[Opinion] Charisma and Conflict

The vagaries and gossamer of human communication patterns, dictates that intuition, visualization, rapport, and patience, matter more than the one trait many parties believe matters the most—charisma.

Charisma is fine.

As a matter of face, in the pursuit of persuading parties to get to the table of resolution, charisma will take the 3^rd party persuader far.

But the charisma of one party, in the face of the lack of belief of the other party, won’t go far at all.

This seems obvious.

What’s less obvious are the impact of each of the party’s past behaviors, choices, and communication patterns around the four areas that do matter: intuition, visualization, rapport, and patience.

Intuition—the feeling that one party is not being honest, engaging in prevarication, or may have ulterior motives, can be a powerful driver for avoiding resolution. Charisma may serve to buffet intuition, but an impression—a snap judgement, if you will—once made, is almost impossible to charisma away.

Visualization—the ability to vision a future without a conflict with the other party across the table, has to come from inside each party. When there is no vision, the peace talks perish. Charisma may hold the parties at the table, but charisma can’t replace “buying into” a persuasive vision all parties can visualize.

Rapport—the ability (and desire) to get along (which seems counter-intuitive) matters more in resolving a conflict that most parties would think. But the hope that a future can be better, combined with a positive intuition about the other party’s motives, can water the seed of rapport between parties. Charisma can trigger rapport, but it can’t bring hope.

Patience—in resolving conflicts, patience is an underrated, underappreciated, and under-acknowledged, trait of parties. Patience matters more than charisma. Parties often though are impatient—with outcomes, with the speed (or lack thereof) of the process of resolution, and with the nature of each party themselves. Charisma may help move people toward patience, but it won’t keep them patient.

The parties in conflict who will be the most successful in moving toward resolution and reconciliation, will be the ones who realize that what got them to conflict, isn’t going to get them to a solution.

Much less resolution.

[Advice] Re/Solution

What’s going to be on the test?

Is this going to work out?

What can we get here?

Who benefits?

All questions that revolve around what is commonly known as resolution. Some in psychology call it closure, but really it’s the mental and emotional process of getting a definitive answer that “ties off” any loose ends.

Narrative structures such as novels, films, short stories, all rely on an ending that is “settled.” Even when we talk about data and research—areas that should have nothing to do with a narrative, but are merely reflections of the world as we have objectively tested it—we use the phrase lately “the science is settled.”

Yeah. Ok. So why are we still arguing?

The problem is not closure, an answer, an end to a narrative or even getting other parties to agree. The problem inherent in all of this phraseology and narrative structure around conflict is two-fold:

We are framing our arguments, negotiations, mediations, and litigations, in the language of closure and resolution, when in reality we are selfishly seeking a way for us to win, and for the other party to lose. Rather than chasing a “lose-lose” outcome, this is a corollary to the idea that we seek an answer—or a conclusion—that matches our worldview, which is the best one, or else it wouldn’t be our worldview.
We are seeking a manipulation, not of facts, but of other people whose ideas, positions, and interests we find to be distasteful, disagreeable, or just downright wrong. We seek to shut “the other” up, raise our own perspective up and devalue the other party, all in one fell rhetorical swoop.

When we seek to disconnect, rather than connect, and to ignore rather than understand; when we seek to replace the value already provided in an experience with the value we would rather the experience have; when we seek to judge rather than to educate; we aren’t looking to get to resolution.

We are merely seeking a solution.

Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 5 – Dana Caspersen

[Podcast] Earbud_U, Season Four, Episode # 5 – Dana Caspersen, Dancer, Conflict Specialist, Author, Performance Facilitator

[powerpress]

The results of our conflicts, disagreements, differences of opinion and more are manifest not only in our lives, but also are captured in our physical bodies.

Structural violence, social justice, and where is all of this exactly in the individual’s body?

Our guest today on the show, Dana Caspersen, is a conflict specialist, author, dancer, and performing artist.

Her work focuses on empowering people to transform conflict from the inside: changing the conversation by changing their own actions and approach.

Dance is not something that I know anything about. Sure, my daughter does dance. And I’ve done some dancing in the past. And my wife likes to go dancing.

But that’s just the rantings of a dilettante who knows nothing about the process of art. Kind of like a weekend painter or a casual sculpture.

Dana has written a book about all of this, including how implicit biases live in the way that the body moves. It’s the mind-body connection where a lot of the outcomes of conflict live at.

And we all do performances so that we don’t have to listen to each other, much less our own selves…

Here’s the thing though: Violence captured in bodies ends up leading to violent lives.

