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Ep. 16: Intra-Organizational Conflict
5 Plays4 years ago
On this episode, Allen Oelschlaeger is joined by Mike Panebianco, a past vice president of the Southwest Airlines Pilot Association (https://www.swapa.org) and president of MRH (mission ready human) Performance, a consulting organization focused on peak human performance.
The discussion focuses on the issue of intra-organizational conflict – i.e., conflict that is internal to an organization (rather than with clients or the general public).
Some of the core principles discussed include:
- Even at organization with strong values like Southwest Airlines, intra-organizational conflict still exists. Conflict is inevitable within any organization or team.
- In most organizations, intra-organizational conflict is a bigger problem than the conflict that occurs with clients (patients, students, customers) or with the general public.
- The impact of intra-organizational conflict is significant: sick leave goes up, stress-related illness goes up, turnover goes up.
- In many organizations, conflict avoidance is often a bigger problem that in-your-face conflict
- The airline industry has done a great job of training such that conflict avoidance within the cockpit is a rarity.
- The Total Quality Management movement was largely based on training people to address issues head-on rather than avoid conflict.
More about Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-panebianco-7478bbb
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Conflict Management for Contact Professionals
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the Confidence in Conflict podcast, your destination for learning how to prevent and better manage conflict in both your professional and personal lives.
00:00:10
Speaker
If you're a past listener, you know that Vistalar, the host of this podcast, provides conflict management training to what we call contact professionals.
00:00:20
Speaker
That's a term we use to describe individuals who spend the vast majority of their time working and talking directly with the general public or their organization's clients.
Intra-Organizational Conflict Dynamics
00:00:31
Speaker
Examples of contact professionals include healthcare professionals, educators, police officers, transfer professionals, those kinds of folks.
00:00:39
Speaker
Now, as you might expect, these individuals deal with conflict day in and day out.
00:00:44
Speaker
However, there's another type of conflict that impacts most employees.
00:00:49
Speaker
Intra-organizational conflict, right?
00:00:53
Speaker
Such as conflict between employees and their supervisors, conflict within teams, and conflict between departments.
Lateral Violence in Workplaces: Insights from Mike Panabianco
00:01:00
Speaker
So in this episode, I talk with Mike Panabianco, a pilot at Southwest Airlines and the founder of Mission Ready Human.
00:01:10
Speaker
about this type of conflict, which is also known as lateral or horizontal violence.
00:01:16
Speaker
So if you've ever worked in an organization of any size, you've probably experienced exactly what Mike and I discuss.
00:01:23
Speaker
So here's the interview.
00:01:24
Speaker
Well, good afternoon, Mike.
00:01:34
Speaker
Good afternoon, Al.
00:01:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's been, we chatted this morning, but it's good to talk to you again.
00:01:40
Speaker
Looking forward to having this discussion.
00:01:43
Speaker
So everybody knows a little bit about you based on the intro that I did for this podcast, but if you could go into just a little bit more depth on your background and experience and how you got into this conflict space.
00:01:57
Speaker
Sure, sure.
00:01:57
Speaker
So just back to the earliest of it, growing up as a farm kid and looking to the sky for my future, always dreamed of flying airplanes and eventually found my way there.
00:02:13
Speaker
And as my career developed, a major event happened that I think everybody listening to this podcast and anybody who is alive that day would remember 9-11.
00:02:26
Speaker
And the utter impact of witnessing 9-11 from the first person view, if you saw it on the news, it impacted you.
00:02:38
Speaker
It probably brought tears to your eyes.
00:02:41
Speaker
And it made an impression that you'll never forget.
00:02:45
Speaker
As an aviator, it not only had that impact on us, but it also opened this exploration of what would I do if that were me?
00:02:56
Speaker
What would I, where would I go with this if that, if I were in their shoes, because this was a paradigm shift.
00:03:03
Speaker
And for us as aviators, we looked at hijacking as something someone did with a butter knife that they snuck through security to get you to fly them to Cuba.
00:03:12
Speaker
We had never really anticipated having our airplanes turned into weapons against people
Mike's Journey: From Aviation to Conflict Management
00:03:17
Speaker
on the ground.
00:03:17
Speaker
So huge paradigm shift for all of us in aviation.
00:03:20
Speaker
Where were you?
00:03:21
Speaker
I actually was in New York, not New York City, but upstate New York.
00:03:25
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During 9-11, I'd put every penny of my life savings down on a new house being built in Orlando and jumped on an airplane and went to New York to visit my family.
00:03:35
Speaker
and woke up to the 9-11 news and sat for the rest of the day wondering where my family members that worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were, and if they were safe.
00:03:46
Speaker
I had an uncle and one of my cousin's spouses that worked in the World Trade Center.
00:03:52
Speaker
And also my father-in-law was in the Pentagon when it was struck by an aircraft.
00:03:56
Speaker
And so it was a long day and it was a deep and impactful day.
00:04:02
Speaker
Did you end up being stuck in
00:04:04
Speaker
Were you stuck in New York for a while?
00:04:05
Speaker
Well, I got stuck there for four days and my ride home was canceled due to obvious security issues and a tropical storm in Orlando.
00:04:15
Speaker
So I rented a car in Florida and drove back home.
00:04:18
Speaker
I lived in Orlando at the time.
00:04:20
Speaker
And went to work and there was no one to fly around.
00:04:23
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And the airports, as you remember, were about empty.
00:04:26
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:04:26
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Finally opened it up.
00:04:27
Speaker
It just opened up a whole new world.
Southwest Airlines Culture and Conflict
00:04:30
Speaker
And and that's how I entered into conflict and conflict training and conflict study.
00:04:36
Speaker
And and that story evolved later into conflict.
00:04:41
Speaker
gaining more knowledge of protecting my, my airplanes.
00:04:45
Speaker
But then I, I was naturally drawn into a human conflict as a, as an issue that touched school children.
00:04:55
Speaker
If you can believe a self-defense instructor with all these certifications and interest in aviation, I had a child that was being bullied in school and
00:05:05
Speaker
put in front of me by his mother and, and introduced that dilemma to me.
00:05:10
Speaker
And I had young children at the time and I was like, you know, um, this is a great way to stay sharp and to, to give back.
00:05:17
Speaker
And I started examining the issue of bullying in school and how it impacted kids' lives.
00:05:24
Speaker
And, uh, and when, what timeframe would that was about 2008,
00:05:31
Speaker
And so, yeah, I, there, there weren't a lot of great solutions for bullying out there.
00:05:38
Speaker
And so I had to craft one of my own and that led me to Dale Carnegie training, how to be a better, uh, interpersonal relationship manager of sorts and to sales training.
00:05:52
Speaker
How do I, how do I help build a bridge between human need and human solution?
00:05:58
Speaker
Um, and, and then, and it just went from there and I've just kind of, I'm kind of been that guy that's wandered around.
