The Neurology of Conflict

The Neurology of Conflict 

 - Marcia Hughes & James Terrell

What happens to our brains when we “lose it”?  The new field of social neuroscience is discovering intriguing answers.  We now know we learn in part because of mirror neurons and that spindle cells build intuition and contribute to those instant judgments now referred to as thin slicing.  How do these and other brain functions affect our ability to be collaborative as we resolve conflict? In this article we’ll explore some of what we know about the brain and conflict and discuss effective conflict resolution strategies that come from people understanding their own predilections and then being able to manage their responses to achieve effective results.  The traits measured by personality profiles such as the MBTI, values surveys such as Spiral Dynamics, and skills assessments such as the EQi, Conflict Dynamic Profile or TKI, and team effectiveness such as the TESI point the way for improving our skillfulness as trainers and leaders in these critical areas.  The conscious intentional use of skills highlighted by these assessments together with the neutrality and communication strategies of mediation augment the trainer’s understanding of how to train effectively and the participants’ ability to understand how to manage their responses.  This discussion will briefly reference assessments while primarily focusing on understanding and responding effectively to conflict.

Core Concepts

1.    Count to 10 before you speak when upset:  This key concept is taught in kindergarten if not pre-school.  Now we know the neuro-biological reasons why this works.  Most people just need to know the principle and practice it.

2.    Amygdala hijack:  This concept was created by Dan Goleman and explains why counting to 10 or some other brief pause is essential before responding when one feels triggered. You can learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack

3.    Decision making and emotions:  Antonio Damasio has led our understanding that emotions affect decisions; pure rationale thought just isn’t possible.  This expands our ability to understand what triggers conflict as well as the necessary decision making components that build resolution. Damasio demonstrates in his 1994 book Descartes’ Error that “pure reason” that is free from emotion or personal bias is an illusion. Every image we conjure up in our mind has attached to it some emotional response and its associated feeling.

4.    Neurobiology Defined:  Neurobiology is the study of cells of the nervous system and the organization of these cells into functional circuits that process information and mediate behavior. It is a sub-discipline of both biology and neuroscience. Neurobiology differs from neuroscience, a much broader field that is concerned with any scientific study of the nervous system. Neurons are cells that are specialized to receive, propagate, and transmit electrochemical impulses. In the human brain alone, there are over a hundred billion neurons.

The success of the body, in fact its survival depends on its ability to receive information from the environment, interpret it accurately, and respond to it effectively. Unfortunately our neurobiology can work against us, for instance when we learn the “stress habit”– that is familiarize ourselves so much with the external cues of stress that we develop internal correlates that trigger the same kind of fear and anxiety as real life but now are due merely to imagination.

Applications: Goleman and Boyatzis in “Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership” (HBR, Spring 2011) discuss three critical aspects of brain biology – mirror neurons, spindle cells, and oscillators – and highlight how we can develop practical socially intelligent behaviors that expand on our neural power and our connections and influence with others.

• Mirror neurons: “The brain is peppered with neurons that mimic, or mirror, what another being does. . . [these] brain cells operate as neural Wi-Fi, allowing us to navigate our social world.  When we consciously or unconsciously detect someone else’s emotions through their actions, our mirror neurons reproduce those emotions.  Collectively, these neurons create an instant sense of shared experience.” (Goleman and Boyatzis, p 45).

We are wired to resonate with the behaviors which are modeled around us. This is infinitely more effective than verbal descriptions. Imagine learning to tie a shoe or ride a bike based on such instruction. In child development this principle is the source of the bonding between of her parents and infant, most specifically the mother.

