The Agile Within
Providing agile insights into human values and behaviors through genuine connections.
The Agile Within
Mark Wavle on Redirecting Arguments into Active Listening: Episode 2
Ever thought about how to turn a potentially disruptive disagreement into a constructive conversation? Well, we've got insights galore from Mark Wavle of Unstuck Agile who's graced us with his wisdom and experiences in the realm of conflict management. Get ready to soak up some real-life instances and practical solutions that you can apply to your day-to-day interactions.
We tackle topics ranging from the essence of effective communication to the potency of reflective listening. Mark shares the importance of suspending judgment and understanding the other person's perspective without starting a debate. We take this lesson further by emphasizing empathy as a tool to demonstrate understanding, and the use of 'I' statements to manage conflict. Taking a leaf from Chris Boss's book, Never Split the Difference, we underline the concept of tactical empathy, backing up the idea that understanding and being heard is what everyone seeks.
Towards the end, Mark brings his Agile leadership experience into play, providing rich insights relevant to all aspects of life. We delve into creating an environment that favors listening, the implications of using the word "you" in conversations, and the advantages of beginning with low-stakes dialogues. So, brace yourselves for this enlightening episode that transforms conflict into an opportunity for personal and professional growth.
Contact Mark Wavle:
https://www.unstuckagile.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wavle/
Don't miss Scrum Day, scheduled for Sep 14, 2023, in Madison, WI, at the Alliant Energy Center. Morning keynote using Liberating Structures by Keith McCandless followed by break-out rooms including speakers from Stanford University and the authors of "Fixing your Scrum". Afternoon keynote by Dave West, CEO of Scrum.org. Scrum is a team sport, so bring your team and get your tickets at www.ScrumDay.org. Hosted by Rebel Scrum. Find the training you've been looking for at www.RebelScrum.site.
Follow us on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-agile-within
Welcome to the podcast that challenges you from the inside. Come be more and discover the agile within. And now here's your host, Greg Miller.
Speaker 2:All right, welcome back. It's Greg and the Marks, mark Wavell, mark Metz. This is part two of our conversation with Mark Wavell. If you listen to part one, we talked about how conflict can be healthy. This conversation is all about transforming conflict with Mark Wavell from Unstuck Agile. Welcome back, mark. Good to be here. Thanks for having me again, Yep. So in this episode we're going to dive in even further. We're going to talk about some skills dealing with conflict, and the big bomb in the room that Mark dropped last episode, mark Metz, is how do you deal with this conflict with your manager or executives, anyone in Agile, especially if you're a scroll master, agilist product owner? You're going to be dealing with folks at that level, not just on your teams and, as Mark Wavell, talked last time.
Speaker 2:Right. Or you should. Well, you should be. Yeah, because, yeah, you do want to spread it just outside your team. So, yes, how do you deal with that? So Mark Wavell has a few skills we're going to go over with here. So what's the first skill, mark, you think we should?
Speaker 4:Right, I'm going to start with a disclaimer to say any of the skills I'm about to talk about you have probably over half of you probably have heard of these things. I'm not going to be you know. There's no, as I say, there's no rocket surgery here. In that set. There's no rocket science. Rocket surgery yeah, there's none of that. What's different here is what I would strongly encourage you to do is to take this beyond knowledge. So the skills we're going to talk about, some of them you have read about. There's lots of articles, lots of videos about these skillsets that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 4:The thing is the vast majority of people don't use them. So the key to being in a conflict situation and being able to do that in a healthier way than you did last time is your ability to actually practice the skills. So you'll use skills in those situations, not just in your mind. Have this concept of it, and I remember the first time I took a class about some of these skills and I was like this is great and conceptually I get it and we practice the skills in the class, and I did it. We did it in small groups and I experienced how it felt to, you know be on the other end of the skills and I practiced using the skills with other people in the breakout groups for practice and I was like, great, that's interesting. I kind of pedaled the bike a block down the street, kind of thing.
Speaker 4:And then I go back Monday morning to work and I was an agile coach at the time and I walk into a meeting one on one I had with a manager I was coaching he and his team and the previous week at the end of the week I had asked him to step out of the Daily Scrums for his team for the daily stand-ups. I'm sorry I'm using the Scrum Guide terms Daily Scrum but you know everybody was looking to him for answers and he was telling him exactly what to do and I'm like, what if you just weren't there for, you know, the next week let's just try that? And I could tell he didn't like the idea already. But by the time on Monday morning I sat down in that conference room at SmallCon.
Speaker 4:I can picture it right now and I don't have that good of a memory. So this tells you that's a very memorable thing in my brain. I'm sitting on the other side of the room. He's sitting closest to the door. Okay, and he walks in. As soon as he walks in I can tell he is loaded, he is ready to go Okay.
