250. How to Navigate Conflict: Tools For Productive Communication

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: The biggest fight my wife and I have ever had was over toothpaste. Picture this, my wife and I are newly married and excited to start our life together. We spent a lot of time discussing and coming to agreement on the big things, having children in the future, our political ideas, where to spend the holidays. So imagine my surprise when I was summoned to the bathroom where my wife was angrily holding our shared tube of toothpaste. Her gaze immediately told me that this was serious and I was in trouble. You see, my wife's a roller and I'm a squeezer, and nothing is more irritating to a fastidious roller than a smashed up randomly squeezed tube of toothpaste.

[00:00:42] Welcome to Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. I'm Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Today is a special day. It's our 250th episode. We've put together a very special episode just for you, and it's going to sound a little different. You'll hear a few more voices, a little more storytelling than usual, plus some music and sound design too. We're celebrating by digging into the Think Fast Talk Smart archives. We've compiled some of the best expert advice on one of the hardest things we face in life: conflict. We face it at work, at home, and sometimes even with friends and complete strangers. It seems like the closer we get to someone, the more conflict we face. But here's the really interesting thing about conflict. Conflict isn't bad. In fact, we need it. 

[00:01:35] Amy Gallo: While our natural human instinct is to avoid conflict because of course we are hardwired for likability and we see conflict as a potential rupture in our relationship. Conflicts are not only inevitable part of interacting with other humans, but they're a necessary part.

[00:01:53] Matt Abrahams: That was Amy Gallo. She's the author of Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone, Even Difficult People. She also wrote the Harvard Business Reviews Guide to Dealing With Conflict and has been the co-host of HBR's Women at Work Podcast. 

[00:02:07] Amy Gallo: There's lots of research that shows that conflict leads to better work outcomes, stronger relationships, and of course, that depends on navigating the conflict in a professional, productive, relational way with compassion and caring. But when done well, conflict has a whole host of good outcomes, and I think we actually should be spending more time, not trying to eliminate conflict, but trying to create the right kinds of conflict. 

[00:02:34] Matt Abrahams: So what are the right kinds of conflict and how do we move away from conflict that's destructive to our relationships and toward conflict that will make us closer.

[00:02:44] Amy Gallo: The idea is not to eliminate conflict, even if we feel like it's unhealthy, but it's to try to transform it into something more productive. 'Cause usually even at the base of those unhealthy conflicts or those unproductive conflicts is something that needs to be resolved. 

[00:03:00] Matt Abrahams: Transforming, conflict into a productive resolution. Where can I get more of that? We've talked a lot about difficult conversations on Think Fast Talk Smart. What was interesting as we went through our past episodes to find the best tips on dealing with conflict is that they all had a common theme. Resolving conflict is much less about the other person and much more about us.

[00:03:22] Jenn Wynn: What makes a conversation difficult is much less the topic and much more the inner experience that each person is having. What you're thinking and feeling, but not saying out loud. 

[00:03:33] Matt Abrahams: That was Jenn Wynn, an award-winning professor and the former Director of Education at the Obama Foundation. Jen also hosts the podcast, The H.I. Note: Healing Inspirations from Life, where she has conversations with people about some of the most difficult moments of their lives.

[00:03:50] Jenn Wynn: Your nervous system goes with you into every single difficult conversation. So if you can pause and regulate your nervous system, then you're gonna be a better version of yourself at the time when you most need to be the best version of yourself. And at the end of the day, the goal is to move away from emotional reactivity towards choice. I wanna choose the better, more strategic path, not the reaction that came out of an emotional trigger. 

[00:04:18] Matt Abrahams: Sometimes I find myself thinking about healthy conflict as a house I'm building. I tell myself, if I can just lay the right foundation and choose the right materials, I'll be set for life. But conflict is less like building a house and more like pitching a tent. The more we use it, the easier it is to remember exactly how we put it together. The weather, or how level the ground is, or how many rocks or trees we're working around, all affect how successful we'll be at securing a safe, comfortable campsite. Just like surveying the ground and weather is the first step for setting up our campsite, tuning into how we're feeling is the foundation for a healthy conflict. 

[00:04:55] Jenn Wynn: I tell my students, if you only remember one framework from this entire course, please remember self-awareness, pause, reframe. 