• Spindle cells:  “Intuition is in the brain, produced in part by a class of neurons called spindle cells …. They have a body size about four times that of other brain cells, with an extra-long branch to make attaching to other cells easier and transmitting thoughts and feeling to them quicker.  This ultra-rapid connection of emotions, beliefs and judgments creates what behavioral scientists call our social guidance system.  Spindle cells trigger neural networks that come into play whenever we have to choose the best response among many…. These cells also help us gauge whether one is trustworthy and right (or wrong) for a job.  Within on- twentieth of a second, our spindle cells fire with information about how we feel about that person….thus leaders should not fear to act on those judgments, provided that they are also attuned to others’ moods. (p 46)
• Oscillators:  “… coordinate people physically by regulating how and when their bodies move together. … When two cellists play together. Not only do they hit their notes in unison, but thanks to oscillators, the two musicians’ right brain hemispheres are more closely coordinated than are the left and right sides of their individual brains.” (p. 46)
• Thin Slicing — As described by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink (2005) is the concept that we make instant judgments and very often stick with them.  These judgments can be accurate but in conflict resolution we guide people to broaden their lens and gather more data so new concepts and answers become available.

5.    Social Intelligence:  Social Intelligence (SI) is measured by your ability to persuade, influence, connect – in short to lead a meaningful life connecting with others and applying your skills to match your values. Defining Social Intelligence is tricky as it encompasses so much of what we express, of our world view, and our interpersonal values.  SI is definitely based in people skills.  And it’s much bigger as it encompasses our capacity to understand and exude our values in all dimensions of living. We define SI as:

Social Intelligence is the capacity to understand and respond effectively to the emotions, social cues and needs of others in a way that furthers our own values and demonstrates respect for others at the individual, team, organizational and global levels.

Thorndike originally coined the term Social Intelligence in 1920 and was referring to a person’s ability to understand and manage other people and to engage in adaptive social interactions.

6.    Manage Self:  This is one of the key sets of strategies for being the best you can be to resolve conflict.

o      Impulse Control – This is the most impactful EI skill according to thought leaders, Howard Book (2009) and Rich Handley (2009). Impulse control is managed by choosing time, tonality, content and demonstrating a listening engaging attitude.  Extroverts usually need to dial done their engagement; introverts need to dial it up.

o       Internal Talk – One good source for demonstrating the enormous consequence of our internal messaging is Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns (1980). By giving ourselves positive and patient feedback, we can then pass that on to others.  It can give us the pre-disposition to diffuse conflict instead of stir it up.

o      Competing responses – This behavior management tool could be used to diffuse responses likely to trigger conflict.  An example is training oneself to say “Let me think about it” with a neutral tone every time you are inclined to respond cynically to a co-worker. Installing this competitive response will convert the anxiety previously driving the self destructive response to an insignificant one

o      Optimism / Positivity – Extensive research is demonstrating the power of a positive attitude, such as believing a conflict can be solved.  It provides resourcefulness, reduces stress and supports creative thought in finding solutions.  Thought leaders include Martin Seligman (2002, 2011) and Barbara Fredrickson (2009).

o      Move towards, away, against – Humans have a few classic ways of responding and how we manage our habits and willingness to respond by being supportive, withdrawn or antagonistic strongly colors the nature of a potential or actual conflict.

Interventions

The purpose of our work at Collaborative Growth is to build sustainable behavior change for leaders, individuals and teams by expanding emotional and social intelligence skills.  We’re excited to incorporate the awareness of brain biology and to include the work of leaders and thinkers in social intelligence as we facilitate sustainable change.

Some other conflict resolution strategies that take advantage of this evolving wisdom:

1)    Quick and powerful

• Drop a pen (the time it takes to pick it up slows you down)
• Take a drink of water
• Walk around the block
• Stair therapy (go climb one or more sets of stairs)

2)    Build Reflective Awareness and Action

• To be effective we must embrace vulnerability without victimhood.  Reflective awareness with action based in taking responsibility can move people out of conflict.
• Strategies at the individual level are journal writing or taking brief notes.
• Strategies groups or teams can use requires the act of listening without commenting; and that is truly listening.  Discussion can occur after the full listening.
• The significant power of deliberate group discussions, twelve step groups, cancer healing groups, long term deliberate gatherings  – leadership groups, book clubs – requires discipline

3)    Act – Move — Engage

o      2% project – Develop a personally rewarding part of your life as described in Marcia’s Life’s 2% Solution

o      Exercise

o      Make a deliberate shift of manageable proportions to change one habit to another – e.g., being more or less assertive, empathetic, doubting.

