Dealing with Workplace Conflict

Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict (with 17 years of nonprofit leadership experience, David Dye speaks to how conflict is often not addressed well in NPO settings and how to do it well for more collaboration)

Too often, team members don’t have the meaningful, collaborative conflict that builds better results, creates innovation, and helps you serve your clients and communities. Often, people think of conflict as strictly destructive and avoid it altogether. But with the right tools, you can easily help your teams move from destructive or avoided conflict to meaningful collaboration in pursuit of your mission.

David Dye helps leaders and teams achieve transformational results without sacrificing their humanity. As a former nonprofit executive and elected official, he is known for practical leadership techniques you can use right away. He’s President of Let’s Grow Leaders, a global leadership development firm known for practical tools and techniques for human-centered leaders. David is also an award-winning author of six books including Courageous Cultures – How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers and Customer Advocates and Powerful Phrases for Dealing With Workplace Conflict: What to Say Next to Destress the Workday, Build Collaboration and Calm Difficult Customers. He also hosts the popular podcast: Leadership without Losing Your Soul.

Website – https://letsgrowleaders.com

Participate in Future Interviews live on Zoom

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
Welcome to the nonprofit exchange. This is Hugh Ballou, Founder and President of SynerVision leadership foundation, where we create synergy as leaders around the vision that we support, we articulate, and we’re passionate about that vision. Our co-host today, as always, is David Dunworth, chair of the board of Center Vision Leadership Foundation. And our guest today has a really important topic, David Dye. We’re going to talk about conflict in an organization. So, David, tell people a little bit about your background, who you are, and your passion for this topic.

David Dye:
Thanks so much, Hugh. Yeah, my passion for this topic So I started my career working in the nonprofit industry. I spent 17 years, uh, as a volunteer frontline employee, uh, team leader, chief operating officer, CEO, and board member consultancy. After I left the 17 years career in any way, I’ve gained a lot of experience in the nonprofit world and my master’s degree is in nonprofit management and, the need, for us to be able to have meaningful conversations with one another about things that matter in service to our mission, to our clients, to whatever it is that we’re doing, the important work that your organization is doing. And the fact that often in nonprofit organizations, the cause starts to overwhelm. And what I mean by that, especially in newer organizations that maybe haven’t got as much maturity in them is that The work we’re doing is so important and so meaningful, that often that kind of overwhelms some of the other things that need to happen, like having a good conflict conversation about priorities, about scarce resources, or about how to stop having scarce resources and have more of an investment mentality. So All of those kinds of conversations require us to get good at navigating workplace conflict. Nonprofit faith-based and cause-oriented organizations are not always the best at doing that. And so that’s where my passion and experience brought me. Part of my background, Hugh, if I’m being transparent, is that I started my career not very good at these conversations. I would avoid them. I would run from them, like many people. I’m not unique that way. They’re uncomfortable. And so I didn’t know how to do them. And I thought the worst would happen if I did have them. And so as a result, I internalized, shoved a lot of things down and spent time agonizing and in anxiety that was unnecessary. As I can tell you more about that, but that was how I started. And I’ve definitely learned the value of these. And so I’m on a mission to help people have these conversations in an effective way.

Hugh Ballou:
That is awesome. And that’s avoid it. As a matter of fact, I served churches as music director for 40 years, and clergy typically want to avoid it, which accelerates it. You’ll talk more about that. One of the people I interviewed for a long article I wrote was a bishop in the Methodist Church. So conflict is a sign of energy, but we just don’t know how to manage it. Now, you recently did a global survey of 5,000 people. We’ve got some questions we want to try to get through so we can get to the heart of this. So talk about that survey. What did you learn?

David Dye:
Yeah, that’s right. So Harper Collins leadership came to us and asked us to write this book, Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict. And we wanted to find out what’s happening in the world right now when it comes to workplace conflict. So we asked 5000 people, from 46 countries, all 50 United States, about the frequency, are experiencing more or less the same and 70% said the same or more conflict now than in the years before. And of those 30%, who said less, half of those said it’s less because they escaped. They escaped a bad, they’ve left the job, they escaped a toxic coworker, or they’re working from home and they’re not interacting with people at all, which is nice and peaceful for them. But what’s lost in all of that is that positive energy that you were talking about and the interactions and the creativity. And then we asked a number of other questions, but one of the big ones was, tell us about a workplace conflict, a big one that you had some time in your career. And if you could go back and give your former self advice, what would you tell yourself? And that was fascinating. 76% of people, when you combine the two top responses, just over half of people said, I would tell myself to be patient, stay calm. And 21% said, I’d tell myself to talk about it, talk about it sooner, have the conversation. So that’s 76% of folks saying, be patient, stay calm, talk about it. That’s powerful. In a survey that big across the world, it doesn’t even vary by region. three-quarters of people give themselves the same advice. Be calm. Be patient. Talk about it. OK, good. That’s good advice. How do you do it? And so that’s why we got into these practical, specific phrases to help people have those conversations.

