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Now...this week I'd like to discuss four things – how we can understand and leverage our relationship with conflict, insights from one of the most talented entrepreneurs I know, lessons in writing a memoir, and a rebuttal to the attempted canceling of scientist Richard Dawkins.
π£ What's your relationship with conflict?
On most occasions, I'm comfortable with conflict. I can give feedback, challenge an idea, negotiate terms, and so on with relative ease.
I don't seek conflict, but I also don't shy away from it. My relationship with conflict has been shaped by at least three pillars – my biology, my childhood experiences, and my philosophy.
Biology: I'm in the ~50th percentile of "agreeableness" per the Big 5 personality test. That means I value getting along with others, but I am also relatively comfortable with challenging people and their thinking.
Childhood Experiences: I grew up in a turbulent household that often featured heated arguments and even physical altercations. Through exposure to conflict, I learned about how conflict can help ease tensions and how people can still love one another even after fighting.
Philosophy: I believe that in life and business, we can all improve and grow. We owe it to ourselves and others to engage in situations that may be uncomfortable and involve conflict if those situations can help foster healthy and productive change.
This philosophy is based on a few core ideas:
- I believe that we need to address problems/frustrations with ourselves and in our relationships when they're small. Otherwise, they can grow much larger and lead to resentment or massive blowups. Resentment and blowups often cause irreparable damage. So I'd rather have an uncomfortable conversation early on than try to bury frustrations that may later balloon into something more destructive.
- I believe that with the right mix of observation, empathy, and compassionate communication, we can deliver and receive messages that help ourselves and others grow. Admittedly, this is a difficult balance to strike, but we can improve this skill like any other skill.
- I believe that learning to engage in healthy conflict is a meta-skill that requires many of the traits I value in people – humility, open-mindedness, empathy, less ego, self-reflection, a penchant for learning, and a willingness to be honest with how little we know.
Now...that's my personal relationship and philosophy with conflict.
What I've learned over the years is that I cannot expect other people to share my beliefs about and relationship with conflict.
In fact, many of my closest friends really dislike conflict. Their beliefs are formed on different pillars, but it's always that the unique mix of their biology, childhood experiences, and philosophies that have led them to different conclusions about conflict than me.
For example, while traveling with my best friend around the world, there were two instances where I got so frustrated that I knocked a box of cereal off the kitchen counter. While I try not to ever let internal frustration turn into physical expressions of frustration, I'm not perfect. These were two instances where I failed to keep my composure.
After the second cereal box incident, my friend was so upset by the event that I thought I might lose him as a friend. From my perspective, I had certainly lost my cool and not acted in calibrated ways, but was this really something to lose a friend over?
Well...he has a very different relationship with conflict.
He grew up in a household where people did not raise their voices, let alone express their frustration in physical ways. The idea that someone like me could lose his temper and slap a box of cereal was an affront to his belief that it's best to remain cool and collected, regardless of how upset you are.
Accepting the gravity of the encounter, I vowed to never knock over a cereal box again. I also learned something about myself and my friend.
Since that encounter, I've realized that the differences in how me and my friend view conflict have led us to have very different approaches to many situations in life and business.
We have diverging approaches in everything from how we think about negotiation, to our willingness to directly challenge people, to the solutions we propose for various problems at work.
How we see conflict is not the only variable driving the differences, but it's a more significant factor than you might expect.
Now, I'm not commenting on who's approach is better or worse. Rather, I'm pointing out that we all have different relationships with conflict that influence how we respond to things that happen in our lives.
I believe our relationship with conflict deeply influences how we feel about certain situations, how we navigate difficulties in relationships, and how we operate in the professional world.
Without understanding our relationship with conflict and how it manifests in specific situations, we're not able to operate at our full potential.
For example, if you're a manager working with someone who is underperforming, your relationship with conflict may affect your approach and ability to address the issue.
If you're a low-conflict person, you may fear giving feedback to this underperforming employee. You want to be liked, and you don't want to deliver bad news, so you might be inclined to avoid the tough conversation and allow the underperformance to continue.
This approach may work out if the employee is self-aware and gets his act together. But it also may lead to the employee never knowing he is underperforming and later being fired unexpectedly without having received the right feedback. I've seen this happen many times.
If, on the other hand, you are more comfortable with conflict, you may come up with a performance improvement plan that addresses the main issues and gives a timeline/resources for solving them. This provides clarity to the employee, and it's up to him to respond appropriately. This approach may backfire if you deliver the message in harsh ways.
In both scenarios, the efficacy of your approach is also related to the employee's relationship with conflict. So you must account for his beliefs as well if you want to maximize the probability of a good outcome.