4)    Trainer Led Exercises

o      Marcia Hughes and James Terrell have authored several books that provide strategies and exercises for resolving conflict including:  Emotional Intelligence in Action, 2^nd Ed. (2012), Developing Emotional Intelligence:  Exercises for Leaders and Teams (2010), The Handbook for Developing Emotional Intelligence (2009), A Facilitator’s Guide to Team Emotional and Social Intelligence, (2009), A Coach’s Guide to Emotional Intelligence (2008), The Emotionally Intelligent Team (2007), Life’s 2% Solution (2005).

Assessments

Some of the good ones are:

Personality: MBTI, Emergenetics, Disc, Hogan, Firo-B

Skills:  EQi, Conflict Dynamic Profile or TKI

Team Effectiveness and Skills: TESI

Values: Spiral Dynamics

Contact

Contact Marcia Hughes and James Terrell at Collaborative Growth for more information on how to use today’s learnings about neurology and conflict resolution to resolve conflict and build collaborative intelligence.

Take Your Team to the Oscars

The Help, Moneyball, and The Descendants – these Oscar nominated movies demonstrate ways of understanding team and individual emotional and social intelligence.  The Oscar nominated movies and some other great ones we highlight demonstrate interesting tips for team and individual awareness.  This is a great way to build team engagement and knowledge on how to improve skills.  It always helps to have a model so our discussion is organized around the Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey^® (TESI^®), which includes the seven key skills we’ve found teams need for building their ESI.

We list two movies for each of the 7 skill areas and discuss the first one.  We hope you’ll comment on our blog site and contribute to this fun learning opportunity for all of us!  We thank the many people involved in making these movies for the great entertainment and the remarkable ways in which your work teaches us.  We enjoyed the movies we are reviewing here and recommend them to you.

Team Identity:  The Help and Of Gods and Men

Team identity measures the level of pride each member feels for the team as a whole, and how much connection and belongingness members feel to the team.

The Help:  The team is composed of African-American maids in Jackson, Mississippi at the dawn of the civil rights movement. A plucky new college graduate who grew up there is horrified with the way her grown-up school chums relate to their maids. So she asks one to tell her story and eventually they all get involved, and what’s been going around for so long starts to come around at last.  The maids had always given each other emotional support; this project brought them together in an act of tremendous courage to have more of a sense of pride, possibility and certainly belongingness to their team.

Motivation:   Margin Call, Albert Nobbs

Motivation is a competency that measures the team’s internal resources for generating and sustaining the energy necessary to get the job done well and on time.

Margin Call: In this case the team is made up of professionals in a financial company who have just realized they are holding tens of millions of dollars worth of worthless stock.  They decide to sell it to their clients the next day in order to save the company. This is capitalism at its worst, and the few conscientious team members cannot change the self protection trend. At the end of the day the conscientious ones are unable to shift their corporate compliance habits, the result is disaster for the company’s investors.  This is a movie your team could see in order to strike up considerable discussion about appropriate motivation and to ask when do we stick with the pack and when do we break free?  It can be a great start to discussions about ethics and how to find win/win answers.

Emotional Awareness: I Am, Iron Lady

Emotional awareness measures how well team members pay attention to one another and demonstrate acceptance and value for one another.

I Am: Tom Shadyac, the highly successful movie director for Jim Carrey films such as Ace Ventura pet detective has everything and lives like it until he has a bike wreck and his life is in peril. He discovers that he’s gotten it all wrong as has everyone around him it seems, so he takes a film crew and begins asking knowledgeable people such as Desmond Tutu the Nobel laureate, Noam Chomsky the political theorist and Coleman Barks the poet and Rumi translator: “What’s wrong with our world?”and “What can we do about it?” Their answers are a consistent formula for living sustainably in relationship with each other and the environment.  Some of the key concepts in the film are: cooperation is in our DNA; the truth of who we are is we are because we belong, technology and the human narrative are beginning to come together; we are geared at a primordial level to feel what each other feels.

