How To Transform A Difficult Person

I was coaching Jennifer, a special education teacher in an elementary school, who contacted me just prior to school starting on September 4th. She had read my book on resolving conflict and wanted some help.

Jennifer was worried because she knew she would be seeing Miranda, a coworker on the team of teachers who worked with the special education kids. Miranda had more experience than Jennifer but wasn't Jennifer's supervisor.

As school was ending last June, Miranda had shocked Jennifer when, completely out of the blue and with a threatening tone of voice, she had attacked Jennifer's teaching methods, telling her that the way she interacted with the kids was doing more harm than good. Jennifer was furious but was too stunned to say anything.

Jennifer remained furious all summer. She told me she wanted to give up her need to be right about Miranda (which I advise people to do) and just listen to understand Miranda's opinion in the hope of learning something, but Jennifer was too angry and judgmental to do so.

Further, she was afraid to confront Miranda because, "I'm not a courageous person. My brain turns to mush and I just don't know what to say." 

Here's what I said to Jennifer:

1.   1. You have plenty of courage. Being courageous means that you act in spite of your fear, not in the absence of fear.

2.  2. Giving up the need to be right has nothing to do with giving up being judgmental and angry. Of course, you're judgmental and angry. Don't try and change your feelings. You can't. If I were in your shoes, I would be angry and judgmental. However, you can feel angry and judgmental and not act that way. This may seem phony to you, but part of giving up the need to be right is to not return anger with anger After all, if you don't listen to Miranda, why should she listen to you?

3.  3. Because you're worried about your brain turning to "mush," I recommend you write down and practice what you want to say to Miranda. I suggest you bring that piece of paper with you and preface what you're going to say with, "I'm nervous and I wanted to be sure and say this to you in the way that I want to say it. So I'm going to read this."

af   4. After explaining why you're reading what you wrote, I suggest you say something like this: "First, I want to tell you what a great job you do with the kids. I know there's a lot I can learn from you. However, when you spoke to me as you did, I shut down because the way you said it made it difficult for me to listen. I want to hear what you have to say. I request that when you have something to say to me you say it with a calm tone of voice so that I can hear you without getting defensive. Will you do that?"

 Always end your request with "Will you?" not "Could you?" "Would you? " "Can you?" or any similar variation.

 After asking, "Will you?" stop talking and just listen. If Miranda hesitates before responding, do not fill the silence. Just wait for her to talk.

5. When Miranda does talk, do not give your opinion until Miranda knows that she has been fully understood by you. Do this by paraphrasing and asking questions. Your goal is to understand Miranda so well that you could explain her position to a stranger and Miranda would agree that she has been well represented by you.

I spoke to Jennifer several days after school had started and she was ecstatic because her conversation with Miranda had gone spectacularly well. They had cleared the air and created agreements for how they would communicate in the future.

Jennifer had, indeed, written down and read what she wrote. Jennifer was especially glad that she had begun by "thanking her (Miranda) for meeting with me and telling her how much I admired her." Jennifer could see that Miranda, who had appeared defensive, relaxed her shoulders.

When Miranda responded, Jennifer told me she did listen even though "I had to bite my tongue to keep from jumping in with my opinion."

When Jennifer gave up her need to be right and listened, Miranda reciprocated (which often happens) and admitted that she wasn't "very good at this relationship thing" and revealed some things that had happened to her in childhood that had caused her to be the way she was. The conversation ended with Miranda apologizing and promising to behave differently.

As they parted, Miranda, who had previously stated she wasn't comfortable with the "touchy feely stuff," hugged Jennifer.

This situation is, of course, different than circumstances in your life. However, this is a good template for how to transform a difficult person in any circumstance.

A Position That Doesn't Have To Be Defended Is Most Open To Change

"Above all, he learned how to listen, with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions."

         Hermann Hesse Siddhartha

Siddhartha is the story of a man finding enlightenment when he gives up trying to find it and just listens to the world around him. The story parallels the life of Buddha but is not intended as a recreation of Buddha's life.