[00:05:04] Matt Abrahams: Self-awareness, pause, reframe. Let's break that down. First, self-awareness. 

[00:05:11] Jenn Wynn: Am I aware of my physical cues, my cognitive and emotional cues that let me know I'm triggered? So for me, I get a lump in my throat or like a tightness in my chest. Some people get, uh, butterflies in their stomach. What's my tell sign, right? And once I know that, the moment I see it, I know I've gotta pause. So a go-to pause technique for me is to imagine myself with my best friend Carla. Then I'm at ease. I'm centered, and that is our goal, that we lead these conversations to a productive outcome, both for the content, the matter at hand, and for the relationship. 

[00:05:51] Matt Abrahams: Once we've had a chance to survey the situation and notice how we feel, and then pause and calm down our nervous system, the final step in this framework is to reframe.

[00:06:00] Jenn Wynn: So that last step, reframe, is where I actually shift away from viewing this conversation as a threat to something I care about and instead perceiving it as a learning opportunity. What good information can I get out of this? 

[00:06:16] Matt Abrahams: Reframing the conversation so that we can see it as a learning opportunity makes a huge difference in how we show up. This is something Amy talked about too. 

[00:06:25] Amy Gallo: Conflict is often seen as a threat. When that happens, we become naturally narcissistic and we become focused on, what do I wanna say? What do I wanna do? We don't think about the other person. 

[00:06:36] Matt Abrahams: Thinking back to the toothpaste conflict, it might have helped me if I'd taken a moment to follow Jenn's framework, self-awareness, pause, reframe. Just that quick check-in probably would've changed my stance going into this challenging conversation and made me more curious about how this conflict might be a good opportunity to get to know my wife better. And it turns out curiosity is key to any difficult conversation. 

[00:07:03] Amy Gallo: The very first step is to think strategically, what's going on with that other person? What's motivating them? What do they care about? What would be a rational reason that they're behaving this way? And that's gonna give you some cues as to how to navigate this not so healthy conflict. Put yourself in their shoes just for a few minutes. 

[00:07:21] Matt Abrahams: What is it that my wife really cares about when she asks me to roll the toothpaste tube from the bottom instead of squishing it like Play-Doh? Maybe she's more motivated by order and consistency than I am. Maybe she's constantly having to overlook annoying behaviors from her colleagues at work. And having one more irritation at home in her safe space just puts her over the edge. Even if I'm wrong about my guesses, just imagining where she's coming from makes me more compassionate.

[00:07:50] Amy Gallo: Then you wanna think about what are we actually disagreeing about? Are we disagreeing about status? Who actually gets to make the call? Really try to understand. 

[00:07:59] Matt Abrahams: For me, squeezing the toothpaste tube isn't a big deal. In fact, it makes me feel powerful and it's fun. But for her, it was a sign that I wasn't really listening to her, which made her feel disrespected. The argument really wasn't about toothpaste at all. It was about listening and communicating my respect for her. 

[00:08:20] Amy Gallo: Then the third step is to think about your goal. What is it that I actually want to achieve? You might be tempted to have a short-term goal, like I just wanna prove I'm right and he's wrong. Not helpful, right? What's your long-term goal? What is it that you need to get this project done on time? Is it that you wanna preserve your relationship with the other person? Whatever it is, focus on that. 

[00:08:42] Matt Abrahams: When my wife called me into the bathroom, I got defensive. I started trying to prove what a great husband I was, but focusing on the short-term goal of winning that argument made both of us losers. A better goal, the real goal, once I stopped to think about it, was to live in harmony with my new wife and make sure she knew how much I loved her. I married her because she's my favorite person in the world. She makes me better. When I think about it like that, it seems ridiculous to let a tube of toothpaste come between us.

[00:09:14] Amy Gallo: And with that information, what you know about the other person, what you know you're disagreeing about, what your goal is, you then make a decision about how to proceed. We often act rashly because we're sort of activated from the conflict, but you have to really be thoughtful. Does it make sense to sit down and talk this through? Who else might need to be in the room? Should I have a phone call? Should I do a Zoom meeting? Whatever it is, think through what's the best way to set up this conversation for success. 