This is more a film about an individual leader than a team, but the ideas are ones the team can see and extrapolate concepts and values they want to notice and promote in one another.  Iron Lady is listed as the opposite of emotional awareness.  Margaret Thatcher is portrayed as paying primary attention to herself and unflinchingly adhering to the beliefs she developed as a child rather than learning and responding to new ideas and populations.

Communication:  We Bought a Zoo, Beginners

Communication provides information on how well team members listen, encourage participation, share information and discuss sensitive matters.

 We Bought A Zoo: This movie tells the story of a major attempt to start over after the death of a spouse and mother. The hurting family leaves their old house, old neighborhood, old school, old job and buys a house in the country that is home to over 40 species of animals and an unusual assortment of people who take care of the animals.  The team becomes the father, the zookeepers and the two children, all learning how to work together to get this challenging small business into start up mode and to turn a profit. The father is the team leader.  He is now the employer of the zookeepers, the food and shelter sponsor for the animals, and the source of love and guidance for 2 children. Most of the movie he’s afraid he’s just about to let everybody down but he keeps taking his own advice to his lovelorn son: “20 seconds of insane courage will deliver something totally magical.”  Fortunately it works and the results are as heartwarming as humorous.

Team members can pick up lots to talk about in terms of which zookeeper or other team member they most identify with and how the different personalities help promote or challenge team success.

Stress Tolerance:  HappyThankYouMorePlease, Moneyball

Stress tolerance measures how well the team understands the types of stress factors and manages the intensity impacting its members and the team as a whole.

HappyThankYouMorePlease:  This delightful film will reduce your stress just by watching it. When 9 or 10-year-old Rasheen gets left on a subway by mistake a group of 20 somethings come together like an ad hoc team on his behalf. He didn’t know his parents or how old he was and was not interested in any more help from social services, but he turned out to be a great teacher of love just as life was providing some great opportunities for practice for his young adult care takers. For example, a geeky guy wants to develop a relationship with a woman who can’t grow hair because of a medical condition. She doesn’t feel worthy of his adoration but tells her friend who found the boy “Let’s be people who deserve to be loved.”  Part of the lesson is for everyone to learn to feel loved.

This is a great film to show a team with generational differences.  It’s a heartwarming way to appreciate the generation entering the workforce.

Conflict Resolution: The Descendants and Of Gods and Men

Conflict resolution measures how willing the team is to engage in conflict openly and constructively without needing to get even.

Of Gods and Men: In March 1996, an Islamic terrorist group kidnapped seven French Trappist monks from their remote monastery in Tibhirine, Algeria. They were held for two months and then killed.  At the heart of this atrocity is a tale of heroic faith, steadfastness and love, captured in the sublime film “Of Gods and Men.” It is perhaps the best movie on Christian commitment ever made.  This is a powerful movie and one of the best released in 2011 about real team work. The monks made a very difficult choice in the face of certain danger to stay together, practice their faith and be with their Muslim community.

These men were not shy with each other, they got angry, they blamed, they acted like victims, they wept, they hid, and they each eventually realized that they were expressing these emotions in response, not to the people and the world around them, but rather in response to their perceptions and judgments of that world. This recognition is what enabled them to fully surrender their lives to the service they provided the local community, and receive the spiritual grace that sustained them through the ending of their time on earth.

Positive Mood:  Hugo, Midnight in Paris

Positive mood measures the positive attitude of the team in general as well as when it’s under pressure.

Hugo: This is an extraordinarily charming film about children and adults and how courage looks and feels and is practiced from both points of view. There are two small teams, one of children, one of adults.  Ultimately the two teams come together as one, but major challenges are faced first. It’s also a beautifully made movie.

Ask you team what elements of the movie help them have a sense of “can do” that they can bring back to their team.

Don’t forget – take your team to the movies.  Have fun and learn!

