Episode 227 Transcript:

0:00:00 Ramona Shaw: Welcome to this episode. We’re going to talk about how to embrace opposition when we receive pushback, when things get hurt, when we feel like we’re in conflict, how do we actually embrace that and see the good in it so that we’re not getting defensive or hold back and have internal emotional turmoil or self doubt when we’re faced with opposition? That’s a really important skill to learn. We’re going to talk about all of that in this episode.

0:00:28 Ramona Shaw: How do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role, build the confidence and competence to lead your team successfully and establish yourself as a respected and trusted leader across the organization? Welcome to The Manager Track podcast. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw. I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is not seen as a source of stress and dread, but as a source of contribution, connection and fulfillment.

0:00:52 Ramona Shaw: This transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead so everyone wins and grows. In the show, you learn how to think, communicate, and act as the confident and competent leader you know you can be.

0:01:06 Ramona Shaw: Welcome to The Manager Track podcast. This episode, as I said in the introduction, is about embracing opposition, and I’ve had to learn a lot of skills in my adult life. The last ten years or so have been really shaping and forming in terms of my life skills and things that I recognize are so important, but I haven’t really paid attention to in the younger version of myself. Embracing opposition is one of those I have a tendency to want to avoid conflict.

0:01:41 Ramona Shaw: So I’ve developed over the years many different strategies on how to do so. If you can relate to this, you know that you have strategies you have developed over the years to ensure that conflict only comes when it really, really pushes your button and everything that kind of is not that important or are things you can navigate or maneuver around, you’ll find ways to do so. I used to do this not all the time. There are differently different areas in my life where I was less conflict avoidant than in other areas. But what I’ve come to learn is the cost of avoiding conflict, and it’s a very hefty price tag.

0:02:22 Ramona Shaw: And for me, one step was I had to acknowledge the awareness that this is what I’m doing and this is what it creates. So that’s step one. In anything that we do and want to improve on, we have to first recognize that we’re doing it, and we have to recognize the cause of the impact of this. And we probably have to agree that this behavior or tactic isn’t creating the results we want. If we don’t care about the result, then the awareness is nice to have, but it doesn’t do much because we’re not going to change.

0:02:54 Ramona Shaw: So having the awareness, understanding that price tag is too high. I got to learn this skill. And then it’s all about finding these moments when this instinct of withholding and not doing well with conflict shows up. And in those moments, you make the switch and recognize, ah, I have to lean into it and lean into the discomfort. So that’s over. I want to say, yeah, last ten years or so, it’s definitely been a piece of work and I still feel I have more work to do.

0:03:24 Ramona Shaw: It may be a lifelong endeavor to get good with embracing opposition, especially for me as the business owner. The work that I do is seeking out opposition because I know that adds value to it and helps us progress our ways of thinking. So that part of opposition versus conflict is something that I’ve definitely been able to embrace a lot more. But it took work. And before I digress more about my story around conflict and opposition.

0:03:54 Ramona Shaw: In this episode, I want to cover not only why we tend to avoid opposition or conflict, what happens when we do this? What benefits are we missing when we aren’t leaning into it? As well as the actual strategies or the actual tactical things that you and I and everyone can do in order to embrace opposition in an effective, constructive way? Let’s start off with the reasons for avoiding conflict. I encourage you to be self reflective instead of saying, I have no problem with conflict.

0:04:32 Ramona Shaw: Think about the different areas of your life beyond just work and look at. Okay, I can see how I sometimes do this. And if you really can’t relate to this topic at all, then most definitely there’s something here for you about the people on your team who might be avoiding conflict or aren’t able to embrace opposition. And so you understanding what we’re going to talk about here is going to help you coach them and support them.

0:04:59 Ramona Shaw: Okay, reasons why we avoid conflict there’s for sure the fear of repercussions. So when we worry that engaging in conflict conflict could lead to negative consequences, such as damaging reputation, or being seen as uncooperative, or sometimes even feeling like we’re risking our job or job security. The second one is the desire to maintain a relationship, prioritizing harmony and wanting to preserve a positive relationship with colleagues or separate bucket personal relationships.

0:05:34 Ramona Shaw: We fear that when we have conflict, we might lose that positive relationship beginning and it can turn into animosity. That’s the second one. Third one, lack of confidence. When we feel uncertain about our own ability to handle the conflict effectively, then we may not have the confidence to express our views or stand up for ourselves in confrontation. I just had an example like this recently in my personal life where I noticed how much more confident I felt about my ability to show up in the conflict in an effective way, even if I was going to make mistakes.