And even if there isn’t any overt physical violence, the toll that stress takes on a body in conflict is manifest in the ways that we walk, talk, and carry ourselves.

None of this is easy to talk about, much less recognize, which is why Dana does the work that she does, and why she wrote the book that she wrote.

Dance, movement, conflict, and systemic violence.

All elements that meet in a miasma of conflicting ideas that continuously crash around us.

Whether we are consciously aware of it…or not….

Connect with Dana through all the ways you can below:

Dana’s Tedx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfQeH3092Sc

Dana Caspersen’s Website: http://danacaspersen.com/

Dana on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DanaCaspersen/

Dana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-caspersen-99243827

Dana on Twitter: https://twitter.com/danacaspersen

Dana Caspersen’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCpuYD5HgcyW3MxvPxNL5YA

Knotunknot Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ39dpZMNmw

2 Reviews of Dana’s Book:

HIT Piece 9.27.2016

Conflict is the process of change.

No great change—not one—happens without conflict.

The key is not to fear conflict (which many of us do) but to manage it.

Many people are afraid in times of great change because they aren’t offered a vision for what the change will bring, nor are they offered the courage to look the change in the eye.

The role of statesmen, leaders, and even executives used to be to provide assurances to the masses of people that the conflict would be manageable, that the outcomes (or changes) would be beneficial, and that the future would be positive.

Those roles stand empty now, and thus it is up to us to choose individually: A past state of supposed peace we cannot return to, or a future state that we need courage, clarity, and candor to get to.

There are no more statesmen and leaders “over there” anymore.

Which is good.

Because, they’re right here.

[Strategy] On Truth and Reconciliation

There’s truth.

There’s reconciliation.

Rarely do you get both of them together.

This isn’t to say that parties seeking reconciliation are engaging in deceitful behavior or lying to gain an outcome that benefits them in a conflict process. But we are all selfish and no more so than when we can see the light at the end of the tunnel of conflict.

This isn’t also to say that parties seeking truth are engaging in behavior that will prolong conflicts and make them worse. But we are all myopic when our needs aren’t met around core values—like getting to the truth of a matter.

Just because you get the truth from the other party in conflict about their motives, their moods, their inner drives, or the outcomes they want, doesn’t mean that you’re going to get reconciliation.

And just like resolution, reconciliation may just be as hard to arrive at.

[Advice] Self-Awareness, Altruism, and Critical Reasoning

As people choose the messages that they will receive and believe, does self-awareness, critical reasoning, and altruism matter?

There are people in the United States who have no idea that conflicts between police and African American communities are raging.
There are people in the United States who have no idea who’s running for President, or why, even as November 8^th approaches.
There are people who are unaware that there are celebrity divorces going on, sports controversies, and other, seemingly ‘low-level’ and ‘unimportant’ cultural conflicts going on right now.
There are people who are unaware of the presence of wars (and rumors of wars) in the world today.

When mass media falls apart at scale, and when the historical, cultural, political, and social forces that used to bind disparate populations in the United States together in the last century and a half, no longer matter, can altruism, critical reasoning, and self-awareness matter?

Or, are we returning to a smaller, localized, conflict-ridden past that may be out of our historical memory, but that hews closer to the way people have always interacted?

And the sub-question: Cui bono? Who benefits the most from this seeming cultural return to a baseline we don’t remember?

[Opinion] 3 Things We Need Now

As many events become revealed that were once hidden; as information becomes freer and freer, and as people have more access to more entertainment, distraction, and dopamine hits via the communication objects in our pockets, audiences need three things now:

Wisdom: There is a dearth of wisdom. You can’t get wisdom from a Google search. You can’t stream wisdom to your mobile device. The only way that wisdom comes (folksy or otherwise) is through relationships with people. When there is a wealth of access to information (Google, anyone?) but there is a dearth of true insight, humanity has really only managed to wrest a sliver from the great artifice of this thing that we call “reality.”

Connection: There is a dearth of connection. Sure, we can connect with an old friend, email an organization and get personalized service, or even instant message a fellow professional in another vertical space far away from ours and harass and/or troll them. But such acts are shorthand for real connection; and, they rely too much on the tool (Facebook, IM, email, etc.) rather than focusing on the act of connecting. Connection with a person, face-to-face, unambiguously, is the only way that conflicts between human beings, and within human groups, will be solved.

