and what's occurred in the past, and making representative, like the ghost of the prior CEO, let's say, and how the prior CEO led the organization is still having an impact on the culture today, even though there's a new CEO. And so the ghost work is to look at what was the context by which that prior CEO, what did they infuse? And if we want to change the culture, we're going to have to look and deal with that first. Is Constellation similar work similar to that?

Yes. There is a deep look at the organization and the evolution of the consciousness of the organization from its creation. The early relationships that were the foundation of the business that impact a lot of the belief system. What is right and what is wrong, how do we do things around here? And those continue to repeat themselves because they're very deeply ingrained in the way that people conduct themselves. Take an example from my old friend from Greece, who didn't really have much of a higher education, but used to laugh that he has seven PhDs. When I asked him how, he says, I just hired them. And when I asked them, what was your value system? He says, look, Amir, these are big words for me. I said, takis, what made you successful? What behavior? He says, we keep our promise. We keep our promise was deeply embedded into the way he was raised as a child and the way he saw his dad run his first pharmacy and the way that he conducted himself in the business world. So when l' Oreal or La Prairie decided to distribute products, they went to him because they knew, this guy keeps his promise. Forget the contracts, forget the big paperwork. There is something embedded in who he is. And I don't think that he was ever aware how deep that goes into his roots, into his making. That is something of a great positive example of a constellation that sits within the organization years after the passing of the individual.

Right, right. So now even this, that's embedded in the company culture going forward, and he's no longer the CEO.

Yes. And the opposite can happen as well, which means that there is a certain pattern of behavior in the organization that is a derivative of a certain personality. And for instance, somebody could be what was called in one company that I worked in, where the grandfather managed by the whip. Management by the whip was a philosophy that from time to time, you need to get somebody who screwed up, put them in front of everybody and whip him. Not physical whip, but yes, emotionally kind of wording and the kind of an emotional putting down that everybody around will get the message and understand what is is absolutely unacceptable. Now go take that out of the culture of the organization. Even as we become educated and we become more knowledgeable and more humanistic from time to time, that might snap out as a way that we believe. If you really want to straighten them when they're off of their direction, go for the whip. The mental, the emotional, the physical whip that will get fear to come back into the organization. The assumption at that point is that fear is a good driver for people to run like crazy and do what they need to do. Only the generations later, young people working for the company have options, have alternatives in life. Fear is not a great driver for them, and the minute they'll have a better alternative, they'll walk out of it. We wouldn't even know by the time new CEOs are brought in, professional managers are hired into the organization, that that is part of the DNA that makes the organization function the way it does. Until we reveal it, until we expose it, until we bring to the surface someone who will represent that point of view, and all of a sudden we'll understand why things are the way they are.

So how does Constellation work in practice? You're bringing the set of beliefs and assumptions that are part of the organization, and you're taking one person to represent each one of those of what it's like to be in the culture.

There are different ways of doing it. Some people use pieces of cloth that represents different Persona or could also represent an emotion or a pattern of behavior. We can call it, let's say, for instance, anger, or call it compassion. And someone will stand on that piece of cloth and represent that perspective into the dialogue, into the sensations that are being felt today. Being in those shoes, I think what will help us to understand where this all started. So this is a German soldier that ends up the Second World War and decides to become a priest and his assignment is sent to South Africa. He's going there to help them see the light of Christianity. And all of a sudden he gets exposed to their shamans and understands the power of what they believe is a way of healing and creating a sense of society, goes back and brings it to the West. Heilinger actually introduced the world to a deeper understanding of our ability, not being in that family at all, to actually represent those points of view. There is a universal connection. So certain patterns of behavior are universal. We can see them in different families and different companies, within different individuals. Sometimes in the literature of management, we call it styles of management. So this person is the driver and this person is in the entrepreneur. And this person is a very compassionate, caring individual. And somebody, we call them if we feel they're going too far out in that direction, is a bureaucrat and somebody else is the lone ranger. These patterns of behavior are repeating themselves generation after generation for the individual, for where they grew up and within the company. So all of this is about really raising awareness and attempting to understand really where we are and what's causing us to behave the way that we do. And as we become aware of it, we're able to start possibly choosing an alternative way of behavior.

And so in doing real culture change work, I would imagine we need to bring some of the current beliefs and way of operating to the surface to really get clear on the impact before we can choose differently. Is that how you would approach it?

