Moving Forward After Conflict

SUMMARY

Do you have difficulty letting go of the pain that comes with conflict, even after it's been resolved?

Well, stick with me because this week I will show you how to put it down and let it go.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, emotional intelligence speaker and trainer of the year and master coach trainer. Today, I want to wrap up our conversation around conflict and conflict resolution by helping you move forward after conflict.

In this week’s episode, I will unpack the five principles that I think are really important for you to do so you can leave what's in the past in the past, enjoy being in the present, and move forward into the future with great relationships and without the baggage of that past conflict.

Now I know, because we are human beings, that there is never going to be a position where this is perfect, and that is never going to be the goal. However, these simple steps that I'm going to take you through will help it be closer than where it is right now.

Number one is to reframe the experience.

Number two is to reflect forward.

Number three is to repair the relationships.

Number four is to resist negative thinking.

Number five is to resolve outstanding conflict.

Conflict is inevitable. It's going to happen all the time, and we're not looking about making things perfect here.

We're not looking at having a utopia where everyone loves each other, and nobody has disagreements. However, we can use the processes we've talked about this month to lessen the effect conflict has on you, the people around you, and the greater good. Having a level of awareness that grows every time you go through a conflict and by recognising when things are going off the rails, recognising how to do things differently, and being able to be more attuned to other people is the only way that you're going to be able to have more mutually beneficial relationships, see conflict as being a good thing, and navigate it in a healthy way.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue our journey together in the relationship management competencies of social and emotional intelligence by opening a conversation around teamwork and collaboration.

I'll see you then.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you have difficulty letting go of the pain that comes with conflict, even after it's been resolved?

Well, stick with me because this week I will show you how to put it down and let it go.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, emotional intelligence speaker and trainer of the year and master coach trainer. Today, I want to wrap up our conversation around conflict and conflict resolution by helping you move forward after conflict.

During my corporate career, I had a big issue with this for many years. Even though the mechanics of going through some resolution process had taken place, I still carried within me baggage from that conflict.

That was because I told myself certain things and allowed them to frame my reference around working with people. I held on to hurts and had taken those hurts personally. If I had a conflict with someone or somebody had wronged me, I had difficulty getting over it and carried those hurts. This made it very difficult for me to have healthy relationships in the workplace — I had difficulty collaborating — even though the conflict had been resolved.

I see this happening time and time again with people I work with. That's why it's vital that as you finish off this conversation around conflict, you know exactly what to do to overcome this roadblock so that you can fully benefit from our conflict management and resolution process.

If you're ready to come with me, what I'm going to do now is unpack five principles that I think are really important for you to do so you can leave what's in the past in the past, enjoy being in the present, and move forward into the future with great relationships and without the baggage of that past conflict.

Now I know, because we are human beings, that there is never going to be a position where this is perfect, and that is never going to be the goal. However, these simple steps that I'm going to take you through will help it be closer than where it is right now.

Number one is to reframe the experience.

You’ve been using the word conflict all through this process, and that's exactly what it is —that’s what you call it. However, how you look at conflict and what you make that mean in those situations will have a big effect on whether or not you can move forward.

Sometimes you’re holding on to that conflict even though it happened in the past because it serves you to do that. Looking at the conflict itself and reframing it —looking at it through another lens — will help you disrupt the pattern and help you go into the other four parts of this process that I'm going to talk to you about. So, instead of it being a conflict, you could perhaps call it a learning experience.

You can look at conflict as something that has strengthened the relationship.

You can look at conflict as something that has given you more feedback to navigate relationships more effectively.

You can view conflict as something that has raised your awareness of some of the challenges you had in your thinking and has pointed out steps to lessen and avoid future conflict by shifting your beliefs and internal dialogue.

By looking at the conflict that way, you are taking something that is negative conflict — a word that invokes certain responses in our inner self — and shifting it to being something positive. Doing so enables you to take it forward in a totally different light.

So, shift your thinking and reframe what you've just been through.

What did you take out of it?

Sometimes you win; sometimes you learn. Looking at conflict through this lens is a different way of doing things.

Number two is to reflect forward.

I've talked about this many times before:

Where you are doing an overview — an autopsy — of something you have just experienced.

You want to make sure that you’re doing it by looking back to move forward. What I'm saying here is that if you reflect on the conflict and the process you’ve just been through, it can either be something that empowers you to move forward or is an anchor that holds you back.