Can Virtual Teams Demonstrate Emotional & Social Intelligence?

by Marcia Hughes, Donna Dennis, James Terrell

When Manuel cut off Maria and implied her research was simplistic during the recent team webinar, most of the other team members checked out and started doing email.  Maria wiped a tear away and swore to herself that she wouldn’t risk participating again.  The Team Leader, who is a top notch engineer and is signed up for his first management training class next month, said nothing.  This interaction cost the team and the organization in terms of engagement, trust, and willingness to take risks with one another, yet nothing may ever be done about it.  Virtual teams face big challenges in being able to connect at an interpersonal level.  They are challenged with non-verbal communication, conflict resolution and forming a strong identity.  Virtual teams are likely to struggle more than other teams in using their brain biology support system of mirror neurons, spindle cells and oscillators, which Dan Goleman and Richard Boyatzis recently described as core to using social intelligence (Harvard Business Review OnPoint, Spring 2011).

Yet no matter how big the challenges virtual teams are proliferating. So what should a good leader and organization do?  Applying a team centered model to measure and build ESI (emotional and social intelligence) will provide the framework for understanding and proceeding successfully to build measurable team ESI skills.  First, let’s understand what we mean by ESI and by a virtual team.

ESI is a set of emotional and social skills that influence the way we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships, cope with challenges, and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way. 

 Another way to think about ESI is that it encompasses your ability to recognize and manage your own skills and to recognize and respond effectively to those of others. These skills, or their lack, are exhibited daily by individuals, leaders and teams.  The question is how well these engagement skills are demonstrated.  The answer is to have a deliberate process for expanding the skills the particular team needs.

Virtual teams are teams that are working from dispersed locations so that they do not have the opportunity to work together face to face frequently.

ESI challenges for virtual teams include:

• Developing emotional awareness of one another
• Resolving conflicts
• Developing trust
• Communications challenges prevail due to:
  • Confused or ignored commitments on response time to one another
  • Lack of visual and non-verbal cues
  • Often cultural and language differences
  • Lack of emotional and social tags that create a sense of connection
  • Relying on email to get work done

These challenges need to be taken seriously because they can cost the organization, team and individuals in many ways including through lessened engagement, decreased productivity, higher turnover, and missed creative opportunities.  Fortunately, these challenges can be addressed.  By using a solid model through which the team members are given a voice about their functioning as a team their ESI can measurably grow.

The model we explore using is the Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey® (TESI®), which is composed of seven scales that measure a team’s strengths or challenges.  The survey is an internal 360 on team performance as it results from team members responding confidentially to a survey about their team performance.  With the data in hand from the survey, the team can frankly discuss their strengths and opportunities as well as their different experiences of being on the team.  Best of all they can then create an action plan to support their development.  Later the team can retake the TESI and measure their progress, which will be depicted through a pre-post chart.

7 TESI Skills & Opportunities for Virtual Teams

Team Identity reflects how well the team connects with one another and demonstrates belongingness and pride in the team.  It also includes role and responsibility clarification. Virtual Teams can grow this skill by:

• Making agreements and keeping them- trust builds through keeping commitments in virtual teams
• Establishing communication agreements, e.g.  response time
• Clarifying roles & responsibilities
• Creating a logo or motto
• Naming themselves

Communication reflects how accurately the team members send and receive emotional and cognitive information.  It indicates how well they listen, encourage participation, share information and discuss sensitive matters.  Communication indicates the extent to which team members acknowledge contributions and give feedback to one another.  Trust must be built faster in virtual teams and if key components are not attended to early, the team is not likely to have the foundation it needs to get work done at a distance. Trust is initially built by making and keeping agreements.  Thus strong communication strategies will support the team in moving forward to experiencing trust beginning with trusting the communication process.  Virtual Teams can grow this skill by:

• Establishing a communication process with understood time commitments
• Practicing active listening virtually
• Setting up conversations in pairs – virtually have coffee or lunch
• Building reflective skills