Yes, very much so. Because it's like anything else in the world or in the medical world, if you want to treat something, you need to go to the root cause, right? The end result that we can see is, I don't know, high turnover or lack of sufficient level of sales or profitability. It's like a heart attack. That's the result. The symptom to that in the human body would be high blood pressure, cholesterol, pain in the chest, if you're getting real close to it. And in the business, that might be other things that are symptomatic, like too much inventory, lack of control of quality. But then you have to ask, where is it coming from? What's the cause of that? For a human being, it would be eating habits, exercising habits, philosophy of life, management of stress, genetic structure for an organization. Quite often it could be within the culture, the belief system, the patterns of behavior that have deeply embedded in the organization. So if you want to change an organization, it's not enough to change the strategy. As a matter of fact, my teacher Adesus used to say that a strategy is like a great cherry, but a cherry on a pile of crap doesn't make it a cherry pie. If you do not transform the relationship at the bottom of the organization, the patterns of behavior, which takes a long time to change. Sometimes you might not change the whole organization if something deeply embedded in the DNA will not change. And people that start companies new often are starving to create a certain DNA. Right? Collins and Porras and Bill Tolas talk a lot about those organizations that were founded by individuals that instilled a certain pattern of behavior and a belief system that transcended them for generations within the organization. Similarly, sometimes there are patterns of behavior that are really unhealthy. They came from days of survival, from a time of war where nothing else was available to do but to assert a certain behavior. That may have been the most appropriate thing to do at the time, but is not true any longer.

Yes, I've seen that so often in organizations that start out very scrappy, entrepreneur, 10 person. And they manage a certain way and they have, they're about survival. Right. They're just, just trying to. And now they're a 400 person organization and they're still leading it the way they did when they're 10 person and the rest the organization is not responding in the appropriate way. And I think it's hard for leaders to sometimes see that. That old adage, what got you here won't get you there. It's time to shift. But they're not paying attention to the changes in the environment. Changes in environment, meaning what do our employees need now that we're 400 people? How do we need to show up? How does our role as a leader show up from our external focus to more internal focus now in leading the organization? How do we develop the next generation of leaders? That wasn't part of the DNA. Back when you were a 10 person, you weren't thinking about how do we develop the next generation of leaders, you were thinking, how do we survive the next year? Right. So I think this work can be incredibly powerful for people to realize what's been driving them in the background and what it is that needs to shift given the environment or the conditions have shift.

Right. It's a little bit like parenthood that for raising someone very young, a baby, a certain pattern of behavior is essential as they grow. If you continue to treat your kids with the same pattern of behavior, you're out of sync. So it's very common for a founder of a company to be very obsessed with every dealer, with every detail, and to control a lot of the decision. It's very much a one woman, one man show to start with. And over time it continues to evolve. There are things you let go of and you institutionalize in the organization. I remember I told one founder that I work with, look, we need to institutionalize you. What I meant is to institutionalize your spirit of entrepreneurship. So it's not embedded in one individual and we need to build an organization. The word did not go well. Let's institutionalize you. But to some extent there is a madness that we repeat. Doing what used to work at one time at a different setup, in a different world, and either the individual changes and often they don't. It's called the Founder's trap. Or the individual is able to evolve, either change themselves or build around them a group of people that complement them in such a powerful way that will compensate for their difficulty to be able to perform in areas that they never did and in ways that they've never done before. It's like learning a new job, a new skill, allure, a new life skill.

Yes.

Those who are able to see the change, to see how the world is changing, to be able to manage that transition. Right. This is Darwinism. And to fix the way that they are conducting themselves inappropriate to the setup, are actually very, very successful. Those organization evolved to a point where, similar to what people used to say about ge, it is not any more dependent on one individual. Largely there is a mechanism that is bigger than any individual that is able to reinvent itself in this way.

Yeah. Let's talk for a minute. Switch gears on your work for dealing with conflict. And obviously I mentioned at the start, you're in your bio, you've done some really important work with groups that traditionally have a lot of conflict between them. Perhaps you can share a little bit about your philosophy and how you approach that.