00:06:03
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I have full interest in everything conflict because I see it as the greatest deterrent to people achieving their potential or organizations achieving their potential.
00:06:15
Speaker
Um, and I, I don't know if you, if you intro this, but as a, as a union member,
00:06:22
Speaker
and a member of one of the great corporate cultures in our country, I see where that loss.
00:06:30
Speaker
And let's just say Southwest Airlines is what you're referencing.
00:06:34
Speaker
Yes.
00:06:34
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Go ahead.
00:06:35
Speaker
I work for Southwest Airlines and they're a storied culture and a legendary culture, if you will, given the history of our founding and our founder.
00:06:46
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But even there, there's conflict and there's loss associated with it.
Mission Ready Human: Purpose and Vision
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And I've spent the majority of my adult life chasing around those solutions to bring organizations and individuals into their best work by eradicating some conflict and then turning the rest of it into something useful and meaningful.
00:07:05
Speaker
And you got involved in union leadership.
00:07:07
Speaker
I did.
00:07:08
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I did.
00:07:10
Speaker
In 2014, our company and our union had been in contract negotiations for several years, and we seemed to go nowhere.
00:07:18
Speaker
While we had one of the most successful business models out there, our labor negotiations were stuck.
00:07:26
Speaker
And it was very frustrating to watch.
00:07:28
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You see the money that we poured into negotiations bearing no fruit.
00:07:34
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And really our membership didn't have a great feel for where we were in the negotiation to begin with.
00:07:41
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And it started creating bad blood.
00:07:43
Speaker
And that's not something that ever belongs in the culture of a company like Southwest.
00:07:50
Speaker
And I wanted to be part of that solution.
00:07:53
Speaker
And so I ran for a union office, ended up as a domicile rep in Baltimore.
00:07:58
Speaker
And then when a vacancy came in the vice president seat, I ran for that and was successfully elected to two consecutive terms as the vice president, which I finished at the end of this past year.
00:08:13
Speaker
So, yeah, just that was my whole life was conflict in the office.
00:08:20
Speaker
And where in all that did you form or decide on the name for Mission Ready Human?
00:08:28
Speaker
So Mission Ready Human was actually born out of my original company title, which was Able Training Systems.
00:08:35
Speaker
And it was about bullying.
00:08:38
Speaker
It was about human performance.
00:08:41
Speaker
But a lot of people thought it was a kid's program.
00:08:44
Speaker
And it wasn't.
00:08:46
Speaker
It's not a boy's program or a girl's program.
00:08:50
Speaker
Mission Ready Human...
00:08:51
Speaker
evolved out of a human confidence program is what is what I was shooting to achieve.
00:08:58
Speaker
And when I say the word mission, a lot of people are like, well, what does that mean?
00:09:03
Speaker
It sounds, you know, religious, although I am a religious person, it's not necessarily religious context.
00:09:10
Speaker
It is more that I believe everybody comes to this earth with a mission that they are uniquely qualified to achieve and
00:09:18
Speaker
And sometimes things will throw you off or you won't be exposed to the right influences for you to achieve it.
00:09:26
Speaker
And I wanted to build a course that would help prepare you for accepting that mission and going out and doing what only you are designed to do and to do it to the best of your ability.
Internal vs External Conflict
00:09:38
Speaker
And one of those factors was removing that conflict, that destructive conflict from your path.
00:09:45
Speaker
So tell me the timeframe for that.
00:09:47
Speaker
When did that name happen?
00:09:48
Speaker
So that was more 2011, 2012.
00:09:51
Speaker
It was on an ink board in my office for months on end.
00:09:57
Speaker
And I just kind of, you know, you'd stare at it and see if it stuck.
00:10:01
Speaker
And it did.
00:10:03
Speaker
So I memorialized it when I moved to Texas in 2015 and actually put the stamp on it and trademarked it.
00:10:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:13
Speaker
Well, everybody listening to this podcast knows that Vistolar is primarily involved in what we call conflict management for contact professionals.
00:10:26
Speaker
So obviously, flight attendant would be a contact professional, police officer, security officer, school teacher, healthcare worker,
00:10:35
Speaker
right?
00:10:35
Speaker
Parking professional, casino worker, anybody that deals with the public that are environments where conflict could occur.
00:10:42
Speaker
And obviously in the airline world, we've seen a few incidents that have made the national news, right?
00:10:48
Speaker
With conflict on airplanes.
00:10:51
Speaker
And it seems like it's, it happens even more now when we got all these mask concerns going on.
00:10:57
Speaker
But the thing that, and as you said,
00:11:01
Speaker
I got to know Mike here several months ago, and we were just struck in that I'd been thinking about and writing about the role of conflict in intra-organizational kind of environments versus the contact professional market, which is where most of our work is.
00:11:20
Speaker
And it's an area that when I go out and look at it, I think there's a bigger problem
00:11:28
Speaker
In any of these contact professional organizations, as much as you think the problem is with the customer or with the patient or with the student or with the parent or with the person you're giving a ticket to or whatever, you find out when you dig deeper that the bigger problem is inside the organization and the conflict that's going on there.
Organizational Silos and Metrics
00:11:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:49
Speaker
And that's what you've...
00:11:51
Speaker
Sounds like where you've had most of your experience.
00:11:53
Speaker
Yes.
00:11:53
Speaker
As a matter of fact, it's an amazing amount of money that is spent on internal customer conflict.
00:12:00
Speaker
And when I say internal customer, that's, you know, fellow employees, employees of different silos in a company.
00:12:07
Speaker
And silos is a silo is kind of a dirty word now that nobody really likes to use, but that's about what it is.
00:12:14
Speaker
If you don't work in the same department and there's conflict between those teams, you
00:12:20
Speaker
it was a unique vision because at one day I'd be defending a, um, a member of our association in a representation with the company where they were being held to account for behaviors brought against them by accusations brought against them by the company.
00:12:36
Speaker
And then I'd go back to the office and I'd have 40 employees that would have issues with
00:12:43
Speaker
with our organization itself.
00:12:45
Speaker
So you'd wear all these hats.
00:12:48
Speaker
And then as a vice president, you tried to get all of your committees to work together and you'd have, you know, maybe some squabbles between them, between a staff member and the association itself, and then representing a member against the parent company.
00:13:04
Speaker
And you look very quickly at how much money and time and lost money
00:13:11
Speaker
you know, lost product that you had because you couldn't have everybody working together.
Southwest's Operational Principles in Conflict Handling
00:13:18
Speaker
And so looking for those solutions, you always look up, you know, you look to leadership, you look to the president, you look to your board of directors and you say, you know, you actually go right back to you.
00:13:28
Speaker
And I'm a big proponent of what are our organizing principles?
00:13:32
Speaker
Can anyone in this building even recite to me what our mission statement is?
00:13:36
Speaker
And even if you could, does it mean anything to you when you say it?
00:13:41
Speaker
Or is it just a bunch of corporate gook?