Emotional awareness measures how sensitive and responsive team members are to each other’s feelings. Does the team value and respect negative as well as positive feelings? This scale measures the amount of attention the team pays to noticing, understanding, and respecting the feelings of its members.  Virtual Teams can grow this skill by:

• Taking a personality assessment and use the information, such as the MBTI or Emergenetics. Understanding work preferences will facilitate smoother interactions with team members.
• Working with the TESI to build understanding of preferences.
• Matching technology to task
• Telling stories about something that happened when working alone
• Asking questions and listening, checking out the accuracy of what is understood

Motivation is the competency that shows the team’s level of internal resources for generating and sustaining the energy necessary to get the job done well and on time.  It gives feedback on whether creative thinking is promoted and whether competition is working for or against the team.  Virtual Teams can grow this skill by:

• Setting stretch goals
• Intentionally reinforce what works
• Catch each other succeeding and talk about it- make sure team members know this is a part of what they need to do as well

Stress Tolerance is a measure of how well the team understands the types and intensity of the stress factors impacting its members and the team as a whole.  It addresses whether team members feel safe with one another, and if they will step in if someone on the team needs help. Stress tolerance reflects the level of work/life balance that the team is able to achieve including its ability to manage workload expectations.  Virtual Teams can grow this skill by:

• Talking about a non-work joy
• Agreeing to all go for a walk at the same time
• Getting up and stretch during the virtual session

Conflict resolution scores show how willing the team is to engage in conflict openly and constructively without needing to get even.  It measures the ability to be flexible and to respond to challenging situations without blaming one another.  Virtual Teams can grow this skill by:

• Expanding dispute resolution skills
• Pacing one another
• Practicing paying attention

Positive Mood reflects the positive attitude of the team in general as well as when the team is under pressure.  Positive mood scores indicate the members’ willingness to provide encouragement, their sense of humor, and how successful the team expects to be.  It is a major support for a team’s flexibility and resilience.  Virtual Teams can grow this skill by:

• Going to the movies together (in different cities)
• Supporting team members in setting up a time for two to use Skype or an equivalent and have a drink together, be it coffee or…
• Making a big and consistent deal of celebrating successes!

There are many resources that will support your ability to use these resources.  Attend or watch our webinar on this topic, our books Developing Emotional Intelligence:  Exercises for Leaders and Teams, The Handbook for Developing Emotional Intelligence, A Facilitator’s Guide to Team Emotional and Social Intelligence, A Coach’s Guide to Emotional Intelligence, The Emotionally Intelligent Team, and Emotional Intelligence in Action, Second Edition.

We welcome your contacting us for more information.

A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

Now is the time to live our intention to be the finest people we can be. Two public shootings occurred this week in states near our home in Colorado.  West of us in Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot while she spoke to her constituents in a simple public setting outside a grocery store. The Democratic lawmaker was doing the best work our politicians do; she was meeting with her constituents.  Chief Judge John Roll of the U.S. District Court for Arizona was killed as were others and many were wounded.  To the east of us in Omaha, Nebraska Millard South High School Vice Principal, Vicki Kaspar, was killed and Principal Case was injured in a shooting at the school by a student, Robert Butler. Acts of violence and tragedy are being experienced worldwide.

How shall we respond?

• Listen with the ears of our heart.  Focus first on the quality of what is said rather than letting the relationship be objectified.  Our messages to and from one another matter.
• Be forgiving.  Forgiveness is the process of repair, healing, making whole again, it is the opposite of retribution.  Omaha students are designing T-shirts printed in school colors to raise money for the three parties most affected by the tragedy, including Butler’s family. This is an example of forgiveness in action, and it is the only way to heal.
• Recognize and acknowledge our essential connection with one another.  Research is showing our species thrived not because of ruthless competition but its remarkable ability to cooperate.  Try saying to yourself when you encounter anyone: “In love I am one with you.”  Just try it and see what happens.
• Explore the truth and implications of the ancient Mayan statement “en la k’etch, which translates as” – You are another myself.
• Calm yourself.  Whether you meditate, pray, walk or use another strategy, be intentional about taking dedicated time to calm and center yourself as you move beyond stress to connect with your truth.