Well, this is really important and in a way it's tied into what we said before, because the way that we behave in conflict is also a derivative of something that happened in the past. We grew up in a certain home where there was conflict management conscious or unconscious. We either saw people that whenever there was a conflict, they raised their voice and they said, it's going to be my way or the highway. And that's called forcing your way forward. And we saw right next to them probably somebody who folded, which means maybe they pulled back now, but they'll come back in an attack later. So it was like a battlefield. And in that battlefield there was somebody who always folded. Not only folded, but fleet away sensing that this is not going to go well and I'd better stay out of this thing. Right. And there were people who came probably in that setup and says, let's compromise, let's do 50, 50 or whatever. All of those are patterns that are repeating themselves from generation to generations. It requires a very conscious mind to stop and look at it from the outside and say, hang on, what's going on here? What are really the conflicting needs that we have to be able to manage the conversation and to identify what is the true unique underlining need that each size had and whether these are true conflict or false? 1 false is the classical conflict that we actually want different things. We call it an orange, but you want the peel and I want the juice. Real conflicts. There are situations where there is really a different interest associated with this. Your win is my loss and vice versa. How do we manage those situations? And I was just fortunate to be asked to be a moderator of a peace forum between Israelis and Arabs, which is a bit peculiar for an Israeli to be a moderator of such. But I was well balanced both, I think, from my own upbringing. And this is why I probably deal with conflict, because I ended up playing a role between mom and dad from a young age, but also because there are always other people in the room that are willing to balance you off in that way. But what I learned in that conversation is what's really important to able to resolve conflict is the ability to be in the shoes of the other person. In other words, to have empathy. What does it mean to be able to have empathy? To see clearly the other side in their imperfection and to be willing to accept that as I accept my own imperfection, to have empathy to the misguided situation right now and to be able to identify together to co create a solution that actually addresses the real needs that both sides have. The art of doing that requires very deep listening. It's called active listening. And it requires the ability to fully engage in holding for a moment the position of the other person. If you and I played this now and I would have an argument with you, I will ask you to come back and tell me what you heard me to say and whether you heard me well or not. And then we will do reverse roles. And sometimes in your absence, I will become you and you will hear me express your point of view. The person who would be most surprised by that is what I will feel coming out of my mouth.

Right. It's not necessarily to check did you hear me accurately? But there's something that happens to the person when you assume the role of the person that you have conflict with and you speak as you've heard them express. If you were going to role reversal and play out, there's something that happens to the other person when they start to speak your language that shifts them and builds that empathy to understanding. It doesn't happen until you actually try it on though. It's not like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard you. No, you didn't really. And so it sounds like you do in the conflict work you do, you're using this role reversal exercise quite a bit to help people really embody the other person's perspective and develop the Empathy for their perspective. Is that right?

Beautifully. Here's something that you just did that I just want to highlight. You change your tone of voice, and that is largely where it is. I'm not reading empathy through the words that you say. I'm listening to your tonality. Does it have softness in it? Are you willing to embed for a moment the other way of looking into it and to say that's a possibility? You're not really sick in your head when you're thinking the way you are obviously from the world of possibilities, seeing it as you just did. Okay. I can see why you chose to see it that way. I can understand how, based on your position and your circumstances, that seems to you the reasonable way to look at it. Now I'm at ease. Now I'm ready to listen to your point of view. Phase one in any conflict resolution, and the most difficult one is really understanding each other. Phase two is understanding what are we really creating together? What's our common reality, which is really what are we suffering from in many cases, by the way? Lack of trust and lack of respect when you look deep into it and what works well. So not everything is bad, but also what's the worst case scenario, which means if we won't do something about it, where are we going to end up and what's the probability for that to happen? That's the second phase. And the third phase, the most valuable one, is the ability to close our eyes together and to see a joint future where both of us are benefiting, where both of us are in a great place in business. We used to call it win, win, still do. It's the ability to see a clear picture that both ends are enjoying the fruits of what we've created and then find out what's holding it back and what we need to do practically to overcome those obstacles. When the dialogue gets to the third step, we're sliding, we're really moving right into the right direction. But the prerequisite is fully understanding each other with a deep sense of empathy, with a deep sense of recognition for legitimacy of another perspective on this issue.

Yeah. Fantastic. So what was the result of some of the peace moderation work that you did? Were there any interesting outcomes, anything that surprised you in doing that work, that question?

Because that's really the invitation to understand the potential for all of us. Right. For the people who are in those groups, the first thing that happened is that they started looking at the world a little bit differently because they were all very influential people in their own communities, managing thousands of people who work for them. They started speaking differently about situations, be it between Israelis and Arabs. That was the formation of a new chapter for YPO in Israel and in Palestine. But a lot more than that for people doing projects, amazing initiatives taken by individuals to say it's going to be governments who will sign peace treaties. But the reconciliation starts with people. And if business people start to reconcile, big movement happens. Because at the end of the day, once peace decide that's what's going to flourish is economic relationship between two countries. In other places, people went back and started to really study conflicts that had an historical background, that they were sort of like under the propaganda of their country. And all of a sudden realized there was actually a different narrative to it. The biggest impact was about how to take it from conflict between nation to conflict within society. How to help women in India feel empowered to deal with their reality, not feel that they're under a compress of a very sort of like musculine society. And start asking, demanding and getting what they deserve by putting power together around political power and changing the way that young women are treated and the safety in the streets and the bathroom for the girls so that they have to go to the forest and whatever. And kids safety in South America, not needing to belong to a gang to find support within a group. These groups then became something very powerful also for the business world because we understood that the same thing happens in the business. If you want to create a powerful culture, you need to create a culture that people watch each other's back and take care of each other. That's the essence. Will you be there for me? Can I depend on you? It starts with simple dependencies. Like you say that you're going to deliver a report at a certain day. And based on the commitment that you make to me, I make a commitment to a third party.