00:13:43
Speaker
You know, it's just, you know, this junk that, you know, big giant words that don't really mean anything.
00:13:49
Speaker
That's really, if I look back and pay credit to my parent company of Southwest Airlines, back in the 90s when I was flying for a commuter airline, I'd watch a Southwest airplane come pulling into the gate and they'd arrive five minutes after us, offload everybody, load everybody back up, bags, fuel, push back and be gone.
00:14:11
Speaker
And here we were in our little turboprop and we had half the passengers they had, and we were still sitting there trying to get our act together.
00:14:19
Speaker
And then you walk, you walk through their gate area.
00:14:21
Speaker
There's just a different feel for that company.
00:14:25
Speaker
And you looked at what was their mission back there in the seventies and in the early, even up to the two thousands, when I went to work there was we're giving people the freedom to fly.
00:14:34
Speaker
And it was just a simple, simple mission.
00:14:37
Speaker
And then you look at their values.
00:14:39
Speaker
They treat everybody with the golden rule.
00:14:41
Speaker
Treat people how you'd want to be treated.
00:14:43
Speaker
And then they looked at what's our vision?
00:14:46
Speaker
What do we do?
00:14:48
Speaker
We deliver positively outrageous service.
00:14:52
Speaker
Anybody could work there.
00:14:54
Speaker
Anybody could remember those things.
00:14:56
Speaker
Those were significant.
00:14:57
Speaker
This is how you be.
00:14:59
Speaker
This is what you do.
00:15:00
Speaker
And this is why we're here.
00:15:03
Speaker
And as a pilot to this day, our operating principles are simple.
00:15:07
Speaker
We keep people safe.
00:15:09
Speaker
Number one.
00:15:10
Speaker
Number one priority always in aviation.
00:15:12
Speaker
Keep people safe.
00:15:13
Speaker
Number two.
00:15:15
Speaker
Give them a good customer experience.
00:15:17
Speaker
And number three, be efficient.
00:15:20
Speaker
Save money so that we can offer cheaper fares to our customers and they get to where they're going on time.
00:15:27
Speaker
So, Mike, this is great because you can recite that, obviously.
00:15:30
Speaker
Here are the three goals.
00:15:32
Speaker
And you're a thoughtful guy, and I'm sure you have those written down somewhere.
00:15:35
Speaker
But that really does seem to be embedded in Southwest Airlines' culture.
00:15:40
Speaker
How do they do that?
00:15:41
Speaker
What's the core...
00:15:44
Speaker
principle that allowed them to get that in their culture versus it just being a nice poster in them.
00:15:51
Speaker
Well,
00:15:51
Speaker
the lobby that the CEO put up.
00:15:53
Speaker
It's funny.
00:15:55
Speaker
I cried when my boss died.
00:15:58
Speaker
It broke my heart to see Herb Kelleher pass away last January.
00:16:03
Speaker
When you went to work for Southwest Airlines, you went to work for Herb.
00:16:08
Speaker
Everyone knew Herb by his first name.
00:16:11
Speaker
You called him by his first name or you'd hear about it.
00:16:13
Speaker
You never call him Mr. Kelleher.
00:16:15
Speaker
Um, he lived and breathed and reminded everybody what the mission was at Southwest airlines.
00:16:23
Speaker
This is how you behave.
00:16:25
Speaker
This is why you're here.
00:16:26
Speaker
This is what we do.
00:16:28
Speaker
And this is how I'll back you up.
00:16:30
Speaker
If you come to work every day and just live this way, I will back you up.
00:16:35
Speaker
I'll be there for you.
00:16:36
Speaker
And they proved it over and over.
00:16:38
Speaker
And they reminded you over and over.
00:16:41
Speaker
It's the language.
00:16:42
Speaker
It almost sounds cultish.
00:16:44
Speaker
But those are just decent human values and decent ways to behave.
00:16:51
Speaker
And that's honestly, Al, that's why we're talking.
00:16:53
Speaker
Because when I saw Vistalar's product, one of your core principles is to treat people decent.
00:17:01
Speaker
And treat people with dignity by showing them respect.
00:17:05
Speaker
Those are my core values.
00:17:07
Speaker
Very easy to align, very easy to show up for.
00:17:11
Speaker
And that's what we lived at Southwest.
00:17:13
Speaker
And that's the way I look at Mission Ready Human.
00:17:16
Speaker
I'd almost say that there's a little bit of it as a testament to Herb.
Aviation Industry's Approach to Conflict
00:17:21
Speaker
And at the union, I was just tapped to lead the Herb Kelleher Memorial Scholarship Fund to go out and find aviators that are trying to be what I am.
00:17:33
Speaker
and help them with a little financial aid and hopefully with some mentorship to get them through their, their aviation goals.
00:17:41
Speaker
But, but Mike, what I'm hearing you say though, is even with a herb in the leadership role, obviously a strong leader, obviously with strong values, obviously with a clear mission, obviously communicated that over and over and over again, everybody understood it.
00:17:57
Speaker
But even with all that, which is, is rare in a lot of companies, right?
00:18:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:03
Speaker
a leader like, but even with that, there's still conflict within Southwest Airlines.
00:18:08
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:18:09
Speaker
And I think it's a human condition.
00:18:11
Speaker
I think it's just, it's going to be everywhere.
00:18:13
Speaker
You're never going to be perfect.
00:18:15
Speaker
Uh, how you handle it says everything about your organization, in my opinion.
00:18:20
Speaker
Uh,
00:18:21
Speaker
You know, when you have when you go down from that that echoing organizational principle and then you look at how your your regulations and your policies and your and your procedures are set up and what operational philosophies you carry out on a day to day.
00:18:37
Speaker
How do we review?
00:18:38
Speaker
How do we do postmortems on, you know, did things go well?
00:18:42
Speaker
Did things not go well?
00:18:43
Speaker
What standard of conduct do we have for each other in our organization?
00:18:47
Speaker
Those are all things that, you know, I look at and can determine, you know, a little bit more about how the organizational health might be for the frontline people.
00:18:57
Speaker
I know the example that you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast was a very well televised, and I won't mention the name of the airline, but one of their passengers was dragged off of an aircraft on national television, and it was repeated over and over and over.
00:19:13
Speaker
And it was really a black eye for that company when that gentleman was removed from the airplane in such a way.
00:19:19
Speaker
If that happened at Southwest Airlines, we would be horrified.
00:19:23
Speaker
I mean, we, it literally goes against everything we do and we do realize that there are human beings that are very, very difficult.
00:19:31
Speaker
Uh, and, and there's going to be, there are going to be breaches of expectations.
00:19:36
Speaker
There's going to be letdowns.
00:19:38
Speaker
We, we, we're in a very unexact science.
00:19:41
Speaker
Airplanes are machines.
00:19:43
Speaker
Weather happens.
00:19:44
Speaker
Breakdowns happen.