Speaker 4:And he explains to me in increasing volume shall we say, yeah how what I'd asked him to do was a really bad idea. It was the stupidest thing he'd heard. He talked to his boss already and his boss agreed. There's no way he could manage his team and do what I had asked him to do last week. He was absolutely convinced. And you know, just going through his litany of reasons Now, conflict avoider that I am, I have already realized a few sentences in that I couldn't leave the room without going past him.
Speaker 4:Yeah, because I would rather just crawl out the door and so basically sitting there going. Wow, he is really upset with me. I do not want to be here and I really need to work with him on this, Like. This is my job. Right Is to help him and his team get better at this stuff. I'm pretty much going to have to deal with this somehow. I might as well try those skills I learned, you know, in the class on Saturday. I might as well what do I have to lose? He's already upset with me.
Speaker 4:Yeah, what Of course is it going to get? I knew him all the time. He wasn't going to actually physically throw a punch at me or anything, but like, let's just try it. And I fumbled through some of these skills we're about to talk about. I'm not saying I did him great, I didn't. I didn't do it right, but as I as I did those things, I saw him in a matter of. It was just about 10 minutes. He calmed back down. He was still holding his viewpoint. His perspective is striped on the beach ball but he was now talking in a normal tone of voice and while that wasn't them, you know, there wasn't a magic wand, rainbows, unicorns we didn't. He didn't suddenly go. Mark, you're right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly what it was was we could actually talk about what we needed to talk about. We could hear each other and we could address the situation that I was like floored I'm not, I'm not kidding I was like walked out of that meeting going what just happened? What just happened? It worked, it was working, it was incredible, even though it was so simple, and so that I just I say all that and spend the time to do that, to emphasize that knowing these things is very different from actually using them. So let's start with the first one and it was actually the main one that I used in that circumstance, and that's reflective listening.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:What I think is underneath the power, reflective listening, especially in conflict, is when we go to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you'll find that people have a great need to be understood, to be heard, to be respected, to belong. There's a number of ways we can look at it there, but that's right there as a need that we have as human beings, and so the first thing that I think this manager needed from me I realized in retrospect is that I showed him I was trying to understand his perspective.
Speaker 4:I was trying to understand his stripe on the beach ball, as opposed to just standing firm and saying no, you're wrong, kind of like the example you gave Mark Mitz of that team that you were working with that one person set up and gave the answer. The next person grabbed the marker and said you're wrong and just started giving the answer, and then a third person did it. They weren't showing to the other person that I was trying to understand your perspective, but as I was conveying that with reflective listening to this manager, he was calming down because he was starting to believe that I was understanding where he was coming from. I didn't say agree, that's a different thing, apparently, but that I was trying to understand where he was coming from. And so the very simple reflective listening practices are intended to shout that message to the other person. I'm trying to understand your perspective, I'm trying to understand where you're coming from and, for those of you who are familiar with these concepts, we're in the territory of empathy. I'm trying to understand what you're feeling, what you're thinking. I will never fully understand what another person's feeling or thinking, so that's not the goal of this. The goal of this is to try and take a day that I'm trying to. If that message gets across, we will make a lot of headway in healthy conflict. So probably good for me to actually talk about the skill Instead of just giving you the benefits of it and so on. But again, this isn't rocket surgery. I'm probably not going to be surprised by what I'm about to say, and it might even sound really stilted and weird. And I'm just going to say trust me, try it and practice it and you'll discover what happens.
Speaker 4:So the very simple thing to do is to first of all shut up. Yeah, just stop trying to get your point across. Stop trying to defend yourself, like Greg you gave your example. It's really hard to do someone's coming at me. I'm going to stop trying to defend myself and we're going to stop trying to make sure they understand me, and instead my job right now is to suspend judgment, which is I'm not. My job right now is not to try and label what they're saying good or bad, or right or wrong, but instead that's so hard it takes a lot of restraint.
Speaker 4:But the point of that is I cannot try to understand their perspective if I am constantly in my brain, even if it doesn't come out of my mouth. With my brain. I'm trying to find the fallacies and flaws and errors and differences and so on from what I think of my perspective as I. Instead, I need to try and tell that part of me to hold its breath for a few minutes, not go away forever. Just hold your breath for a few minutes so that I can focus on this other human being across from me and try and understand their perspective.
Speaker 4:So, first of all, stop talking and start trying to understand their perspective and then, when they break, when they pause for a moment, try to reflect something that you've heard and it's again. It's not terribly difficult. So it sounds like if I'm following you, it sounds like you're saying this Am I with you on that? It's that simple. That's the simplest form of reflective listening. And what you're trying again to say is I'm trying to understand you, I'm trying to be with you. Am I there?