Yes.

But the deeper level of trust is an understanding that we either hang together or we'll hang next to each other. And that I, being a member of your executive committee, I'm not your competent. The competitor is outside. The confusion is that if I shine in a meeting, you think that I might reflect negatively on you and maybe I'll get the next promotion. And so the combat moves from outside, inside. And as people start to battle within the organization with each other for prestige, for recognition, for position in the organization, we lose it. Because what makes us successful is not five different fingers that operate separately, but if they hit the wall, they'll all break. Is our ability to become one. The ability to become a Fist. Everything that a leader wants to do in the organization is unite the force at the top. The higher the alignment at the top, like a pedaling, the less there is shift on the bottom, the higher the diversity at the top, the higher the distance between people below. They don't talk to each other, they're in silo now go. Be agile. When everything needs to go through the boss. If you don't have the culture that we learn how to work with each other because we co create, we are dependent on each other's success. Fascinating place this is happening is in families.

Yes. So tell us a little bit about your work there, because I know you wanted to look at the personal life of these leaders and how that's impacting their business life. And I'm a huge believer that childhood wounds play out in the workplace over and over. What happened to you as a child is how you lead today. Unless you've done a tremendous amount of work on that. So maybe you could share a little bit about your approach to this work with family constellation or other types of work with families.

I think you've said it. You know, if you have a challenge at home, energy is fixed. If you have a disease. I remember my dad at the end of his life had cancer and we used to go on a trip on a boat every year together with a group of his friends. And I came along. It was a great way to spend a week with my dad. The next year came up and I said in June, dad, we want to go. And he says, son, I can't. I don't have any energy. I have to calculate how many steps there will be down the road. I can't do this. What does it mean? When you are very weak, all the energy goes inside. Only the remaining excess energy is available to go outside. Similarly, in an organization, if people are fighting all the time inside, there is less energy available to deal with the outside world. And if you're going through a divorce, which happens to people as an extreme example, and it's a bad divorce because some divorce are good divorce, that's a good thing to happen, you move on in life. But sometimes it becomes a battlefield that involves the kids and God knows what else. You don't have energy because you're so preoccupied in bringing peace to the most precious system in your life. You have very little energy for the outside world. Being able to deal and make successful families work well is a life project. And I think Corona has taught many of us that that is a priority. If that works, our life is okay. We'll have food on our table. There's only so much that we can eat. There's a roof above our head. At the end of our life, we won't see our clients and our vendors. We will see, hopefully our family members and the kind of relationship that we will create there will give us power to deal with the world around us. So being able to manage a conversation in a family, to learn how to deal with conflicts before they become explosive, to be able to be there for each other so that there is no need for therapy left and right, that we learn how to talk to each other. And the protocol of that conversation is available and present. And it's very simple. We hear each other, we share. We don't tell each other what to do. We keep confidentiality among ourselves. Principles that you and I have learned for many, many years. And we deploy them in all the executive groups that we work with because we understand that those are the foundations of success. Openness, authenticity, vulnerability, confidentiality. That's a family look.

I really appreciate the work that you're doing around both family and how that impacts business and executive and navigating conflict in both those environments. I'd love to have people know where they could find out more if they want to learn more about constellation work or the work that you do in dealing with conflict.

Thank you for that opportunity. There's a book called Non Flicked. It's not non conflict, it's nonfict, which means it's converting conflict into nonfict. The Art of Everyday Peacemaking. And there's a movement that we started both in the US and Canada called A Million Peacemakers, which is an NGO dedicated to spread this around the world. I'm looking for any help from people that will help me find ways to spread it. Be it on a movie, be it on a TV station, be it on a big stadium where we'll have a lot of people sitting on blankets and going parallel through this process. Any way that will help people learn. A very simple, straightforward process that in two hours you master it and you've got it under your belt. You don't need to do a 200 course to get a certificate. It's a simple life skill that is out there and available for people. And I'll be happy to share it with as many people around the world.

Wonderful. Thank you. And thank you for giving that gift to people. We all need to learn to deal with conflict in a better way. If you like this episode, you're not going to want to miss my interview with Joey Klein on Training youg Emotional Health for Peak Performance. Thanks so much. Hope you enjoyed today's episode. And I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive. Sa.