Developing emotional and social intelligence (ESI) is the focus of our work.  We’ve written seven books providing specific strategies for making a sustainable difference in the quality of the lives of individuals, leaders, teams and organizations by expanding ESI.  This is how to mitigate and prevent the conflict that escalates to violence when we treat each other carelessly.  We’ve worked with people on six continents and are blessed in the many ways we have been touched and taught by people worldwide. The heart of our work is coaching people to expand their compassionate truth telling with themselves and with one another.  While we offer many formats for engaging in this vital path, in truth employing the five simple and profound steps listed above will accomplish all that is needed.

Paul Simon wrote Bridge Over Troubled Waters in 1969 and Simon and Garfunkel released it in 1970. At that time in the United States, where we live, people were deeply troubled over the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement was growing, on May 4, 1970 four Kent State University student demonstrators were killed and nine more were wounded deeply shocking our nation.  It was a time of deep challenge and this beautiful song touched our hearts, minds and souls. Simon and Garfunkel sang:

When you’re weary, feeling small
When tears are in your eyes,
I will dry them all
I’m on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can’t be found

Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

©1970 Simon and Garfunkel

This song is perhaps one of the most profound expressions of empathy ever written in English.  It acknowledges that a great deal of our human adventure is still fraught with disappointment, loss and sorrow.  It volunteers to be consciously present in those times providing strength and companionship to help us get through them.  Empathy is the ESI skill most critical to understanding what others are requesting and why they are making the request.  When we take time to understand the heart of the message, it becomes much easier to respond to those needs and desires and to avoid the kinds of conflict that is certain to result from ignoring the true request.

Thank you Simon and Garfunkel.  Thank you to all who are willing to slow down, listen with the ears of your heart and know that communication matters.  Thanks to those who go beyond fear and the belief in separation to know and assert with your whole self to all beings on this planet “In love I am one with you.”  Thank you to those willing to be taught by the ancient Mayans and so many other cultures that “I am another yourself.”  Thanks to all who stop in the midst of the chaos, the demand for social media interactions, the busyness and expectations to be still, breathe and send peace to yourself and one another.

Thanks to all our friends and colleagues for the privilege of communicating and working with you.

Teambuilding with Emotional Intelligence Competencies

Conflict Resolution Team Competency

To exercise conflict resolution skills well, teams need to create the capacity to embrace divergent thinking, engage creatively and then coalesce around a common decision.  The competency of a team resolving conflict is implemented by a collection of team and individual skills.  At the team level they need team identity, emotional awareness, the ability to communicate well, stress tolerance skills, and a positive mood.  Individuals on the team also need individual emotional intelligence skills in self regard, assertiveness, empathy, reality testing, impulse control and optimism.  While every team needs all of these skills to resolve conflict, different teams will need a different balance of those skills.  Depending on the culture of the organization that houses the team and the socio-political environment in which they operate there will be different emphasis on how conflict is addressed.  For people who serve on many teams, success requires the ability to dial those skills up and down based on the specific situation.

Let’s take a look at a strategic approach for developing conflict resolution skills for a team.  Figure 2 shows the skills needed at each of the three levels we have discussed.   To apply this strategy the organization would:

1)  Identify that they value teams being able to resolve conflict well resulting in establishing conflict resolution skills as a team competency.

2)  Identify the emotional intelligence skills at the team and individual levels needed to support success in resolving conflict. (Remember there are other factors at play in addition to EI skills, such as sufficient information and resources and take those into account as appropriate.)  The EI skills needed are: By the team: team identity, emotional awareness, the ability to communicate well, stress tolerance skills, and positive mood.  By the individuals: self-regard, assertiveness, empathy, reality testing, impulse control and optimism.  Together these skills need to support the ability to engage in divergent thinking and then move to convergent thinking where all rally around the final decision.