I love the "Siddartha" quote because I believe it is a brilliant prescription for conflict resolution, both the conflict within ourselves (when we try, through an act of will, to change ourselves) and the conflicts we have with other people (in which we try and change them).

Hesse is suggesting that the very act of trying to change others (and ourselves) produces resistance to change and that, paradoxically, giving up trying to change others (and ourselves) is what makes change possible.

These thoughts were inspired by a story from the September 4th, 2012 issue of "The Daily Good," an online blog. The article was first published in the Harvard Business Review and was written by Peter Bregman, CEO of Bregman Partners, a "global management consulting firm."

The story Bregman tells doesn't appear to be about a conflict, but it is.

Conflict is, by definition, a disagreement. Basically, conflict exists because one person, one group, one nation wants another person, group or nation to change and encounters resistance.

That's what happens in the story Bregman tells.

Bregman writes about visiting some friends whose 9-year old daughter had just returned home from a swim meet where she had been disqualified for a "false start" (that is, leaping into the water before the starting gun had been fired). The girl was close to tears.

The parents tried to change their daughter's perception by telling her that the false start indicated she was really trying hard to win, that every swimmer at some point is disqualified for a false start and that she'd have many more chances to win at other swim meets that year and in the years to come.

The parents' words did nothing to change their daughter's despair.

Just then, the girl's grandmother entered the room, sat beside the girl, put her arm around her and said nothing. The girl put her head on her grandmother's shoulder. After a few moments of silence, the grandmother said, "I know how hard you work at this, honey. It's sad to get disqualified."

After a few more moments of silence, the girl got up, wiped her tears and said, "Thanks, Mimi" (her grandmother's name).

Notice that the granddaughter changed when the grandmother didn't try to change her but simply validated the girl's experience ("It's sad to get disqualified.") and just listened.

Why does not trying to change produce change?

Consider: from the moment we leave the womb, someone is trying to change us. Our parents, our teachers, our friends, our coworkers, our bosses and the advertisements we read and see are all on a mission to influence us to change (I'm not judging whether the changes are for the worse or for the better).

Is it any wonder then that we are distrustful of those who seem to want us to change? What we may hear under the surface of every conflict is, "There's something wrong here, perhaps with you" and that,"I can fix you if you just do what I tell you to do."

But suppose, instead, we just listened as Siddartha did, as Mimi did, not to change but to understand? There would be no reason to be defensive because there would be nothing we'd feel the need to defend.

When in a conflict, listening "with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions" will produce change in us and others because, as someone once suggested to me, a position that doesn't have to be defended is most open to change.

You can read Peter Bregman's article here.

Resolving Conflict: Who Deserves The Cookies?

Dr. Dachner Keltner is a psychology professor at the University of California who studies how "humans negotiate moral concerns." One of the experiments he conducted has implications for conflict resolution. 

Here's the situation:

Imagine you have been arbitrarily designated as the leader of a team of three people who have been asked to develop ideas about how to curb drinking on college campuses.

Or, if you prefer, imagine you've been arbitrarily designated the leader of a team with two other business colleagues who are crafting an employee handbook.

Or suppose that you've been arbitrarily designated the leader of a team consisting of you and two other parents who are drafting a proposal to deal with bullying at your children's school.

Make up a team of your choosing if you don't like any of these situations. Whatever you choose, imagine you have become the leader purely by chance.

Now imagine that after exactly 30 minutes of being together, someone enters the room with a plate of four of your favorite cookies, fresh out of the oven.

You and the other two team members immediately reach for a cookie. They taste as delicious as they smell.

But who gets that fourth cookie still sitting on the plate? The solution is obviously to divide the cookie into three, equal pieces, right? 