00:19:45
Speaker
Emergencies happen, customer service failures, people miss their flights, people consume alcohol at the airport.
00:19:53
Speaker
There's so many things that can happen in air transit, but we still try to live by the processes and procedures based in our organizing principles of how we behave, why we do what we do, and what we promise to our customers and to our employees.
00:20:13
Speaker
Mike, you said it greatly there because from the day we started Biscis, we've said that you can't stop conflict.
00:20:22
Speaker
This whole idea, even back to your bullying example, you can't stop bullying.
00:20:26
Speaker
It's part of the human condition.
00:20:29
Speaker
Conflict is inevitable.
00:20:30
Speaker
It's going to occur.
00:20:31
Speaker
There are people that drink.
00:20:33
Speaker
There are missed flights.
00:20:34
Speaker
There are whatever.
00:20:35
Speaker
It's going to create conflict, disagreement, people upset.
00:20:39
Speaker
But if you can figure out how to manage that conflict well,
00:20:43
Speaker
the outcome can be extraordinary.
00:20:45
Speaker
And I think that's what Southwest Airlines with their culture has been able to do is even in the face of conflict, they manage it well and people have a great experience.
00:20:54
Speaker
But when that conflict is managed poorly, and I'm sure there's examples at Southwest where it is, the effects can be disastrous.
00:21:03
Speaker
Sure.
00:21:04
Speaker
No, it's, and again, I never...
00:21:10
Speaker
I never go out and bad mouth my company because I'm a big fan and I also feed my family and there are restrictions on what I can and cannot talk about what happens inside of Southwest Airlines.
00:21:22
Speaker
But no, it happens.
00:21:24
Speaker
People fall down.
00:21:26
Speaker
People make mistakes.
00:21:27
Speaker
It's just the reality.
00:21:28
Speaker
It's not a criticism.
Inter-Departmental Conflict Insights
00:21:30
Speaker
It's the reality.
00:21:31
Speaker
I think you've heard this story from me, but I'm not sure the audience has, is that
00:21:37
Speaker
I had the opportunity a few years ago to present to state tax collectors.
00:21:44
Speaker
Right.
00:21:45
Speaker
So you would think this is a group.
00:21:47
Speaker
that's dealing with conflict all day long.
00:21:48
Speaker
They're out finding people that aren't paying their taxes, businesses, not individuals.
00:21:54
Speaker
And they were going into businesses and saying, you know, you're not paying your taxes and literally, you know, putting yellow tape around the business and closing businesses down so they could collect the taxes.
00:22:04
Speaker
I mean, that's what everybody in the room did for a living.
00:22:09
Speaker
And I'm just going, you know, it's hard to imagine a job where there would be
00:22:14
Speaker
You know, more conflict day in and day out.
00:22:17
Speaker
Right.
00:22:17
Speaker
So I'm presenting to 500 people in a big conference room about our stuff.
00:22:22
Speaker
And and so I started out with the question.
00:22:24
Speaker
I go, OK, guys, I'll deal with, you know, tax collection, whatever.
00:22:29
Speaker
So just rate it for me.
00:22:30
Speaker
If you deal, think about the conflict you have with your the people that you're collecting taxes from.
00:22:37
Speaker
And then think about the conflict you have with your supervisor or manager.
00:22:42
Speaker
And then think about the conflict you have between departments.
00:22:46
Speaker
Where is the greatest source of conflict in your life?
00:22:51
Speaker
And, you know, it was 500 names.
00:22:54
Speaker
Hands went up.
00:22:55
Speaker
I'm sure it wasn't everybody, but it sure seemed to me like everybody in the room picked between department conflict was the number one source.
00:23:05
Speaker
And that just hit me like a ton of bricks.
00:23:07
Speaker
I've gone, wait a minute.
00:23:08
Speaker
You guys are dealing with collecting taxes from people that don't want to pay their taxes.
00:23:14
Speaker
And you're still finding that...
00:23:16
Speaker
The biggest source of conflict is between departments.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:19
Speaker
And I mean, that could be politics.
00:23:21
Speaker
I always say I play five levels of chess when I look at conflict.
00:23:25
Speaker
And it could be politics.
00:23:27
Speaker
You know, who's next in line for that VP role?
00:23:29
Speaker
Who's next in line for management role?
00:23:31
Speaker
Or how do the bonus structures look?
00:23:34
Speaker
Competing metrics.
00:23:35
Speaker
Just competing metrics alone can destroy a company.
00:23:39
Speaker
You know, if one company or if one area of the company sets metrics on timeliness and another division of the company sets it on customer satisfaction, can you see where that that's going to come up?
00:23:53
Speaker
And, you know, and then once the two managed management heads, but heads on that that level, it bleeds down into the front line.
00:24:03
Speaker
uh uh you know the front front line soldiers it really just it becomes us against them and the tribalism there is enough uh and then talk about mobbing you have one person who doesn't like another person from another department or you know someone from hr is a bully and handled somebody a little a little bit rough and that employee then tells their coffee circle their coffee clutch
00:24:29
Speaker
about the way they were treated.
00:24:31
Speaker
And next thing you know, you got seven or eight employees that don't like the HR person.
00:24:35
Speaker
Or an executive director has to make a difficult decision that impacts all these people and it doesn't play well.
Financial Costs of Unresolved Conflicts
00:24:44
Speaker
And so now there's that common core of an issue that people start to rally around and then they add a little bit of venom to it and a little bit of heat to it.
00:24:52
Speaker
And it's, you know, it turns into, you know, the news media and what they do with America right now and polarizing people.
00:25:00
Speaker
Those are very expensive realities because, you know, productivity drops, sick leave usage goes up, stress related illness goes up, turnover goes up.
00:25:11
Speaker
I mean, I think in one of the roles that I've held in the past 10 years, the turnover cost was 122% of a salary.
00:25:22
Speaker
Because recruitment, the loss of customers that usually would accompany that person imploding or taking those people with them when they left, you'd have just astronomical costs surrounding all of that.
00:25:36
Speaker
And there are the things that I look back in aviation and you look back and you'll have one person who knows a bad thing is about to happen in a cockpit, but because they don't like the person they're flying with, they keep
Communication in Aviation: Avoiding Catastrophe
00:25:48
Speaker
it to themselves.
00:25:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:50
Speaker
Or they don't effectively communicate, you know, hey, we're running out of gas.
00:25:55
Speaker
You know, I don't, I try not to trample on, on, on the unfortunate who have lost their lives in aviation accidents, but as a pilot, I
00:26:05
Speaker
I have learned more from watching those scenarios unfold and seeing how a dysfunctional communication structure or leadership structure or a little bit of conflict in a small confined space in a very complex environment can cause catastrophic results.
00:26:22
Speaker
And, you know, my whole mission in life right now is to remove those factors from your greatest success.
00:26:32
Speaker
and your safety, and your longevity, and your legacy.