Speaker 4:And that invitator, the other person, because you're probably not hitting it spot on. You don't have to. You don't have to be perfect about what you say right there, they will guide you as soon as they realize that you're trying to understand them. It's like a magnetic draw. They go. You got part of it Right. Here's the other part. I'm not sure you got this part and they'll explain it to you, and then you do it again. Oh, I see. So it's more about like this you think it's going to be better than that, is that? Yeah, yeah, it's that. And even if you get it right, they're going to say and and keep going, because they've got somebody who cares about them enough to spend the time to understand their perspective. So they will explain it to you fully at that point, if you're getting your message across.
Speaker 2:You know, I've, I've, I've noticed, as you talk through, that I'm thinking back in situations in my life that my head immediately goes to like conflicts with my wife is that we can, we may. If we don't do that, what you're saying, I've made things worse, because I think I know what she's saying. I'm trying to argue it and she's like, and it's like no, and I'm like, you know, I'm not hearing her because I'm not shutting up Right, Because I want to I want to.
Speaker 2:I want to say that you're wrong in what you're saying. And then, once I kind of calm down and you understand, she's like no, I wasn't saying that, I was saying this. And I'm like that happens a lot with me in my life and I'm like but you're right, just shut up and ask is this what you're saying? No, it's not what I'm saying at all. Oh well, then, maybe I'm not right.
Speaker 4:Help me understand Right, let's, let's talk through it.
Speaker 4:No, you're there are so many ways this can go wrong, and that is absolutely one of them. Part of the challenge we've got with this that requires us restraint is that people speak at a certain speed, a certain number of words per minute, yeah, and our brains can process much faster than that it's. It's easily a 10 factor. It's very hard to measure these things, but easily on a study as a factor of 10 of the speed with which our brains can process versus the speed we can speak. So, somewhere in the 150 words per minute that we can speak in, and we're up in that well into the thousands, mid thousands at least, of what we can process in our brains. And so the way I like to put it is our brains are a Ferrari and the person who's talking is a bicycle, yeah, so you've got this like room and you go. I know what they're talking about, I know where this is going to go.
Speaker 2:We are like, like, even, even like. Even in this conversation, like whenever I do these, like for me, I'm listening to what you're saying and I'm trying to take it in. I'm also trying to think think ahead. Like you said, I'm trying to think ahead of you. Okay, what am I going to say next? What's it? Not just the words are going to go next and I have questions I want to ask. Don't lose that question, right? So you're right, I'm going way ahead of you.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yes, that's right, and I mean, one of the biggest challenges in communication is just actually being heard. Because of those reasons, we're thinking of what to say next and all that kind of stuff. So that's why I say it takes tremendous restraint and I, when I'm coaching people through this, I say if you have listened well, you will be tired at the end of it. That means you've done it right. Right, that means you've done it right. If you want, to take reflective listening deeper.
Speaker 4:One other thing I'll just add is reflect the emotion you think you hear to. Now, that's a pretty personal thing to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Right, yeah, but wow, talk about connection and feeling heard and understood. That's deeper. It sounds like you're really angry about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right, or it sounds like you're really anxious about this. And if you can start to put in some of the emotional words, that deepens the connection and the understanding you're trying to get, because there's two aspects the thoughts and the feelings. If you just stick with thoughts, it's only going to go so far. If you can also do emotions, that's a deep connection. Sorry, that's true.
Speaker 2:That's true. Okay, yeah, that's true, because I've done that. I've done that with my wife. I said you sound like you're angry. Well, no, I'm not angry, I'm this, and she'll give me a different word yeah. So I've done that. I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's if you can give yourself a failure, bow or raise your hand and say woohoo.
Speaker 1:When that happens, when someone says not that but this, that but this, you're not trying to get it Right.
Speaker 4:You're trying to say I'm trying to understand, trying to. Yes, she got that message and said he's trying to understand me, so I'm going to, I'm going to bother, I'm going to spend the time to try and tell him how I really feel. Yeah, I know it's not angry, it's just instead.
Speaker 3:So, mark, I have some conflict with something that you said. Yeah, yeah, nice.
Speaker 2:Mark, can't hold it in. Can't hold it in, it's not emotional?
Speaker 3:I promise Not emotional. It's a funny story, yeah, um, going back years past you. So you mentioned that our brains can process information much faster than we think they can and much faster than we can speak. Well, yes, I had a situation where I was, I was working with um, with two very excited people, we'll say, and definitely got very impassioned in in their discussions and explanations of things. And they're not. They were not from the same part of the country that I am in. So I'm in Columbia, South Carolina. You could tell by my accent, I'm just a good old Southern boy, right.