Trust: There is a dearth of trust. Sure there is wisdom. And yes, there is connection. But, as has often been said in this space, there isn’t a lack of information, but there is a lack of trust. Not only is there a lack of meaningful connection, there is also a lack of trust. Organizations and individuals rely on this lack of trust to establish their authority long enough in your mind to get you to make a purchase. But trust established for less time than it takes to make a neocortical electrical leap from impulse to emotion to judgment, to justification, to purchase, isn’t really trust at all. That’s just effective marketing.

Showing up every day and being willing to learn, rather than to teach.

Giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Creating an environment of humility.

Do these three things and you’ll be well on your way to building trust, wisdom, and connection for yourself and for others.

[Opinion] On Crossing the Chasm

The biggest gap in organizational culture today is the chasm between the ideals and values on the wall and the actual lived reality of hourly work life.

This gap used to not matter at the height of the Industrial Revolution, but as the papering over of the gap has become less and less effective over time, the presence of the gap has become more and more evident.

Unfortunately, many organizational leaders are deciding to expand that gap through behaviors and conflict choices that reflect a nostalgia for a command and control past, rather than seeking to cross the chasm with a bridge to the future.

Either an employee is on one side of the chasm—or the gap—or they are on another.

Unfortunately, the inherent conflicts based in organizational identity fester and grow (they go fungal, rather than viral) in the darkness of that chasm.

Crossing the chasm of conflict between the ideals on the wall, and the daily workplace reality, is the hardest confrontation for leaders, founders, managers, and supervisors to engage in.

But the journey across that chasm is the only journey that matters.

[Strategy] The Deep End

The deep end of the swimming pool is the best place to be in order to change through conflict.

The deep end is where no one wants to go. It’s at the edge of the conflict universe, far away from the shallow center and a place for pioneers, adventurers and a place where safety is not a primary concern.

The deep end as an idiom describes all the ways that people used to respond emotionally to being put in situations that didn’t conform to the status quo, and that required a level of rebellion and non-conformity to confront and overcome. The idiom comes directly out of the last century, a time when personally, professionally, academically, and in every other way that mattered, challenging the safe, right, and easy path wasn’t as profitable as it is now.

We use the phrase “off the deep end” to mean that we have been involved in a situation, or trapped in a behavior, that we have no previous experience in handling, and that we feel so uncomfortable in, that it feels like death.

Of course, out on the edge of the universe, out in the deep end of the pool, we might drown. Or we might just decide to suck it up and persevere, gaining grit and resilience in the end.

Bringing up the importance of swimming in the deep end is somewhat problematic these days, in a public culture that’s built around filing down the rough edges and hammering down the nails that insist on not being hammered down. This is an interesting phenomenon, because there have never been more opportunities to be weird, to stand out, to go to the end of the emotional universe, and to jump willingly into the deep end of the pool of emotional experience.

There are few strategies for managing getting into the deep end:

Realize that you won’t die—the pool of conflict is deep on purpose, so confronting your boss, your co-worker, you parents, or someone else who you think has power over you about their conflict behavior and choices, won’t result in death. Just you being uncomfortable for a while.

Realize that the deep end is where real changes happen—getting excited about the new Iphone or Samsung phone is not a change. Going to the deep end with another person on their behavioral choices that have impacted you negatively is a change. And change always happens at the edges of confrontation and away from the safe, chunky middle.

Realize that, of course you can’t handle it, that’s why you’re doing it—just responding to a conflict (i.e. with accommodation, avoidance, confrontation, collaboration, or compromise) in the ways that you’ve always been comfortable responding is what you’ve always been able to handle. Moving away from that safety emotionally and behaviorally will feel scary, uncomfortable, and will yield results that you couldn’t have imagined. Because you had no basis from which to imagine them in the first place.

If you’re not doing something every day, to change how you address conflict behaviors in your life, you are placing yourself in the shallows of life. And when a real storm comes, and it always does, the deep end of life will come and visit you, instead of the other way around.

HIT Piece 9.6.2016

Every day of the week, the month, and the year, is Labor Day when you’re in conflict.

Conflict with family, friends, enemies, co-workers; the bandwidth to actually deal with each scenario and relationship in a healthy way, diminishes with each passing moment.

But then, sometimes, through mixing and applying a heady cocktail of avoidance, accommodation, and collaboration, the labor becomes less, well, laborious.

The emotional high that goes along with establishing this sort of safety in the group (thanks to a calmed fear response deep in your amygdala) can last for many days…sometimes for many months.

Until you forget and the next conflict flares up.

Because it’s scary to deal with the problem underneath, and drinking heady cocktails (metaphorically), can always be used as a substitute for the real action of confrontation.