In life and business, everyone has different natural tendencies, experiences, and philosophies.
This reality is one of the reasons that makes personal and professional relationships so difficult, especially in situations that may involve conflict.
So what can we do to increase the probability that we have healthier interactions with others when there is potential conflict involved?
The first step is self-awareness.
What's your relationship with conflict? How did it form? How does it manifest in different situations? How do your beliefs differ from the beliefs of others? How can you adapt your style for others?
Without self-awareness, we cannot effectively deal with situations that may involve conflict.
Once we understand ourselves, the next step is reflecting on how to approach difficult situations before they actually happen.
I like to use the message, messenger, and receiver framework.
In every difficult conversation, there are three basic elements:
- Message: What you or someone else wants to communicate.
- Messenger: You or whoever is delivering the message.
- Receiver: The person receiving the message.
Imagine that you have some piece of feedback that you want to give to someone else, and you're worried about the potential for conflict. The way to mitigate this risk is to walk through the framework.
For the message, think about what it is that you want to communicate. There are dozens of ways to communicate a message. You can tell a story, be direct, sandwich the idea between other ideas, and so on. You can do it in person, over the phone, or over a beer.
To know what tactic to use, think about what you know about the receiver. What's his relationship with conflict? What are his beliefs? What have you seen work and not work in that past?
Finally, think about the relationship between you – the messenger – and the receiver. Is this your boss or direct report? What does he think about you? What does he think about your intentions?
Armed with this information, you select a path forward. You choose the message, the medium, and the timing.
In some cases, you may even decide to leverage a different messenger.
I've encountered times where I'm not the best messenger for someone because of their relationship with me, their preexisting beliefs about me, past experiences we've had, and so on.
So instead of risking a high-conflict situation that doesn't allow the other person to hear the message, I find a more suitable messenger for relaying the information.
This message, messenger, and receiver framework is not perfect, but it increases the chances that we have productive interactions with others that move all of us in the right direction.
Remember, the goal is not to be right or to change people.
It's to cultivate healthy interactions with the people we love, to get more out of our personal and professional lives, and to help others along the way.
I'll leave you with a question.
How can you better understand and leverage your relationship with conflict to enrich your life and the lives of the people around you?
π¨π» Interview with Entrepreneur Dror Liebenthal
I recently interview Dror Liebenthal, the the ambitious CEO of Bold.org who is reimagining the world of philanthropy.
I first met Dror at Princeton University in 2011. Since then, we've worked together at three companies, traveled to 10+ countries, and helped each other grow as people and professionals.
Over the years, I've been impressed with how Dror has systematically prioritized learning and applied first principles thinking to his decision-making processes.
Dror has also rapidly ascended in the world of startups. He's now one of the best startup operators, builders, and leaders I know.
What's awesome about Dror is that he's applying his intelligence, expertise, and tenacity to solving hard problems that improve the quality of people's lives at scale.
Along the way, he continues to be a compassionate person, a man of integrity, a wonderful friend, and someone who values family.
I'm thrilled to share my interview with Dror in which he discusses his life story, most valuable habits, leadership lessons, and how he's disrupting the world of philanthropy with Bold.org.
π Life Reimagined Insights with Entrepreneur Dror Liebenthal
I hope you enjoy getting to know Dror – he's awesome!
✍️ The Art of Memoir
I recently published my notes for Mary Karr's The Art of Memoir. If you're an aspiring nonfiction writer, this book is full of useful gems.
A few of the key takeaways you'll learn about in my notes:
- The relationship between experience and truth
- How to develop a voice that resonates
- Using transformation as an organizing principle
- How to deal with the people you write about
- What to do when you're stuck
You can access all of my notes from her book with Foundations, which is the growing digital library where I publish key takeaways from all the best books I've read. It recently crossed 100 book notes published!
Use the code lrcommunity for 20% off at checkout.
π¨π¬ The World of Canceling Academics
The American Humanist Association recently revoked its 1996 AHA Humanist of the Year award from scientist Richard Dawkins over some Tweets that he recently made.
While I believe people should be accountable for wrongdoing and harming others, this situation is one of the increasing number of examples I've seen of organizations going too far in discrediting someone based on subjective interpretations of a sentence or two of a lifetime of work.
If you're not familiar with the situation, I encourage you to read about it, form your own opinions, and check out Steven Pinker and Rebecca's Goldstein's response to the AHA protesting the decision.
April 21st 2021
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Thanks for tuning in, and see you in two weeks.
Cheers,
Cal
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