Except when this experiment was carried out by Professor Keltner, that's not what happened. The experiment was conducted repeatedly with the same result: The leader of the team took the fourth cookie for himself/herself and ate it with relish, clearly enjoying this second cookie in full view of his/her cookieless teammates.

I first heard of this experiment in a talk given by Michael Lewis, author of "Moneyball," "The Blind Side," and "The Big Short," among other books. He was speaking to the 2012 graduating class of his alma mater, Princeton University.

On one level, this experiment merely confirms the old adage that "power corrupts." But Lewis used the results of the experiment for a slightly different purpose and one that has implications for conflict resolution.

Lewis cautioned the graduates to remember that it is easy when one gets to a leadership position or to a position of authority to imagine one automatically deserves an extra "cookie." And that one, by dint of that position, no matter how lucky one may have been to arrive there, needn't find it necessary to share one's "cookies."

But we don't have to be in a leadership position to face this dilemma. By definition, our point of view is the only one we've got. It's easy from our vantage point to believe it's the only one there is and, therefore, deserving of extra "cookies."

As Dr. Keltner notes on his website, "opposing partisans tend to assume that they alone see the issues objectively and in principled fashion."

At the very least, if we're interested in living and working cooperatively, we should consider the implications of the choices we make about how to divide the cookies.

You can watch Lewis's 13-minute talk at:

There Is No Cause. There Is Only Effect

On August 27th, 2012, the New York Times published an interview with the mother of Jeffrey Johnson, the man who killed a coworker in front of the Empire State Building.

When asked why she thought he did it, the distraught woman was as baffled as the rest of us. Valiantly trying to answer the reporter's question, she attributed her son's behavior to a car accident that had put him into a coma when he was in the sixth grade, then suggested that it might have happened because Jeffrey was devastated when a beloved cat recently died in his arms.

When police investigators were asked about a motive for the shooting, they theorized that Jeffrey did it because he blamed Steven Ercolino, the man he killed, for his recent job loss.

Jeffrey's mother and the police were simply doing what we all do when tragedy strikes: We search for answers in an attempt to make sense of the senseless. Why did they do what they did? Why do we do what we do?

I'm reading a book called "What Is The What" about one of the "Lost Boys Of Sudan" who, along with thousands of other boys (and girls), became homeless and orphaned as a result of the most recent Civil War in Sudan (there have been others, but the Darfur genocide has made us particularly aware of this one).

Reading the book is like listening to the explanation for why Jeffrey Johnson killed Steven Ercolino. To explain the Sudanese Civil War, one must begin with, "Thousand of years ago, the tribes of Sudan...."

The explanation for why anyone kills anyone might similarly begin, "Starting with when his great, great grandparents first arrived in the country..." and even that doesn't go back far enough.

And just try to explain the causes for the famous Hatfield/McCoys family feud (I can't even explain the game show of the same name).

In other words, if we start looking for cause and effect, we must logically go back to the beginning of the Universe when the Big Bang led to the formation of the Earth, the creation of mammals, then human beings and, finally, Jeffrey Johnson at the Empire State Building.

Or consider the every day world of people we don't get along with. We search for reasons why they are they way they are and we review our interactions with them for clues. But the explanation for why any of us think what we think and do what we do must begin with the beginning of time.

This is not to excuse or condone violence in any form. We must do everything we can to be sure people are safe and that sometimes means using force to stop force.

But if we are to end the seemingly unending conflicts in our lives, we have to stop searching for causes to blame it on and, instead, commit to the phrase, "I'm responsible."

We are the way we are because we've chosen to be the way we are. Even though neuroscience, philosophy and psychology at least since Freud, all question the degree to which we freely choose our actions, believing that we do at least gives us the possibility of altering life on this planet for our children and for ourselves.

At the same time, recognizing our limited ability to freely choose, we can show empathy and compassion for those who are stuck in the paradigm of "I can't help myself." If I stop looking for causes and accept my responsibility, then I'm responsible for helping people who think they can't help themselves (and of course, sometimes they can't).