Speaker 3:And so when these ladies would start explaining things. Ferrari is probably not fast enough Um talking Okay.
Speaker 4:I don't know what's about Ferrari, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I just had to stop these, these two people, and said y'all you're talking to a, to a poor little Southern boy from down here in South Carolina. Y'all actually talk faster than I can think and you would not believe the reaction I got out of that Wow. Yeah. It was uh, um, yeah. So I got haunted by that pretty much the whole time.
Speaker 2:I worked with it.
Speaker 3:Let me slow it down for you, mark. Oh no, mark, you have a you have a.
Speaker 2:I'm sensing a pattern here from you. This is the second time now.
Speaker 4:Oh man, that that sounds challenging. I know this. I can relate, I think, to some of what you're saying there of like just getting overwhelmed. My brain processing can't keep up with something that's going on there, and if there's two people speaking, I suppose that multiplies the number of words per minute.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, totally. Yeah, oh, my goodness.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a good request. That's another skill you just practiced right there that you used in that situation of making a request although they kind of played at you for it afterward they might not have had your intent there, but making a request of other people. I find that that's a spot that gets a lot of people stuck in conflict when they're saying okay, mark, I might be able to buy into slowing down, suspending judgment, kind of holding my breath, so to speak, on those things and listening and reflecting. But when do I get them to hear my perspective? I'm going to spend all this time understanding their perspective. What about mine?
Speaker 4:Because I wouldn't be in conflict or tension if I didn't have a different perspective than theirs. And while some of these things, like you're saying, greg, with your wife, sometimes you're like, oh well, then, I'm not upset, there's no conflict.
Speaker 4:Now that I understand your perspective, a lot of them we're still going to have a different perspective on, and so that's where that request comes in and it's a really beautiful moment. I'm going to reference a book here. It's Never Split the Difference, by Chris Boss. If you've heard of that one, it's about negotiation and he talks about empathy and there he uses it as tactical empathy, which is slightly different but in this case pretty. We'll call it similar enough for this conversation, certainly, and the way that he approaches that is really good.
Speaker 4:So if you are listening well to the other person and you're reflecting back to them and you're studying them to see if you are conveying the message that I'm trying to understand you, they get that message.
Speaker 4:Great, you have to adapt empirically, right, Good Agilus, we're going to have to adapt to land through that spot. But if you get there, you think you're getting there. Then just ask the question do you feel like I've understood where you're from on this? Because I really want to. Am I with you that I track where you're at? And if you can get an answer that sounds something like a yes or a, that's right, then you have a golden opportunity at that point to say could you do me the honor of repaying that? Can I describe what it would be like to describe my perspective, and could you just reflect back at me. Just kind of repeat what you heard so that I'm sure I'm conveying it clearly. Notice how much I'm learning things. We'll get to that skill in a little bit, but if you really have understood that other person and really they've gotten the message you're trying really hard to. I have yet to have anybody say no to that request.
Speaker 2:I've never thought of doing that before. I just learned something. I had like a light bulb moment when you said that. I was like well, I've never done that, I've never asked so. I've never done that for someone and then turned back and said can you do me the honor of repeating yeah, that's great.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it is a two-way street. If they don't know the reflective listening skills, that's fine. You can even prompt them at certain points. So you talk for a few minutes, all right. So let me pause because I've just said a lot of words. Could you say what you thought you heard me say, because I'm not sure I'm being clear, or it would help me know whether or not I'm being clear with what I'm saying here? And that's, you're basically inviting them to reflectively listen at that point.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 4:Awesome. It's a beautiful example, Mark, of making a request for what you need. Could you all slow down for me? I'm having a hard time keeping up.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No, that was great. Yeah, they just turned it around.
Speaker 3:So one of the challenges that we that we do have in our technology rich Landscape that we have here is we just get bombarded with so much information, so much noise that it makes it hard sometimes to do that reflective listening, any advice you've got here for that to truly setting aside the time and the attention to listen to somebody and then to be able to relay that so that you know if you are talking up a level or two levels.
Speaker 3:That person's time is probably important and they're getting messaged a lot, yeah, so that they are giving you the proper their understanding and hearing you.
Speaker 4:Right. The best advice I can give is to is what I would call self leadership. I think at EQ we call it self awareness. To some extent there's self-awareness there and some other things too, but knowing yourself so that you can display what you want to see from other people. It's kind of the golden role approach, right?