00:26:36
Speaker
Those are the things that I really look forward to accomplishing with a business like Mission Ready Human and working with Vistolar and working with some of my consulting partners.
00:26:47
Speaker
There's a great potential.
00:26:50
Speaker
Mike, you made a huge point there with that one example is that
00:26:55
Speaker
This goes back a couple of years also, but we went in and did some work with a pretty sizable organization.
00:27:01
Speaker
We were brought in by the CEO.
00:27:03
Speaker
He said, you know, I got a conflict problem.
00:27:06
Speaker
And we went in and we, again, our primary focus is, as you know, on contact professional conflict, you know, where you're dealing with the public or a client or a student or whatever.
00:27:18
Speaker
But this was, you know, we've done some of this intra-organizational work.
00:27:22
Speaker
Went in and the CEO is going, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:27:23
Speaker
And we did some training and whatever.
00:27:26
Speaker
And it took almost a full day to fully understand what his real issue was.
00:27:31
Speaker
Because, you know, we dealt with, oh, what happens with all the examples you use?
00:27:35
Speaker
You know, somebody has a different budget.
00:27:37
Speaker
You know, somebody is not treating somebody well.
00:27:39
Speaker
And, you know, and so you get this little click thing or whatever, mob, whatever stuff going on.
00:27:45
Speaker
We thought that was where the problem was.
00:27:48
Speaker
A full day into the training, finally, the guy pulls us aside.
00:27:51
Speaker
He goes, you know, I finally kind of figured this out.
00:27:53
Speaker
My problem is not with overt conflict.
00:27:56
Speaker
It's people avoiding conflict.
00:27:59
Speaker
it's great.
00:28:00
Speaker
The bigger problem is people don't know, have the skills to deal with it.
00:28:05
Speaker
And so they avoid it.
00:28:06
Speaker
And so problems that otherwise should have been brought up and addressed get pushed underneath the carpet.
00:28:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:14
Speaker
And that's, that's just, you know, completely off limits in an airplane situation.
00:28:19
Speaker
Right.
00:28:19
Speaker
Right.
00:28:20
Speaker
And, you know, we don't have any choice again.
00:28:22
Speaker
I mean, like the consequences are life and death and,
00:28:26
Speaker
You know, if you don't have, you know, a lot of people have the skill set or
United Airlines and Crew Resource Management
00:28:32
Speaker
let me rephrase that.
00:28:32
Speaker
A lot of people have the knowledge.
00:28:34
Speaker
They just don't have the skill set or the demonstrated competence, the opportunity to practice.
00:28:42
Speaker
People know, generally know right and wrong.
00:28:45
Speaker
You could lay a scenario out for somebody and they'll immediately know what the problem is.
00:28:49
Speaker
The problem then becomes, and this is what's great, what I found great as of huge value in my initial contacts with Vistolar was they don't do fireside chats, they do fire drills.
00:29:04
Speaker
And I was like, well, that's right up my alley because look at how much money we spend as aviators to simulate real flight.
00:29:11
Speaker
I mean, 30s and $40 million simulators to go in so that you're actually sweating when you walk out because the level of reality you face.
00:29:20
Speaker
So when, you know, these people have, you give them the knowledge, but if you don't give them the opportunities to examine their courage and take that first step to start an intervention or to address the problem,
00:29:36
Speaker
I think you're set up to fail.
00:29:38
Speaker
And I think you're right.
00:29:40
Speaker
The biggest problem is people avoiding it because they've never been given the opportunity to truly exercise that muscle and see it.
00:29:48
Speaker
So, but how long, how long has it been decades?
00:29:52
Speaker
I think, and the airline has probably done a better job than any other industry in dealing with this in the, in the cockpit, but it's been decades.
00:30:00
Speaker
You guys have been working on how do you get the,
00:30:05
Speaker
I don't even know the right terms, Mike, but the co-pilot to speak up when he sees the captain making a mistake.
00:30:13
Speaker
Well, I think organizationally, first of all, that organizationally, they have to empower that first officer to make that statement.
00:30:22
Speaker
It has to be policy.
00:30:24
Speaker
It has to be trained and it has to be made okay by the organization to have it done.
00:30:31
Speaker
The other way they have gone about doing it is a little bit more in the lane of leadership training.
00:30:39
Speaker
So, you know, you're still a leader, even if you are the first officer and there's only two of us up there.
00:30:44
Speaker
So it's, you know, it's like you're the first officer is the last ditch effort to save the day.
00:30:53
Speaker
And so the organization is covering that.
00:30:56
Speaker
What we do as a, uh, as a, a pilots association is in, in all unions do this, but they have a professional standards committee as well.
00:31:06
Speaker
And we will help you to initiate those conversations.
00:31:09
Speaker
Or if you're having issues on that level, there's someone that you can actually reach out to in a confidential way.
00:31:15
Speaker
That's a peer that can help mediate some of those issues.
00:31:19
Speaker
But when it happens in real time,
00:31:21
Speaker
you better hope your training is enough that you have the courage to say, Hey, this is unsafe.
00:31:27
Speaker
We need to not do this.
00:31:30
Speaker
But when did that, when just, do you know, when did that, that culture change occur?
00:31:36
Speaker
Cause it's my understanding.
00:31:37
Speaker
There was a time in the past where the captain was running the show.
00:31:42
Speaker
And if you spoke up,
00:31:44
Speaker
you got your hand slapped.
00:31:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:46
Speaker
I don't know how many years ago that was, but there was a, and I think the airline industry discovered that was like the core problem and they had to fix it.
00:31:53
Speaker
I think that was in the mid eighties.
00:31:55
Speaker
Uh,
00:31:55
Speaker
United, United airlines was the pioneer in what they called CRM back in the day, crew resource management.
00:32:01
Speaker
And it followed a couple of incidents, um, followed and evolution has been with every incident, accident and loss of life.
00:32:11
Speaker
There has been something, and we always say checklists and procedures are written in blood because they are, we've learned something from, you know, that's the nature of the culture of aviation is that we are a learning organization.
00:32:23
Speaker
And that when we do poorly, we learn from that.
Commitment to Learning from Mistakes in Aviation
00:32:26
Speaker
And we will not let that loss go to waste and be dishonored by not learning and trying to make us better, make us all better for the incident or the accident that took, you know, took lives.
00:32:39
Speaker
And you had US Air that had five incidents in five years.
00:32:45
Speaker
And that learning process really pushed for the type of training that we do now, which is continuous qualification training.
00:32:54
Speaker
And I have the great pleasure of having worked with two of the US Air pilots that pioneered that training and pushed for the safety programs that we have today.
00:33:06
Speaker
And those guys, I mean, they walked the debris fields where their friends were killed.
00:33:12
Speaker
And so nobody knows it better than they do.
00:33:15
Speaker
And nobody knows it better than the families of some of these people that have lost their lives in these incidents and accidents.
