Last week a client called me, with whom I had completed a Coaching Process over a year ago. He was very stressed because there was a conflict between two managers in his company.
Two people who have very different behavioral profiles and who are often involved in friction.
The director’s anguish was that in the midst of so many accusations, he feared disappointment at the thought of one of the two lying. Not knowing what to do because he recognized how important they were to the company, he decided to call me.
Think about it, if you’re the director and you’re in a situation like this, what’s the first thing you should do?
The first step in a situation where we are in pain and can’t manage our emotions is to distance ourselves, look at the situation from the outside, and list the facts without the emotion.
When a leader is affected by a conflict in his team and becomes emotionally involved, he needs to distance himself and understand what is taking his self-control away at that particular moment. Only then will he be better able to understand the needs of those involved and help them too.
In this case, as he had already gone through a process of self-knowledge, it was easy to identify what he needed to see in himself, so that he could reassume his inner leadership and then be an effective leader in that situation. A call of just over 5 minutes and he was in control to resolve the conflict.
Those who have this deep self-knowledge are able to succeed in everything from a job interview to a negotiation involving large companies and fortunes.
Self-knowledge is what makes it possible to know what kind of situation will get you down and make you react in a way that is detrimental to your goal. Usually our most intemperate reactions are those that hit us directly in an unmet need for value.
A leader is first and foremost someone who knows himself deeply enough to know how to control his inner game in the most adverse situations and not become his own adversary in a conflict situation. This awareness of who you are, what your values are and what is important to you, puts you in a position to take the lead and enables you to control your actions and reactions and not jeopardize the goal you want to achieve.
This is what Daniel Golleman calls self-management. The way we manage our emotions and our own mood.
To lead a negotiation, a leader needs to have a clear focus on where they want to go and steer the conversation towards this goal by arousing positive emotions in the people they are negotiating with.
It’s important to be aware that our brains are primed to automatically see the negative side of everything we experience; it’s a way we’ve found since cave times to protect ourselves and ensure our survival.
The fact is that we have evolved as humanity and we need to learn to focus on the opportunities that a conflict presents, not just the threats.
Focusing on opportunities is what differentiates a person who exercises internal leadership.
Let’s say you’re looking for a job, for example. Focusing on the fear of not being able to support your family prevents you from seeing countless job opportunities, because the threat here is not being able to meet your basic need for survival. In this situation of unemployment, the biggest fear is not being able to survive, which is very legitimate.
And my invitation to job seekers is to change the focus of their gaze.
What if, in this situation, you did the exercise of visualizing yourself in a job that tied you down all day for a salary that only meets your needs for housing and food.
What opportunities would you be missing out on to become more fulfilled while staying in a job that only serves to meet your basic needs?
The challenge is to change the focus, to broaden the field of vision. So you can start looking for jobs that give you the fulfillment of working in something that really makes sense to you.
And when you find that job opportunity, sit down to negotiate the vacancy with the interviewer, connecting with them, understanding what they really need and how you can help them achieve their goals, demonstrating that you share the same values as the company and this is an opportunity for both of you to achieve your goals.
We know that more and more companies are looking for people who share their values and, if necessary, many companies invest in the technical development of a new employee, because they know that they will have a truly engaged employee there because their main motivation is not the salary at the end of the month, but being able to contribute to the company’s growth by doing what they do best.
When we connect and create an emotional bond, understanding the other person’s needs, we can even change their way of thinking.
Because deep down in a conflict, what everyone wants is to be heard. That’s why an outsider with no emotional involvement is important to mediate the conversation.
And this applies to both professional and personal negotiations.
We negotiate every day without even realizing it. Becoming aware that we can lead in the most diverse negotiations that life throws at us makes us leaders who are prepared to overcome the internal and external conflicts we face on a daily basis.
#internalleadership #conflictmanagement #eaglesinspirationknowledge
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