Speaker 4:So if I'm distracted checking my phone and emails and whatever right looking at the, this can be hard in some situations. If I'm on a break room or a restaurant and there's a TV on with the Bengals playing, I'm going to have a really hard time. If I'm facing that TV, really listening well to the other people that I'm there with. So know myself well enough to know those things, know what my flooding response is like we talked about last time and what ways I can prepare myself for those situations so that I am more likely to be able to set aside all that stuff. So it's I mean again, nothing here is rocket surgery and yet doing it is the challenge. So if I'm going to walk into a meeting where I know it's really important that I pay attention to the other person, I might even leave my phone outside, you know, for an hour. It's okay if nobody can reach me. Certainly I'm going to tell it to not buzz beep or anything. Not me.
Speaker 4:If I do take it in, I'm going to try and arrange my seating. Again, this is just me, knowing me. I'm going to try and sit in a spot where there's not something really interesting going on behind that's active, like a window that people walk past or anything of that nature, and then it helps. If I mean, this is sounds so like you've got to be kidding me, but seriously, if I eat well the day before, that it's better. I'm able to concentrate better. If I eat a lot of sugar, if I have caffeine again, this is me knowing me. It's different for every person, but I'm going to be better able to pay attention to the other person and even to be able to do things like no breathing techniques, meditate, in order to be able to find the spot where I can suspend that judgment and I can focus just strictly on the other person. The more I do that, the better. So it's again, it's a set of skills, practice. It Don't expect that any of us are going to walk in, not having done this before, to a half hour long meeting with the CIO or whatever and just be like, ok, I'm going to be, it's fine, I'm going to do this for 30 minutes.
Speaker 4:No, try it with someone who you don't know really well for two minutes. First you know something where you don't have a lot of steak in the game. Don't try it with. I would just recommend don't try it with a family member for an hour long thing. That's been going on for two years as your first go. Exactly, start small, so have you?
Speaker 3:so? Have you ever, in those situations you talk about being, you know, leading by example you ever, you know, verbalize? This is an important conversation. I'm going to put my phone on silence because I want to truly hear what you have to say. Do you ever do the other person.
Speaker 4:I can. I can do that, I'll. I'll be honest too If that's my attempt to ask them to do the same. That's a little. That's heading, at least heading toward passive aggressive, If I'm not just going to ask him so.
Speaker 4:I got to make the request and I tend to do it this way is to say this is a really important conversation for me. If this isn't the best time for us to just focus on this conversation because I know you've got a lot going on Help me understand when the best time is, because I really want to make sure we connect well over this. So just give them an out, basically where they're deciding, they have the option of saying this you know what? I can't right now because the server just went down or whatever. Right, so OK, that's fine. When would be a good time for us to have a really focused conversation about this? Or the person. The other option is the person that says, yes, I can, and they're, they're basically committing at that point to Reducing, to eliminating distractions so they can be focused, so just make the request, yeah that's great.
Speaker 4:It sounds so simple, doesn't it? It's still a skill that I practice to make that request. Very good skill, yes.
Speaker 2:I've, I've, I've, I've done that in the past. I've, I've said that what's a good time, that's. It's very professional to do that. I think it's respectful yeah.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's.
Speaker 4:It's amazing because the alternative this is from violent communication, the book nonviolent communication, if you've heard of that one. That's where I get a lot of the request language, because the alternative to request is a demand which, in terms of the book is very violent way to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man.
Speaker 4:Did somebody do it? They don't have an alternative. I mean, they always have an alternative, but you're not giving them an alternative, and that, in the language of the book, is violent Communication. So making a request and being open to them, giving you an answer that you don't want or as different from what you proposed, Is the key to requesting. And so, yeah, if you can't walk in with that, you're not actually making a request. There could be consequences to the session, but it's always a request because that's a human right
Speaker 4:and you're talking to Exactly.
Speaker 3:Right, you said it a couple times. No, mark, you said it. It sounds so easy. It reminds me of you. Know, somebody told me a story is like you can explain to somebody about Hitting a baseball. Yep, sounds easy. You've ever played baseball before I really struggled to that one. I'm not gonna be.
Speaker 2:That's a tough.
Speaker 4:That's a tough skill, it is you guys have been in a batting cage once because I just I was like I want to, I want to actually see how hard this is, because I bet it's harder than I think it is and I was just so happy that I even made contact once and like I don't know what else the game. I mean like softball too. I was like yes.
Speaker 2:You know they I played baseball they say keep your eye on the ball. But when you've got, you got the fastball coming in and you're like I have a major leaguers talk about, you know, Seeing the seams? I can't see the seams. I can't. I just see Coming at me what you're talking about but I want to dodge.
Speaker 4:Thank you, yeah, yes, no, it's very similar to that.
Speaker 4:So really good analogy, mark and that's why I keep saying practice, try it and practice and use them, because you can read tons of articles about this stuff. A bunch of them. Just practice it, and that's why what, whether you come to this class, the transform conflict class, or not, do some practice, because that's that's the focus of this class is, we're gonna talk about them and this, many of the same things that I just said. He was saying class, and then we're gonna actually Practice them, so that you make a request to another person and you go oh, that's how it goes, that's gonna make a request to you and you go that's how it goes.