00:33:20
Speaker
So we honor them with this training and the effort to continuously improve.
00:33:25
Speaker
Now, that's the most extreme level, although I think the military might be the more extreme level due to the nature of their mission.
00:33:32
Speaker
But we're a peacetime mission.
00:33:33
Speaker
We're a transportation.
00:33:34
Speaker
We're connecting people to things that are important in their life and how we honor that.
Practicing Conflict Management Skills
00:33:41
Speaker
with the level of training that we do, imagine what that could do, that type of mentality and function could do in an office.
00:33:50
Speaker
Exactly.
00:33:51
Speaker
If you put that level of attention to your people in resolving conflict and doing a great job of it, imagine what your company would be capable of.
00:34:04
Speaker
Mid-80s, it's interesting because I think you know my background's in medical devices.
00:34:09
Speaker
And if you make a mistake in building a medical device, it could ultimately, it's not like an airline where you could have a crash, but ultimately it could kill somebody because the device would not operate appropriately out in the field.
00:34:22
Speaker
And, you know, mid 80s is when this whole total quality management thing came into effect.
00:34:28
Speaker
And it was the same, you know, struggle inside a manufacturing facility making medical devices where, you know, the norm was you kept the line going.
00:34:39
Speaker
And it was all about keeping the line going and trying to get as many products out the door as you could.
00:34:43
Speaker
And if you were a frontline worker, second in command, didn't matter where, you know, you kept your mouth shut and you just kept the line going.
00:34:51
Speaker
And total quantity management came along and said, no, no, no, no.
00:34:55
Speaker
Your job is different.
00:34:56
Speaker
You need to, if you see a problem, you are, you have the responsibility and we're going to train you how to do it, but you got to raise your hand and say, there's a problem here.
00:35:05
Speaker
We're not going to let the line continue until this gets fixed.
00:35:09
Speaker
And that was a major, major culture change in manufacturing.
00:35:13
Speaker
And the result is, I mean, we all drive, you know, higher quality cars now and products, I think, universally are much higher quality than they were pre-1980s.
00:35:23
Speaker
But it's that same underlying principle of it's tough, right, in the face of conflict to raise your hand and say, okay, I'm going to say something and risk, you know, whatever the ramifications are of
00:35:37
Speaker
of jumping into a conflict space.
00:35:41
Speaker
So I think, you know, this internal organizational thing, it plays on both sides.
00:35:45
Speaker
It's the side of, oh yeah, there's somebody that's mean to each other or there's bullying going on or whatever.
00:35:50
Speaker
And how are we going to deal with that?
00:35:51
Speaker
And let's try to minimize that.
00:35:54
Speaker
But there's also the side of just avoiding it and the impact that has on our organization.
00:35:58
Speaker
Yeah, that to me, that's a loser's choice as well.
00:36:02
Speaker
Avoiding conflict, it's never pleasant.
00:36:05
Speaker
I mean, I've dealt with it with my peers.
00:36:07
Speaker
I've dealt with it with my membership.
00:36:09
Speaker
I've dealt with it with our employees.
00:36:12
Speaker
You know, and even, you know, who hasn't had that uncomfortable couple days with a spouse when you've said something maybe you shouldn't have said, she's angry, you're angry, or he's angry there, you know, however that dynamic worked.
00:36:26
Speaker
Avoidance doesn't do anything to make things better.
00:36:32
Speaker
engagement does.
00:36:33
Speaker
So how do you take that first step?
00:36:36
Speaker
Where do you grab the moral courage to step forward and say,
00:36:42
Speaker
I have something I need to say because, you know, and here's why.
00:36:46
Speaker
And have it not be about the other person, but have it be about the mutual success of either your organization or your family or, you know, whatever the relationship is.
00:36:55
Speaker
That moral courage needs to be practiced.
00:36:57
Speaker
It needs to be rooted in something real, in values, in a commitment.
00:37:05
Speaker
in ethics and to being intentional about that.
00:37:09
Speaker
I think a lot of companies willy nilly their way into it and say, everyone should know this is right.
Benefits of Conflict Management Training
00:37:15
Speaker
But people, unless you clarify it and you shout it from the rooftops and you make it your culture, it's not inherent to everyone because we all have different skills and abilities.
00:37:27
Speaker
We all have different value sets that we bring to whatever our personal mission is.
00:37:32
Speaker
And I think one of the things I really love about the training that Vistolar does and the way we train as aviators is that you give people that opportunity to step forward and try it out.
00:37:43
Speaker
and put it in context and then dissect it and look at how did that work versus this?
00:37:50
Speaker
Did you try this?
00:37:51
Speaker
Did you ever consider this?
00:37:52
Speaker
What are people that are standing over here?
00:37:54
Speaker
And this was revolutionary as well.
00:37:57
Speaker
And I remember hearing Gary Klugowitz talk about this.
00:38:00
Speaker
It's like, everybody's got a phone camera now.
00:38:03
Speaker
You're always going to be on camera.
00:38:06
Speaker
And I've had, you know, have you ever done something that you definitely are glad is not out on YouTube?
00:38:12
Speaker
You know, talk about a context builder and playing another level of chess when you prepare yourself for things.
00:38:18
Speaker
Think about that almighty cell phone camera and what Twitter could do to your family or to your ability to make a living or to your company.
00:38:27
Speaker
So, you know, again, it's just it's a matter of painting the greatest picture in depth before you're actually called to serve in that manner.
00:38:37
Speaker
I think that that is our highest calling because it's so expensive when you don't.
00:38:44
Speaker
But it's an interesting point because you, Mike, there was a lot of emphasis there in the story about Herb and what you just said about the importance of ethics and values and a common mission.
00:38:58
Speaker
And we've all experienced it.
00:39:00
Speaker
I've been in organizations where that was like super important.
00:39:04
Speaker
The leader, you know, set the standard for how we were going to treat people.
00:39:09
Speaker
All crazy important.
00:39:11
Speaker
But we also know that establishing that mission and values where everybody's on the same page, they all have the core same values, you know, in a diverse society, that's difficult.
00:39:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:25
Speaker
Right.
00:39:25
Speaker
And it doesn't mean you shouldn't keep working at it.
00:39:28
Speaker
But as you know, VisSolar's training is more focused on, okay,
00:39:32
Speaker
you know, ideally, yes, wonderful mission.
00:39:35
Speaker
Let's do it.
00:39:36
Speaker
Let's get everybody on the same page.
00:39:38
Speaker
But day to day, let's teach you some skills where you're going to treat people with dignity by showing them respect, not necessarily because it's in your moral fabric or because it's the values of the company, but because it's the selfish thing to do.
Managing Sociopaths in Professional Settings
00:39:57
Speaker
Because if you do
00:39:59
Speaker
Use these skills appropriately.
00:40:01
Speaker
You're going to have a better day.
00:40:02
Speaker
You're going to go home at the end of the day feeling more satisfied with your job, right?