If in that process of reflection you’re looking at what you did not do well, and you ruminate on that and feed your internal dialogue even more, it means that the experience is not a positive one.

You need to make sure that you focus on where you are going by reflecting on what has been and by looking at how you can use that experience moving forward.

It is somehow having a quick look in the revision mirror to reflect on where you were but keeping your focus on the windscreen in front of you because that is where you are going. You, therefore, need to keep in mind that you are not going backward, and neither are you staying where you are now.

The second critical component of this reflection is to find things to forgive.

Forgiveness is the greatest empowerment that we can have. It starts with forgiving yourself — forgiving yourself for what your part is in the conflict, forgiving yourself for what was made aware to you during that process, and forgiving the hurt that was brought by other people.

Remember, I talked to you about focusing on the issue and not the person in that whole process. However, since you’re human, there could have been things you took personally and things you said that hurt the other person.
So, one of the greatest things we can do at this point is to forgive. Whether that's just something you do internally or something you do verbally with the other person, forgiveness is the key to moving forward.

Number three is to repair the relationships.

I talked to you about relationships being the most important part of any conflict resolution process: Protecting the relationships with the people involved. However, you’ve gone through a process now where there were things said and done that could have damaged a relationship, broken some trust, and changed some thinking about other people and vice versa.

So, the third part of this process is to think about what you can do differently moving forward and how you can repair the damage done by the conflict. You can use a feedback process of questioning and doing a deep dive with people by asking them what you could do differently moving forward so there would be healing and forgiveness. Going through that process can help you repair the relationship.

Do not do what I had done before in my corporate career; when somebody wronged me, I cut them off immediately.

Instead of cutting off the relationship, do what’s most important: repair the relationship and move forward.

Now, this will be an incremental process, and you need to make sure (just like forgiveness) that you realize it's something you walk in every day. It's not something that you do, and it's done. You need to be able to forgive and move forward. You need to be able to repair the relationship by giving each other space to do things differently as you go together moving forward.

Number four is to resist negative thinking.

I had a challenge when I saw that person who had “harmed me" in the conflict. I allowed that to construct emotions, bring up that negative inner dialogue, and look for things that I didn't like about that person or whatever triggered that negative downward spiral.

You need to take those negative thoughts (as they come) captive, shift them, flip what you were thinking, and ruminate on what’s positive so that we can move forward together.

So you need to resist that negative thinking, reject it, leave it behind because it is not serving you, and keep the dialogue healthy.

Remember, it's not what happens in life; it’s what you make it mean.

So, shifting the beliefs and meanings around what went on and resisting those thoughts as they come up is important.

Remember that mini-me, that internal dialogue that has been created by you to keep you safe and down where you feel you should be — it’s linked to the health of your identity, which is not what you do, but who you believe you are.

Sometimes, when you try to move forward, do things differently and create a space for growth, that thinking — that inner voice — will pull you back, feed you with negative thoughts, and stop you from moving forward.

If that happens, you need to resist, reject and replace those negative thoughts with positive affirmations about yourself and about what you can do moving forward.

Number five is to resolve outstanding conflict.

No matter what type of conflict resolution process you went through and whatever style you used, there could still be some things that were not totally solved. As you give yourself and the other person some space, there could be things that can crop up again.

Now that you have that initial conflict resolution process, and you've used that, you can be more aware when things are cropping up again.

Be quick to ask questions, check-in, reflect, and ensure that everything's okay. To do these, you want to make sure that you have milestones and check-in points along the way. When you do this, the initial conflict has been solved and the issue you are working on together is moving forward. You can actually check-in and see how the relationship's going and how the change of behaviour serves you both.

Conflict is inevitable. It's going to happen all the time, and we're not looking about making things perfect here.

We're not looking at having a utopia where everyone loves each other, and nobody has disagreements. However, we can use the processes we've talked about this month to lessen the effect conflict has on you, the people around you, and the greater good. Having a level of awareness that grows every time you go through a conflict and by recognising when things are going off the rails, recognising how to do things differently, and being able to be more attuned to other people is the only way that you're going to be able to have more mutually beneficial relationships, see conflict as being a good thing, and navigate it in a healthy way.

Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week as we continue our journey together in the relationship management competencies of social and emotional intelligence by opening a conversation around teamwork and collaboration.

I'll see you then.