0:06:16 Ramona Shaw: I’m going to get through this and we’re going to be better on the other side, even if it takes time, even if there’s some stumbling blocks along the way. But when we don’t have that confidence and we don’t have a track record of getting through conflict, opposition, then that may totally get in the way. Another one that may hold us back for avoiding conflict or really having an issue with facing opposition. And I want to make a side note here. When I talk about conflict, it’s unhealthy. It’s on a personal level where we feel emotionally involved in it.

0:06:50 Ramona Shaw: Opposition is just someone else’s sharing their opposing view. We can still have a constructive dialogue because we’re less emotionally attached or we don’t feel like our personal relationship is at stake. Oftentimes people think they are engaging in opposition while someone who’s part of that group actually sees it as conflict. They’re two different things, but I’m bundling them a little bit here in looking at the reasons because they’re so tightly connected.

0:07:20 Ramona Shaw: Fear of repercussion. Desire to maintain a relationship, the lack of confidence. Now let’s talk about personal values. In some cultures, we might have been taught that conflict is something that we need to avoid and that we have to seek consensus. And that disagreement are inherently negative, especially if that happens between different levels of hierarchy or authority. That can most definitely hold us back because we believe we’re not entitled or we don’t have the mandate, or it would be disrespected if we were to oppose someone of higher status or with higher authority.

0:07:59 Ramona Shaw: And that can come from personal values and it can come from cultural values. The next one is a fear of escalation. So when we worry that a small disagreement could escalate into a much larger conflict, often I find this happens when we notice there’s a bit of a disagreement. We also notice or sense that the disagreement in itself I could handle. But I’m realizing that I’m responding to it a little bit more emotional because this has been in the making. There have been a lot of small incidents that I haven’t addressed.

0:08:32 Ramona Shaw: Now there’s another small incident but the water is starting to spill over. If I erase this, I might get to the place where I’m going to share all of it, and I’m going to share my resentment and frustration that has been piling up, but I haven’t shared so far. That’s another common one. Or then we have a desire for efficiency. I have found myself more often in this place where conflict just seems time consuming and emotionally draining, especially when we’re already running on thin ice, or feel like we’re totally at or over our capacity emotionally, or from time management perspective, or both their energy perspective.

0:09:12 Ramona Shaw: And then we think about engaging in a conflict and we just feel like, I don’t have it in me, I can’t. And so I’m just going to let it go because I have. I’m not going to be able to deal with that as well. We turn our heads and we look away. It can also be that we think, especially as we’re managing something, that if we engage in conflict, it could slow down the progress of project or of work. And if we have a milestone that we’re working towards, we may choose not to engage in opposition or conflict out of fear that we’ll miss that headline.

0:09:43 Ramona Shaw: And by the way, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a worthwhile consideration to keep in mind to see how much would conflict actually slow us down if we do bring it up. In our work with our clients, we often do a core strength assessment that’s part of our leadership accelerator, our new manager training program, and some individual work that we do with clients. In that assessment, we talk about the conflict sequence, one part that we’re learning about ourselves, so that the assessment checks how do we go about opposition and conflict?

0:10:18 Ramona Shaw: What’s interesting is that we all have a different approach. Some of us might tend to accommodate, and that’s how we’ve learned to deal with conflict. Other people have this tendency to assert themselves, to assert themselves right away. And it doesn’t mean that they’re angry or they’re super upset, which just means that when they notice something isn’t quite working or they disagree, their immediate reaction is to lean into the dialogue, talk it out.

0:10:47 Ramona Shaw: People who don’t have that same response to an initial annoyance may look at this very different. They may either tend to want to accommodate, avoiding that, or they may want to understand it better first. So they go into research mode, or they ask a ton of questions before they’re willing to articulate their opinion or the dialogue. Overall, the fact that we have different approaches to, it can often lead to a misunderstanding.

0:11:14 Ramona Shaw: Instead of being able to resolve conflict, we’re actually escalating the conflict because of that. So it’s important to become aware of how we respond to opposition or conflict and also being aware that not everyone responds that way. Those are all the flawed assumptions that we have. When I think about how to embrace opposition, there’s a lot of suggestions and behaviors that we can practice to embrace opposition. But at the end of the day, it is about our mindset. It is about how we define or how we see opposition.