00:40:06
Speaker
You're going to have less stress in your life.
00:40:08
Speaker
Do this because it works and it impacts you personally, not just because, you know, it's what the corporation wants me to do.
00:40:19
Speaker
So I think they all play a role, but I think it's important that people understand that these skills work
00:40:28
Speaker
And if they work, you personally are going to be better.
00:40:32
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:40:32
Speaker
I mean, I think that's the great paradox, selfish unselfishness.
00:40:36
Speaker
It's, you know, by serving and fulfilling that mission and doing it really well, you get more than you're ever going to give.
00:40:44
Speaker
You know, you don't want to go out and say that you almost feel like maybe we shouldn't say this out loud.
00:40:48
Speaker
But, you know, when you do these things well, you get to drive home with music in your head instead of, oh, man, I wish I'd done that differently.
00:40:58
Speaker
So I'm fully, yes, absolutely.
00:41:01
Speaker
I'm with you.
00:41:02
Speaker
100%.
00:41:05
Speaker
You know, at the, at the extreme, you know, you have a, I'll just use this at the, at the extreme extreme, but you have a sociopath working for your business, right?
00:41:14
Speaker
And you can talk to that person about empathy and company values and, you know, the moral and right thing to do and ethics and whatever, but you,
00:41:25
Speaker
That's probably, you know, just personality wise, that's not going to have a big impact.
00:41:30
Speaker
But if instead it's saying, we're going to teach you some skills, use these skills and you're going to, right.
00:41:35
Speaker
It's going to impact your life personally.
00:41:38
Speaker
You're going to be better off.
00:41:39
Speaker
You're going to be less stressed.
00:41:41
Speaker
You're going to enjoy your work with more, right?
00:41:44
Speaker
That's just another way to accomplish.
00:41:46
Speaker
True.
00:41:47
Speaker
And it's funny that you mentioned the sociopath, because I have some experience with a few, um, the, uh,
00:41:54
Speaker
Again, I mean, you look at the bottom line of what is the victory in dealing with a sociopath.
00:41:59
Speaker
It's either getting rid of them or getting rid of you because there's not much in between with individuals who function on that level.
00:42:08
Speaker
And your success scenarios are pretty limited, especially if that sociopath happens to hold a leadership position.
00:42:15
Speaker
above yours or parallel to yours.
00:42:18
Speaker
So, you know, surviving long enough to make a change for yourself so that you can continue on your mission with some other organization or, you know,
00:42:27
Speaker
Isolating that
Bullying in Healthcare and Its Impact
00:42:28
Speaker
individual and exposing that behavior as destructive to the organization and doing it in a professional way that doesn't leave you looking worse than the person who is, you know, acting like a sociopath or is a sociopath.
00:42:41
Speaker
That also is important because I think some people in the vacancy of good conflict skills, they go to an emotional extreme and end up looking worse than the person who did horrible things to them.
00:42:55
Speaker
Um, and I never, I've never heard more stories than in the healthcare system where nurses are bullied.
00:43:01
Speaker
I mean, they're nurturers and caregivers, but it's amazing how many of them, uh, find themselves in workplace bullying issues.
00:43:11
Speaker
Um, I just shocked.
00:43:12
Speaker
And you would, you would, you would think the problem would be, you know, the patient or in the ER, somebody, you know, the, somebody on drugs or the, the family member coming in with a,
00:43:23
Speaker
you know, child custody issue or whatever.
00:43:27
Speaker
And all those things are important and they all create a lot of conflict, a lot of stress, but yeah, you just keep hearing the stories about us, that inter-organizational thing that ends up having the biggest impact on people.
00:43:39
Speaker
So that's, I mean, as you know, Mike, I mean, that's part of our goal here at VisFly is to be thinking about how do we take the underlying skills and principles that we've been out teaching to contact professionals for 30 years,
00:43:53
Speaker
and bringing those skills into an inter-organizational environment to address those problems.
00:44:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think you guys are uniquely qualified to do that, just given the solid principles that you built your courses on and you built your training on.
00:44:11
Speaker
Just a little context shift, and I think this is reality.
00:44:15
Speaker
I think that course is definitely a reality on what you've already built.
00:44:20
Speaker
Cool.
00:44:21
Speaker
So good.
00:44:22
Speaker
I mean, I think this has been a great discussion.
00:44:24
Speaker
I think, Mike, I'd love to get back together with you in a future podcast.
00:44:29
Speaker
And maybe, I think we've done a good job of indicating that there's a problem here.
00:44:35
Speaker
It exists in every organization on the planet.
00:44:38
Speaker
It's inevitable.
00:44:38
Speaker
It's not going to go away.
00:44:41
Speaker
And the key here is how do you manage it well so you have a positive outcome instead of managing it poorly where things go south and all those negative things that you described.
00:44:52
Speaker
So I'd love to get back together, maybe talk through some of the solutions that you've been thinking about for years.
00:44:58
Speaker
I think I think that'd be a fun conversation to have.
00:45:01
Speaker
And I know we could probably do another hour or two on what's wrong.
00:45:05
Speaker
But I think we laid it out.
00:45:06
Speaker
I think if we could just get more leaders to acknowledge what you described in the horizontal violence or the internal conflict.
00:45:21
Speaker
and see how much impact that has on their organization and their bottom line.
00:45:27
Speaker
I mean, all board of directors, all leaders, all directors of finance look at the bottom line.
00:45:32
Speaker
And if you could quantify that just by some of the examples that we brought forward, there is a ton of loss, a ton of loss in the internal conflict space.
00:45:42
Speaker
And I would love to get back together with you and talk about how we can press forward in solving that.
00:45:47
Speaker
Well, you used a term there that
00:45:50
Speaker
It's probably been around forever because I'm not an HR person by background, but it's a term that I've learned only in the last few years.
00:45:59
Speaker
And again, I don't know how new a term it is.
00:46:00
Speaker
You might know, but this term will either lateral violence or horizontal violence.
00:46:06
Speaker
And it's, I think it's that term is what's used in the HR world to describe what we've been talking about here.
00:46:12
Speaker
Yes.
00:46:13
Speaker
Do you know what the origins of those words are?
00:46:16
Speaker
I first heard it in the 80s and it was more a discussion surrounding some of the activities in the Vietnam War area and then ended up being called fragging where people would take out their aggressions and disappointment on friendly soldiers or officers.
00:46:36
Speaker
And that was the first I heard that phrase used.
00:46:40
Speaker
Again, it kind of went from fragging in the military sense into the HR and professional conflict world as horizontal violence.
00:46:48
Speaker
But, you know, I'm hearing it more and more.
00:46:49
Speaker
And I think people are finally starting to understand that, you know, this is a real phenomenon and it's something that they need to address.
00:46:58
Speaker
Well, it's interesting.
00:46:59
Speaker
It's it's.