[00:09:44] Matt Abrahams: There's one more element we need to consider when we're preparing for hard conversations, one that we might not even be able to see even after going through Jenn's framework and Amy's questions.

[00:09:54] Julia Minson: There's a lot of advice out there, both in the academic literature and in the practitioner literature, that says to navigate disagreement better, you need to be curious about the other person's point of view. 

[00:10:10] Matt Abrahams: That's Julia Minson, a professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a decision scientist who studies the psychology of disagreement.

[00:10:18] Julia Minson: The problem is people think they're already doing it. 

[00:10:22] Matt Abrahams: We often think we're being curious, but we don't show it. 

[00:10:26] Julia Minson: So a lot of the work we've been doing as a consequence of that research is saying, let's stop telling people to feel curious and let's start telling people to act curious. 

[00:10:40] Matt Abrahams: Julia told me about a fascinating study where participants had to start and end their arguments with the words, I'd like to learn about your perspective.

[00:10:49] Julia Minson: We ask participants in a study to make an argument on a topic, and then we ask them to write a paragraph about what their point of view is. We then take that paragraph and then we stick two sentences on the beginning and two sentences on the end. And the sentences say something like, I understand this is a really complicated topic and I would love to understand your point of view. And then their own paragraph comes after that, right? I believe blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And at the end we say, but I get that some people might disagree and I would like to learn about your perspective.

[00:11:29] So we didn't change anything about the person's argument. We just slapped two sentences on the beginning, on the end that use very simple language to say, I want to learn about your perspective. And what we find is massive effects on how reasonable and thoughtful and pleasant the original speaker is relative to their own words, which was the same exact argument, just without this expression of willingness to learn, on the beginning and on the end. 

[00:12:00] Matt Abrahams: In other words, just saying the words, I'd like to learn about your perspective, makes a difference. But what about the part in between where we actually need to have that hard conversation?

[00:12:12] Julia Minson: We use a framework that we call HEAR. So H-E-A-R. Hedging, emphasizing agreement, acknowledging the opposing view, and reframing to the positive. The H in HEAR stands for hedging, so it's words like sometimes, occasionally, some people, words that introduce uncertainty. 

[00:12:37] Matt Abrahams: With the toothpaste incident, I might have hedged by saying something like, sometimes I forget how important order is to you, and I'm guessing there have been many times when you've forgiven me for my messiness.

[00:12:49] Julia Minson: The E stands for emphasizing agreement, and the idea here is that even if we disagree dramatically about the thing we're discussing, there are some things we agree on. 

[00:13:03] Matt Abrahams: I might have said something like, I know it's important for both of us that our house feels like a place where we can rest and feel at home, and that neither of us wants to nag each other over little things.

[00:13:16] Julia Minson: The A for acknowledgement is using your own words to show that you have heard the other person. And I like to make a little bit of a disclaimer around the A, because there's a good way to do it and there's a bad way to do it. The bad way is to say, I hear you, and then you move on to making your own point. The good way is that you have to demonstrate what you heard. 

[00:13:41] Matt Abrahams: It's easy to say, I hear you when you ask me to roll the toothpaste instead of squeeze it. But demonstrating I heard my wife's request requires me to get deeper, to what's really bothering her. What I finally came up with was this, when you asked me to roll the toothpaste, I hear you asking me to do something small that will make you feel heard and respected.

[00:14:03] Julia Minson: And then the R in HEAR stands for reframing to the positive. So instead of saying, I completely disagree that blah, blah, blah, you could say, I think blah, blah, blah. You can make the same exact point in the positive frame instead of the negative frame, so it doesn't spiral into negativity as quickly. So H-E-A-R. Hedging, emphasizing agreement, acknowledging the opposing view, and reframing to the positive. 

[00:14:34] Matt Abrahams: So we've got Jenn's framework to help us check in with ourselves once we're aware that conflict is coming. Self-assessment, pause, and reframe. Amy's four questions help us to shift the focus off of us and get curious about the other person. One, what's a rational reason this person might be acting this way? Two, what are we really disagreeing about? Three, what's the goal of this conversation? Four, what's the best way to proceed? Then we can use Julia's HEAR framework to help us actually have the conversation.