0:11:53 Ramona Shaw: Do we see as something that is not good? Calling out a flaw in my thinking, is it something that’s undermining or trying to attack or diminish my self worth? Is it personal? Or am I going to look at this as something that is helpful, that is going to help me learn, make the idea better? Something that is part of any group, any human to human interaction? We eventually get to opposition. In fact, it’s also a sign that we have diversity in the room, because if we were all thinking the same way, there wouldn’t be any opposition. We all agree that that’s actually not what we want, and we can do way better with a diverse group.

0:12:39 Ramona Shaw: And so what that means is there is going to be opposition, and that should be a good thing. We should look at that in order to get good at it. We should look at that as something helpful, and then everything else will get better. And the moment that we start to personalize it and make it about us, we can get wrapped into an emotional loop. That’s not helpful. A while back, I was invited to my son’s school to go talk about my home country.

0:13:07 Ramona Shaw: It was a short presentation, and I tossed in some fun facts, and I brought some goodies and some treats, and we had a really good time. One kid walked out and said, well, that was lame. Do you think when the boy said, that was lame, I recognized how I thought I was cute. Like man, like big boy, right? Needed to demonstrate that he wasn’t having a good time or that, you know, he didn’t like the candy or he wasn’t, you know, participating in or wasn’t participating in the quiz. He was fully engaged in the session. But to me, him saying that was lame.

0:13:46 Ramona Shaw: I looked at this as a cute thing to say, and none of this was about me. It had anything to do with me or me coming and talking about it. Of course, it’s also a very low stake scenario here where I had nothing at stake. I didn’t come to impress kids I wanted them to have a good time and walk away with some information about another country. The interesting part, though, is that if I was in a very different scenario in a workplace situation, and someone would walk out and say, well, that was lame, would I look at this the same way of like, well, that person didn’t have a good time and that’s their total fair, right.

0:14:25 Ramona Shaw: And could I be interested in, okay, what was it that you felt was lame? Or didn’t you? Like, what would have made this differently? I could ask all these questions with the same lack of attachment to how they felt, and I’m talking here about a presentation or a workshop. But the same could be true about an opinion that you have an idea that you share, an update or a presentation that you give, and someone is giving negative feedback or having an opposing view to yours is pushing back on you.

0:14:56 Ramona Shaw: Can you look at this with that same non emotional attachment? Like I would look at the little kid saying, that was lame. Or does it start to feel personal, like someone is attacking you or your competence or your talent chance? This is where we want to look at. Yeah. How are we looking and interpreting the opposition? And this is what it boils down to. It’s all nice for us to talk about the concept and how we should see it and that we should embrace it.

0:15:24 Ramona Shaw: At the end of the day, we all have to check ourselves. Is this really how I feel when someone is opposing my ideas, or do I get emotionally attached? And then if I do get emotionally attached, why is that? Because the way I feel is due to a thought in my head. And if that thought is something I interpret as something personal, we know the answer. And that’s something to investigate, assuming that we are understanding the work we need to do. This is called self leadership.

0:15:55 Ramona Shaw: Building self awareness is part of that. Now, what if we want to create an environment where we’re all embracing opposition? Where that becomes a bit of a team norm or culture? Here are a few things that I suggest to do. First, we have to talk about empathy and managing our own emotions when we’re in conflict. Saying these platitudes like we all embrace opposition is nice, but often doesn’t help change behaviors. We need to say, look what happens when we’re in conflict. How are we interpreting that? What are scenarios or ways that this kind of opposition or conflict can lead to an emotional response and when does it not? So everyone gets aware of their own triggers, their own responses, their own beliefs around it.

0:16:47 Ramona Shaw: And ideally, you can do this as a team. Two is then to encourage that open dialogue. And that sometimes means to assign someone to be a challenger, for someone to specifically say, you’re in this meeting or as we’re talking about this idea or this decision, you’re the one who’s constantly going to challenge our way of thinking, coaching someone, when you’re supporting someone saying like, okay, I’m going to just challenge the assumptions here a little bit. I’m going to give you some pushback to help you refine your idea when you’re presenting something, say, like, ask me some challenging questions. Let’s see, where are some flaws or some gaps in my thinking?

0:17:24 Ramona Shaw: You have to role model what that looks like and create this space to have these types of open dialogues. Another very important principle to incorporate is that we always try to understand first before we try to be understood. If you hone that in as a leadership principle and you communicate it explicitly, to say, this is a moment where we want to understand before we try to be understood, or can we have that conversation where we both try to understand first before we try to be understood and spend a little bit of time leaning into the other person’s perspective, make that a principle that other people are aware of as well.