00:47:01
Speaker
For whatever reason, the term didn't become lateral discord or lateral, you know, upsetness or lateral disagreement.
00:47:09
Speaker
It was lateral violence, horizontal violence.
00:47:13
Speaker
Obviously, somebody decided to put that term to it to make it as significant as it is.
00:47:19
Speaker
And again, I think once you see it got to be more and more prevalent when workplace shootings started happening.
00:47:26
Speaker
That was a rare, rare, if ever.
00:47:29
Speaker
I remember the origins of it were back with the Postal Service and, you know, the people almost made a funny catchphrase out of it, you know, like a disgruntled postal worker.
00:47:41
Speaker
And then it started to become more and more real.
00:47:43
Speaker
So violence, you know, violence is, you know, it's physical, it's mental, it's emotional.
00:47:49
Speaker
It is, it exists on, on all those levels.
00:47:52
Speaker
So I think some people have, have under labeled it for years.
00:47:56
Speaker
And now that violence is actually being properly attributed to that behavior, I think that's a good thing because it'll get the attention to what it needs to be.
Emotional Scars of Bullying: Relevance to Workplace Conflict
00:48:05
Speaker
where, you know, we start putting dignity and respect back into the workplace.
00:48:09
Speaker
And I'd love to see some legislation come along on that too.
00:48:11
Speaker
So we can talk about that in, in, uh, solutions as well.
00:48:14
Speaker
We need it regulatory as well as procedural.
00:48:18
Speaker
You know, Mike, you, uh, I bet you know this very, very well.
00:48:23
Speaker
And, uh, as you know, we've, we've put some time into, uh, children bullying also over the years.
00:48:31
Speaker
And, um,
00:48:32
Speaker
have a program that's in martial arts schools around the country.
00:48:35
Speaker
But the thing that I find just extraordinarily interesting is you could be talking to anybody.
00:48:43
Speaker
And in my experience, this is universal.
00:48:47
Speaker
And they go, what do you do?
00:48:48
Speaker
And you start talking about bullying, which is not a topic that normally comes up in a conversation, but I can bring it up.
00:48:54
Speaker
Oh, you know, we have, you know, conflict management company and we do some work with kids with bullying.
00:48:59
Speaker
Almost universally, and I would say universally,
00:49:02
Speaker
you can look at the person you're talking to and their brain will go immediately back to being eight years old or 10 years old or 12 years old and being on the, you know, in the hallway or in the schoolyard or whatever and being bullied.
00:49:18
Speaker
And that memory is like big time embedded.
00:49:23
Speaker
And I bet around that same time, they probably got hit in the shoulder.
00:49:26
Speaker
They probably got punched in the face and they probably don't even remember that.
00:49:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:30
Speaker
Right.
00:49:30
Speaker
But that,
00:49:31
Speaker
That emotional bullying, it's a sword that's deeper than the physical in some cases.
00:49:42
Speaker
hurt that people have when they're kids.
00:49:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:44
Speaker
I think there's, there's so much science surrounding how an emotional event is recorded by the brain and how it's recalled and, and, you know, just how the, the amygdala and the, uh, the, the hippocampus, uh, bring back and alert you to threats that you've suffered in the past.
00:50:02
Speaker
Uh, when I pitched my first, uh, my first project for funding seed funding, uh,
00:50:08
Speaker
at an incubator, some of the investors, the question I asked is, how many of you can remember an incident where you were bullied as a kid?
00:50:18
Speaker
And they all put their hand up.
00:50:20
Speaker
And I said, do you remember how it felt?
00:50:23
Speaker
When you went home that day, were you afraid to talk to your parents?
00:50:27
Speaker
Were you afraid to go back to school the next day?
00:50:29
Speaker
Were you afraid to walk around the corner because you knew that the kid that had inflicted that pain on you was going to be around the corner?
00:50:35
Speaker
And they all, you could see it.
00:50:37
Speaker
Like there was an emotional shift in the room.
00:50:40
Speaker
I could have asked for millions and millions of dollars and I probably would have gotten it because I don't think there's a human being alive that can't recall an abusive relationship that has marked them for life.
Future Discussions on Conflict Solutions
00:50:53
Speaker
And what higher calling could we have than to help a young person or a parent who's trying to help their child come through that in some form that doesn't look like PTSD where they're impaired by it.
00:51:08
Speaker
Right.
00:51:09
Speaker
So yeah, I'm with anybody who stands to help press that solution.
00:51:14
Speaker
I'm there.
00:51:14
Speaker
I'll be there.
00:51:15
Speaker
You call night or day.
00:51:18
Speaker
I mean, I've seen people where you talk about bullying.
00:51:21
Speaker
And literally their face turns red.
00:51:25
Speaker
And you go, what is going on?
00:51:26
Speaker
And they go, yeah, yeah.
00:51:28
Speaker
Let me tell you about when I was eight.
00:51:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:30
Speaker
Really?
00:51:31
Speaker
Right.
00:51:31
Speaker
I mean, it's, it's.
00:51:32
Speaker
And the ones you don't probably have too many memories of how they inflicted that pain on somebody else.
00:51:39
Speaker
Well, you got that problem too.
00:51:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:41
Speaker
Those are those sociopaths.
00:51:43
Speaker
I always enjoy my conversations with you.
00:51:45
Speaker
Thank you so much for your time today and be safe.
00:51:51
Speaker
Always.
00:51:52
Speaker
Right.
00:51:52
Speaker
You're up in that airplane.
00:51:54
Speaker
I'm I'm on vacation for a little bit, but I could think of no other way that I'd rather spend my an hour of my time than talking with you about these topics.
00:52:04
Speaker
It just it's a it's a daily effort and part of my daily mission.
00:52:09
Speaker
And yeah, I can't wait to talk to you again and look forward to that opportunity to to move to solution conversations.
00:52:18
Speaker
There we go.
00:52:19
Speaker
Thanks a lot.
00:52:20
Speaker
Take care.
00:52:20
Speaker
Thanks, Al.
00:52:21
Speaker
Take care.
00:52:22
Speaker
Well, that wraps up another episode of Confidence in Conflict.
00:52:26
Speaker
In the introduction to this episode, I stated that you've probably experienced the intra-organizational conflict that Mike and I would discuss.
00:52:33
Speaker
Well, was I right?
00:52:35
Speaker
I'm guessing I was because everyone I've ever asked about lateral violence ends up telling me story after story about this negative aspect of organizational life.
00:52:45
Speaker
In a future episode, I'll loop back with Mike and talk about some possible solutions to this pervasive problem.
00:52:52
Speaker
In the meantime, if you want more expert advice on how to prevent and better manage conflict, subscribe to this podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:53:02
Speaker
And if you like this episode, please write us a review.
00:53:05
Speaker
Also visit Vistalar.com slash blog to get notes for this show, share your comments, and access additional conflict management resources.
00:53:15
Speaker
Take care and stay safe.