Speaker 2:That's the best way I found in any class that I the best classes I've been in are the ones that actually do it. Like I agree we're going through a professional scrum. Foundations class was the first scrum class I went through and they actually had us Break into teams, have a scrum master product as my first, as my first experience at it, and actually do it, do it, do a product you know, run your, run your scrum, and that's the best way to learn. I think it might be yes.
Speaker 2:It's actually not just sit in the class about theory, do it. So I think that's a, that's a. You'll have a good class doing that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, watch out because you're getting me into instructional design Lane and I'm a geek about that. The different types of learning of awareness is great and important, but it's it's only on the way to actually being able to apply something, and you're right that that is now called the applying professional scrum class, by the way, just for us.
Speaker 2:Oh, they change it. Okay, yeah, yeah, okay. So we have reflective listening mark. What's another mark Wavell? What's another skill that?
Speaker 4:yeah, and we talked a little bit about respect, so I'll leave that there. The other the other one is projections and what we're in the land now of like. Okay, so I've listened to the other person, maybe I need to make a request or I need to say something that I need to hear. So imagine you're a manager, you've got a person reporting to you and they've they've not done what you've asked them to do, or so it would seem to you. Anyway, you don't see it, and so you bring them and you describe that to them.
Speaker 4:You know, we had this conversation. You said you could do that and and I haven't seen it. Help me understand what's going on and and what it looks like from your perspective. So you do great Request, reflectively, listen, is there describing that? And you realize they still haven't done nothing. Okay, yeah, you describe your perspective and the other person's like, yep, no. So how do you go through that in a way that reduces the likelihood the other person's gonna get into that state? We talked about last time of neurobiological flooding, because if a person is flooding, what that means is they're in danger mode and they're their brain and their body are actually operating in a way that means that they are not thinking clearly right.
Speaker 4:They're actually not thinking, they're reacting and they're doing it in a way that's that's gonna be defensive, they're gonna try and defend themselves, and that looks different for each person. Some people attack when they're trying to defend themselves. Some people curl into a ball, so to speak. You know you can just see them disappear. Some people, you know, feign agreement, all that types of stuff, type of thing.
Speaker 4:But how could, how can that conversation, could I reduce the likelihood that this, the, the person that's reporting to me, that I'm talking to, would go to that state, so that we can actually talk about what we need to and they could hear what I'm saying and and consider it, as opposed to trying just simply trying to defend themselves in a way that ends up in unhealthy conflict, and that the key to that is removing projections. So a projection is when I shove Using kind of slightly violent language here on purpose to make the point when I shove my thoughts, beliefs, perspectives or emotions on to another person. I Bet Greg and you keep talking about Conflicts with your wife, which means you've got a relationship. Yeah, I do that example. If if you had said earlier, or you said it seems like maybe you're you're angry, if you had instead said to her you're angry? How do you think that would have gone?
Speaker 2:No, no, she wouldn't like this. I'm not angry.
Speaker 4:I'm not good. Yeah, that's right, she would have been angry for you. It's been angry then now I'm angry.
Speaker 4:I wasn't, I wasn't before, but I am, that's right, correct, because you projected your perspective and Maybe even your emotion. You're feeling the time. You project that under her. Or when we get into a spot, like you also described earlier, greg, where we think we know why the other person did what they did a motive, those types of things and we tell them what it is Like. Well, you're, you're just this, because you that, and right, yeah, exactly what does the other person gonna do? Of course, what would you expect defense if somebody and shove them, they're gonna defend themselves.
Speaker 2:Correct.
Speaker 4:And we do it too. So people use these things with us. We get defensive too. So the key is the word you. You've probably heard me say that a lot in just a couple minutes. I've been talking about projections. Think of it like a projector that is throwing an image up on a screen in a room, the, and that's exactly what we're doing. Or projecting or throwing these Emotions and perspectives and so on on to another person that are really ours to own, but we're throwing them on the other person like a Projector does, and the on switch to that projector is the word you. So when I say you're angry, I'm shoving. I'm now projecting. I've turned on the projector.
Speaker 4:The other person is Almost guaranteed going to get into a defensive posture and we're gonna have less healthy and helpful productive relation Conflict at this point in time, and so what I want to do is remove as many use as I possibly can so that I own what's mine. I own my perspective, my viewpoint, my experience, my emotions, all those kinds of things. So instead, what would I say? Instead of let's just try this out, let's practice it. For me, so, one of the, maybe one of the situations that you're willing to share about Greg or mark, where you want to tell somebody you this or you Did that, or you're feeling this or whatever it might be, well, what's one of those situations? And let's just, if you don't mind, we'll just workshop it here real quick, because this isn't again. Another is a very simple skill. It's just when we don't tend to practice.