[00:15:09] Thinking about these three tools together makes me wanna shift metaphors. It's got me thinking about conflict, not as a tent, but as a stone. When you drop a pebble in the water, waves ripple out in circles. The first circle is checking in with ourselves. The next ripple out is thinking about the other person and where they're coming from. Then we can use HEAR to navigate the third ripple, the actual conversation. There's another ripple that came out in our conversation and it's one that might surprise you. 

[00:15:39] Julia Minson: The willingness to come across as little foolish.

[00:15:43] Jenn Wynn: A real humble attempt to say, this is my summary of what I think you experienced, but is that right? Fix what I'm missing. Is it half right? And I missed the other half.

[00:15:54] Matt Abrahams: Paraphrasing what we think we heard the other person say, and having the humility to admit we might have gotten it wrong. 

[00:16:00] Julia Minson: You know, showing vulnerability or saying, I'm sorry, that's not what I meant to say. Let me try again. 

[00:16:07] Amy Gallo: Saying I don't know what the best answer is, and this is why I'm doing what I'm doing, and I'm a real person who's struggling.

[00:16:14] Julia Minson: Giving yourself the chance to admit imperfection, so you can do better. 

[00:16:22] Jenn Wynn: Once we can paraphrase, this is a skill that, honestly, I think it's like punching above its weight. After I've taken all this time to really ask these open, thoughtful questions, get curious, understand your perspective, make sure you show the person that you are internalizing what they said.

[00:16:40] Matt Abrahams: Thinking back to the toothpaste incident again, I could have said something like, I really wanna understand where you're coming from. It seems like I'm not doing a good enough job showing you that I'm listening to you and making you feel respected. Is that right? Or is there something I'm still not understanding? I really want to understand your perspective because the last thing I want to do is to have you feel like I'm not listening or respecting you. We might be tempted at this point to rush into a difficult conversation now that we've done all of our great self-reflection, and thought through our goals and how to achieve them. But there's one last ripple, a step we often skip that can make all the difference. 

[00:17:19] Jenn Wynn: Practice. At the end of the day, the goal is not perfection. It doesn't exist. The goal is continual improvement. I wanna keep getting better and better. And so the way to do that, of course, like any muscle building activity is practice. And as we continue to have more and more repetition, right, as we build in the reps, we're not only gonna build the muscle, which feels good. But then it's gonna be ready for us to flex when the moment counts. When we're in the most consequential conversation, we will have already built up those great question asking muscles, those great paraphrasing muscles, those great intention stating muscles and so on and so forth. So, practice, practice, practice, and make it a little more challenging each time along the way. 

[00:18:07] Matt Abrahams: Listening back to these conversations with Amy, Jenn, and Julia, I'm struck by how much focus there is on what happens before the difficult conversation even starts. But what if we do all that and then we get into the actual conversation and it doesn't go the way we were hoping?

[00:18:23] Joseph Grenny: What's difficult in crucial conversations is oftentimes our motives shift to debating or defending without us even being aware of it.

[00:18:31] Matt Abrahams: That's Joseph Grenny, a renowned speaker and bestselling author. His work focuses on how individuals and organizations can improve communication, influence, behavior, and drive change.

[00:18:43] Joseph Grenny: People will tell you, you're being defensive. No, I'm not being defensive. It looks like to them you're being defensive. I came in with a motive of problem solving, but pretty soon I got ego invested and oftentimes we're not self-aware that that has actually occurred.

[00:18:57] Matt Abrahams: This one hit home for me. In my conversation with my wife, I was already feeling criticized and defensive, and then my ego took over because I wanted to prove that squeezing toothpaste didn't make me lazy or inconsiderate. But there's good news here. If we can notice that our motives have shifted and we just want to win the argument, we have an opportunity to shift the conversation. 

[00:19:21] Joseph Grenny: People who are really good at these moments learned to look for signals. Sometimes it's just something I feel in my body. I've come to know that when my jaws are tight and when my shoulders are clenched and I'm leaning forward and I'm talking faster, that's a sign my motives have shifted. I no longer want what I originally wanted. I now want something else. I wanna punish, I want to win, I want to be right. The two most potent ways of shifting back, of getting to dialogue, are asking two questions. First, what am I acting like I want. You can do this covertly.