0:18:06 Ramona Shaw: So that’s a third suggestion and then a fourth. And not everyone needs that, but I want to call it out is to actually set boundaries on what effective opposition versus unhealthy conflict looks like. If someone makes it personal, if someone gets disrespectful, if someone is making false claims, if someone is trying to use other manipulative tactics that are not useful for having a constructive dialogue, those are things that need to be called out. And ideally, you can define those as explicit boundaries, team agreements, norms or social contract.

0:18:43 Ramona Shaw: That that’s not how we engage in conflict. So when we talk about a leadership philosophy in our programs, in our work at Arkova, but also often on this podcast, how do you wish the team navigates conflict? It’s a good question to ask yourself in Zidad and put that into your philosophy and see how you can live that out and demonstrate that in your leadership role. Emotional intelligence, becoming aware of the issues and the thoughts or emotions that trigger conflict.

0:19:14 Ramona Shaw: Encourage open dialogue and role model it. Practice this idea of seeking to understand before you’re understood and then setting clear sort of boundaries or guidelines on how conflict should be managed. When we do it well, with the boundaries in place, people have an understanding that we’re actually, as a team, embracing opposition, or you personally are role modeling it well, we can see the numerous benefits from creating an environment where people volunteer feedback, offer pushback, question you to help with personal growth, to help you both with decision making, with strategizing, with new ideas, higher quality ideas that you’re able to bring in because of that constructive dialogue.

0:20:03 Ramona Shaw: And it also strengthens the relationship. When people know they can challenge you. It shows that you care not so much about your ego and being right, but that you care about the team environment, the output, the results that you create and when. I know that it’s not about your ego and how you feel, but it’s about what we deliver as a team that provides a sense of psychological safety and builds trust.

0:20:33 Ramona Shaw: So these are some of the benefits that we can get to when we truly embrace opposition. When we’re seeing opposition as a bad thing, when we are seeing office politics as a bad thing, we’re not going to be effective at office politics. Office politics is neutral. Okay, conflict. Opposition is neutral. But when we look at it as healthy and constructive, we can actually see it and use it as a positive force because of our behaviors.

0:21:04 Ramona Shaw: Same thing with office politics. If our behaviors are positive, we’re turning office politics as a neutral into a positive force. The way we see it is going to determine how we’re going to show up in this. Then we have to become aware of what kind of reasons might hold us back from actually doing this. We have to understand how to engage in it, lean into the discomfort a little bit, learn how to stay engaged in the dialogue and try to understand in order to unlock the benefits that opposition brings to you personally and to the people that you work with, specifically your team.

0:21:43 Ramona Shaw: If you want to be on the lookout of strong egos and thinking we’re always right, that is also a strategy, by the way, to avoid conflict and opposition. If we just believe so much that we’re always right, that we’re not even engaging any of it because we’re not having it because we think it’s useless. Of course, when emotions take over, that’s another big hurdle we want to be on the lookout for. And then, especially as leaders, we have to be super explicit about embracing opposition, creating that space for other people to do it if there’s a power imbalance in place, and we have to acknowledge that and do more than what we may need to do with a friend or a peer outside of work. So while we could talk about embracing opposition and effective strategies for a long time, in fact, we do run workshops and skill trainings on these topics.

0:22:31 Ramona Shaw: For this episode, my intention really was, and I hope that this landed video is that you start to think about how you relate to opposition, the beliefs you have about it, how you see it, and what factors can get in the way of you leaning into it. And again, if you don’t have an issue with conflict, good for you. Then use all this information to think about how this may show up for the people that are on your team and that you lead, and how you can help them navigate and embrace opposition, or move into that space of really becoming, navigating conflict and starting to embrace opposition in a healthy way.

0:23:13 Ramona Shaw: That is what we got for this episode of The Manager Track podcast. I wish you a great week and I hope to see you again next week. If you found this topic useful, please do share and give it a five star review so that other people can find this too. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you tuning in every week. We care about this podcast. We care about you and always love hearing from our audience. With that said, Ciao for now. I’ll see you next week.

0:23:40 Ramona Shaw: If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with.0:23:47 Ramona Shaw: This includes my best selling book, the confident and competent new manager, which you can find on Amazon or ramonashaw.com book, and a free training on how to successfully lead as a new manager. You check it out@ramonashaw.com masterclass.