Speaker 2:Let's try it out. Go ahead, mark.
Speaker 4:Told.
Speaker 3:I'm trying to think you. Let's see, are you ready to go, greg?
Speaker 4:The back.
Speaker 2:Hey, Mark, we're getting some Did you turn your air conditioner on. We're getting some background. There you go. I did not change.
Speaker 4:All I did was mute my mic from the mic from. Maybe so it was. It was getting re accustomed to the environment, maybe for a minute. Is this how it went around? Yeah, yeah, it's better Okay okay, so let me start that thought again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, start that thought.
Speaker 4:Let's just take this example. Greg, just, you know, puts you on the spot, mark, and says Mark, speak, go. You know your turn. So, from your perspective, mark, maybe you're like, uh, that I didn't really like that. I don't know, I'm just like trying to make a scenario here so we can play through, okay.
Speaker 4:But if that's what's just happened, you could look at Greg and say, greg, you really shouldn't do that. You put me on the spot and you made me angry, right, okay, you could say that, so, but what? All that just happened there is you're telling Greg what your perspective is and what you're feeling, but you're saying it in a way that says it's him, it's his fault, he's making you angry, right? In reality is you own your emotions, you own your experience. Your perspective is that you felt put on the spot and because of that you were angry. So saying it that way is very different, greg. Wow, so what I just experienced there was I felt like you just put me on the spot and I didn't feel prepared, and so I'm feeling all angry about that right now. That's all I statements. Greg doesn't necessarily like, maybe, what you're saying, but you're not coming at him. He doesn't feel like you're coming at him.
Speaker 2:And I would say if, in the sorry, in the initial scenario, if he said you put me on the spot, you made me feel angry, I would say, no, I didn't. Right, I didn't. I'm not trying to put you on the spot. There's the defensive posture. Right, there's a defensive. I'm not trying to make you angry, I was just trying to get you to ask a question or whatever.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's right, yeah, and if we turn off the projector and we own our stuff, the implication that most people get through that is you're asking them to empathize with you, to understand your perspective, and then you can understand theirs. Right, we're back to them again and then, when you're in that sweet spot where you have tried to understand each other's perspectives, that's where you have healthy conflict, where you can go. Well, I understand where you're coming from, you understand where I'm coming from. What can we do or how can we address this so that we're both able to work through this well together, and that's the conflict when you get down to it.
Speaker 2:So that's a moving project and maybe sometimes I've you've heard you agree to disagree, right, maybe you talk it through and maybe you just because the goal isn't to you said it earlier, mark way. Well, I think you're not. You're not really going to change the other person's opinion, right? The guy that was mad, mad with you, that walked into the room, he still he feels how he feels, right, you're not going to change his. He feels that that's the way he has to manage his people. That's like his. Maybe over time you can change it, but you're not always going to. Sometimes you won't change people's opinions, right, you just have to agree to. But you have to be agreed to open and discuss it, right?
Speaker 4:Yeah, at the very I mean I would almost consider a worst case scenario you're describing, and yet it is an option in every conflict that we may end up there, like with that manager. If I've understood his perspective, well, what, what is it that you feel like is an abscential for you in managing your people? I'm trying to understand his perspective on this because he's seeing a conflict. He can't both be absent from the Daily Scrum and manages people. What is what's in between there? What's that get? If I can understand that, and then he can understand.
Speaker 4:What I'm trying to help him do is to skill his people up so that they don't need to keep coming in to him for the fish every day. But he's teaching him how to fish because he's hired smart people right that get capable of doing this some of them and some of them aren't, but can learn and how can he help them do that more and more? And so if we are able to understand, for example, those two perspectives and we go how can we do both of these? What would satisfy both of these, then we can actually talk. That's really what we needed to talk about, right, and maybe we say we can't, but at least we look at what we're really trying to talk about instead of what we're talking about, which is I'm really ticked off at you because you shoved me out of the room, so to speak, because you know probably how it felt to him shoved me out of the room with my team and I have either performance or results, so that's not going to work.
Speaker 4:Well, let's talk about what we really need to talk about. That's where we're trying to head with these conflicts is let's talk about the real things and respect each other as human beings about it, and you, quite often what you find is there's an option that actually addresses both things, or multiple options in some cases that address multiple perspectives that you can try out. And, as Agilis, this is just another technique that I'll just quickly spout off. Here's Agilis. We have on our side the empirical cycle, like we're used to sprint, so those kinds of things we go. Well, unless we say it, we assume that whatever solution we come up with is forever. That's just the way to so. Instead, let's just can we just try this for two weeks?