[00:19:54] This can be an internal dialogue. And I gotta tell you, Matt, at least for me, it's an ego enema. When in that moment I acknowledge to myself, no, this is about punishing. You said something I didn't like, I'm feeling hurt, and that that was unjust, and I'm actually trying to hurt you right now. Just acknowledging that to myself makes me not want it anymore. Because most of us don't like the dissonance of thinking of ourselves as a decent human being, but then acknowledging that we've got motives that are not particularly pretty.

[00:20:25] Matt Abrahams: Once we've asked ourselves what we're acting like we want, the second question is to ask, what do I really want?

[00:20:33] Joseph Grenny: What do I really want for me? What do I really want for you, Matt? What do I really want for the relationship? What happens is the short term impulsive motives that often possess us in these moments, we start to be liberated of those and asking the really want question orients us towards longer term goals, some of the deeper interests that we have. Just acknowledging that to myself shifts my mode. My behavior starts to change. When your motive changes behavior follows naturally. And we tend to talk more patiently, more respectfully, more openly towards others. So even without a lot of training in crucial conversation skills, just getting your motive back on track can make an enormous difference in how you show up.

[00:21:15] Matt Abrahams: Let's bring it all together one last time. First, use self-awareness, pause, reframe to check in with ourselves. If the conflict is the pebble we throw in the water, checking in with ourselves is the first ripple. The next ripple is to get curious about the other person and ask ourselves four questions. What's a rational reason this person might be acting this way? What are we really disagreeing about? What's the goal of this conversation? And what's the best way to proceed? The third ripple is to practice the conversation by using HEAR, H-E-A-R. Hedging, emphasizing agreement, acknowledgement, and reframing towards the positive.

[00:21:58] If you don't have someone to practice with, try recording your conversation in a voice memo on your phone. You can even feed it into your favorite AI tool to anticipate how the other person might respond, and then practice using the tools in this episode to paraphrase what they've said and make sure they feel heard and understood. Finally, if we're in a difficult conversation and it's not going well, stop to notice how we're feeling in our bodies. Then ask, what am I acting like I want? Revenge? Making the other person feel bad? Once we've gotten that ego enema, we're in a much better place to ask, what do I really want? And remind ourselves of the importance of the relationship and what really matters.

[00:22:41] Jenn Wynn: Often when we don't have the conversation, it's because we assume it will go poorly. So we give up before we've even started. But here's the thing. Most things that we want in life are on the other side of a difficult conversation. So are you just going to give up on your biggest dreams in life because you weren't willing to take the time to step outta your comfort zone and practice a skill? Communication is a set of skills, learnable, growable skills. And difficult communication is a set of hard, but worth it, skills. 

[00:23:15] Joseph Grenny: The world will get better to the degree we start seeing more examples of people that have learned to say the truth and to say it in a way that is inclusive and is inviting. You don't just get better at it by accident. And the really important thing for people to understand during crucial conversations is the emotion you feel is far more subject to your control and influence than you realize. 

[00:23:38] Matt Abrahams: Eventually, my wife and I did have that difficult conversation, not just about toothpaste, but about how I could communicate more clearly with her that I respect her and show her I'm listening when she asks for something. To this day, we have two tubes of toothpaste in our bathroom. One neatly rolled in, one aggressively squeezed. As an epilogue, there was a time when my younger son got upset with my wife and having heard this story many times about our toothpaste troubles, he ran into the bathroom and squeezed her toothpaste just to make a point.

[00:24:13] Thank you for joining us for this 250th episode of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. To hear more episodes about conflict and navigating difficult conversations, check out our show notes. This episode was produced by Laura Joyce Davis, Katherine Reed, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our theme music is from Floyd Wonder. Additional music from this episode came from Blue Dot Sessions and is listed in our show notes. With special thanks to Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. And check out fastersmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our Think Fast Talk Smart Learning Community, where you can join a global community of people interested in honing and developing their communication and career skills. You get access to asynchronous lessons, an AI coach, quests and challenges, and much more. Join us at fastersmarter.io/learning. That is fastersmarter.io/learning.