People who attend courses about managing conflicts report that they love the interactive experience, are excited about the skills they learn, give glowing testimonials to the instructors, see value in the material, and … and then what? The follow up isn’t encouraging.
A common question and comment that people have
People tell me their conflict stories, and almost everybody has one or two or hundreds. While in a typical casual conversation about conflict, people often raise this type of question and comment:
Their question:
How do I get the other guy to change? and its variations: What if they don’t see they’re the problem?
Their comment:
I took an excellent conflict management course, but don’t use the techniques I learned. and its variations: I tried that tactic but it didn’t work.
I hear these mentioned often enough to be curious. Something isn’t adding up. People love to learn how to do conflict better. They want to do conflict better. What stops them from doing conflict better?
For decades, I’ve practiced, consulted, coached, trained, taught, researched and written about conflict. My job is conflict’s analysis, management, and resolution. Most of the training courses being offered are excellent. But don’t you want courses to be excellent AND useful long term? I sure do.
My research hypothesis became:
What’s the disconnect when the course is excellent and then people don’t use what they learn, especially in their conflicts?
The two simple research questions:
If you’ve taken a conflict related course, what did you think of the content? After you completed the course, what changed for you?
Disclaimer: My inquiry is anecdotal, informal, and I’m not claiming robust research findings.
I talked to regular people who, at some point in their past, took conflict related courses. I was interested in knowing what skills, tools and methods that they learned were useful over time. I expected to hear they used basic methods, such as listening, questioning, uncovering interests, or generating options. In other words, I wasn’t looking for them to report that they took a course, heard celestial trumpets, and were transformed, or that they became mediators. Reporting any trivial use of a new skill would have put them in the ‘win’ column.
The summary of the anecdotes:
People explain that if they weren’t using a skill before the course instructor taught it, they weren’t likely to use it long after.
In other words, the course ended, and nothing much changed in how they dealt with conflict. Maybe I asked the wrong people or the wrong questions and maybe this calls for a strategic change in conflict courses. New question: what would make the course content sticky long term?
A different strategy
Allow me to extrapolate from my limited inquiry to ponder possible reasons that skills aren’t used as much or have as durable effects as trainers and course attendees hope. Thank you for indulging me.
What if Occam’s razor applies, and a simple explanation is the most likely. What if people take an excellent conflict management course and love it but revert to their default conflict pattern instead of using new skills because their old pattern is natural and comfortable and the new learning isn’t? Patterns are habits and habit are, well, habitual, which makes them hard to change.
Then, the question is ‘how to make the new skills natural and comfortable enough to replace the old natural and comfortable pattern?’ Or, in simple terms, if the old natural and comfortable conflict pattern is suboptimal, let’s teach natural and comfortable skills that more easily become the habit.
Bottom line, teach skills that naturally and comfortably fit the way people already think and interact.
What might those new natural and comfortable skills be, you ask? Good question. I’m open to any suggestions, ideas and comments you have.
My new podcast, Conflict Owner’s Manual, is the lead up to posting what I hope is a useful way to think about and do conflict better.
Please check out Conflict Owner’s Manual on your podcast app or my YouTube channel, leave comments, and subscribe for short episodes every Sunday and even shorter episodes every Wednesday.