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 4:Try this for a week whatever, let's talk about it again and see if it's, you know, now that we've understood each other's perspectives, is it helping those perspectives or are we able to get what we need out of those? So, with this manager, with you, you know, let's try you being in every other daily scrum, I don't know. Whatever it might be, let's come back and talk about that and we can see how that's challenging for you, if that for the things you're trying to get to, and how that's helping your team or not helping your team, and then we'll figure out what to do from there.
Speaker 2:I've been very successful doing just what you said this far with teams. You know mainly I'm sure you both know like teams. You come into a new team. They're doing the daily standup like every other day or whenever you know here or there and you find out, yeah, just say hey, can we just try it for a sprint, right?
Speaker 2:That's going to, I would say Garnier close to 100% of time. After those two weeks they end up liking it and want to do it. I've been very successful with that approach. Let's just try it for two weeks, a sprint, that's all it is you go to the bar that way of success. Yeah, that's right. There's two weeks. Oh, that's all we have. Okay, we can get through two weeks. Anybody can get through two weeks. They know it's there's an end in sight, possibly, right, right? Okay, I'll give you two weeks, most people, right?
Speaker 4:I have to tell a story really quick here of an organization that I worked with on this and we got through these skills we were just talking about and it was the CEO who was in the class and from the very first moment in class I was up front and I started teaching it and he started challenging the things I was saying. And Chris Collins, at the back of the room, he's looking at me and he sees my shoulders going straight up.
Speaker 2:Five minutes into the class two day class.
Speaker 4:I'm flooding, I'm not doing well here Because he's kind of coming after me and I feel like I have to defend myself and he's giving you know Chris is in the back of me the deep breath signs and all this kind of stuff. So I'm trying to calm down. He eventually asked me about it's. You know, wait, are you saying we shouldn't have any tension? And I'm like, great question. No, you absolutely need tension in your organization.
Speaker 4:Starters and organizations are set up to optimize for tension actually. So you've got a sales team that's going to have tension with the marketing team that's going to have some tension and synergy with the developments and etc. Etc. It's a matter of how you handle the tension. It's healthy. So the stuff we talked about at the beginning. So we started to warm up, but he was still pretty skeptical about the whole thing until we actually had him practice this part about projections and we did that in small groups. So he's in a group of three people from his company, all you know, all up and down the chain, and he's like okay, so it's my turn, here's. Here's an example. Actually, this is something I said to this product leader last week and he and it was a punchy thing, and it was. It was like, yeah, you don't understand our customer. You're completely covering your customer.
Speaker 4:And he's like huh, so if I were to remove projections, how would that sound? And he reworded it with the, workshopping it with the rest of his group there, and he came up with an alternative. And and I was I was just watching from, you know, a few yards away, just kind of listening in to see how this was going, and he's like huh. And then he turns around and he calls to that product leader. He's like hey, come over here for a second. You remember this thing I said to you last week. And the product leaders like oh, yeah.
Speaker 4:What if I had said this to you? And then he said his reworded statement and the other guy's like oh, that's completely different. Yeah, All right, so you're you're concerned about this aspect of it? Yeah, and I was like I was watching it right in front of you, Right in front of you.
Speaker 2:It's like wow.
Speaker 4:Right. I was like this was meant to be a white glove classroom environment that you could practice it and instead the the CEO's going like you know what, let me just try it. And it was amazing, that's great. What in the world? And on the way back to the large session he stops me and says can I share about that in the large session? Can I talk a little bit about the importance of this? I'm like it's your company.
Speaker 2:Of course you can.
Speaker 4:But it turned into a really amazing leadership moment where he said I've realized I'm not good at this stuff and we need this in order to be successful, so help me. And he's like hold me accountable, is what he was saying. Hold me accountable for this stuff. This is really important and I invite you to do these things as well. This is our success. And I was just like I was almost bawling in the corner.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh my gosh that was crazy. So that's that. Well, that's a sign of a. It could have gone completely the opposite way, right, but that's a. He was, he's a good CEO, then he's open to to hearing that and he really, yes, wanted to get better that, so he, that's a great story.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that is a great story he's. He was willing to put it to the test to he's like huh that seemed to work in the small group. Yeah, but the guy sitting right here, let me try it. Let me let me actually see if that works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, awesome, yeah, yeah, that's great. So okay, so great. So we've gone practice some of these things which we know will definitely make you better in not only life, but in agile, so you can use it in any, any, any aspect of your life that you're having trouble. So thanks, guys, for another great show, another great episode. Thanks for Mark for joining us here. Again, this has been Greg and the marks, the agile within, and we'll see you next time.