David Dunworth:
OK. Very, very, very impactful and interesting. Wow. Over how many countries? Forty-six.

David Dye:
Forty-six countries.

David Dunworth:
Yeah. Oh, that’s quite a quite a survey. What do you think about that, Hugh? Are you with me?

Hugh Ballou:
I am. I just said I got a little background noise muted here, but that’s really good. That’s really good. So we really reframing it is what you’ve talked about. You’re reframing the engagement and sometimes just being together. I’ve studied the work of Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist, and family systems, not even having to talk about the issue of spending time together and building relationships. You know, it’s the last hour, David, the last start off. talking to each other. We talked about that in our community meeting today in Center Vision. So, David, you got a question, don’t you?

David Dunworth:
Well, yeah, that leads right into what, you know, our topic is that because we’re in work with people, we spend more time at work, whether it’s a non-profit, a company, whatever, you’re doing your own business, that we spend as much or more time with the employees or with the stakeholders, coworkers than we do with our own family. And so just like any other relationship, you know, conflicts are inevitable. David, what are the first steps in your mind that are used to diffuse that difficult situation that obviously will come up time and time again?

David Dye:
Yeah, David, I so appreciate you highlighting that conflict is inevitable. If we’re talking or we’re dealing with another human being, we have conflict because we see things differently. We have different experiences, different value sets, all of that. We’re trying to achieve different things. We understand things differently, right? So the first place to start for any of this isn’t even with another human being. It’s the conversation we have with ourselves. So, you know, I’m thinking about, uh, uh, uh, nonprofit work. I was 18 months in working for a CEO, a nonprofit CEO who is doing this marketing event. I’m a frontline team leader. I got a team of three people and the CEO pulled together this marketing event. So he’s bringing potential funders, big wigs, uh, you know, no notable people from the community and puts on this marketing event, but it was, it felt fake to me. felt like it lacked integrity. And I didn’t feel he was being upfront with the people who were attending about what was happening. I really thought it lacked integrity, but I didn’t say anything because CEO, right? So for three days, I’m, as I mentioned, not talking about it. And instead, I’m not sleeping, I’m stewing and tossing and turning and all this anxiety, like, how can he be this way? Doesn’t he get, we’re a values-based organization? What’s wrong with him? Finally, after three days of that and not sleeping, I didn’t use any of these powerful phrases. I just popped my cork and I said, listen, I don’t like it, this is wrong. This is lax integrity. I don’t want my team to be a part of this. I don’t want to lead them in it. No, I’m out. And what do you think happened next? Right? Well, I was expecting to be handed a box and my final check, but that’s not what happened. What happened was incredibly powerful. He said, David, I don’t see it that way. I don’t think it lacks integrity at all. but I don’t want you to violate your conscience either.” So my question for you, and he asked me a question I really should have thought about from the beginning. He said, David, how can we make this work for you? We need to raise this money. We need to have the event. How can we do that in a way that your conscience will be clear? It was a great question. Took me 15 seconds, 15 seconds to come up with an answer. Oh, well, let’s just tell them this situation. And without getting into all the details, what’s going on here. He says, yeah, we can do that. Let’s do it. 15 seconds and I could have avoided all of that angst. What he taught me in that moment as a very young career, as a nonprofit professional, was that if nothing changes, nothing will change. If I don’t say something, I’m depriving that person of the ability to teach me something, to make a different choice, for all of us to improve. And so in those moments, if we don’t say something, silence is selfish. And so the first conversation is with ourselves. What’s at stake if we stay silent? What happens if we don’t speak? What are we telling and communicating? What values are we communicating if we don’t say anything? So those are the places to start.

David Dunworth:
Yeah, great, great point there.

Hugh Ballou:
Violence is selfish. Did you pick that up, David?

David Dunworth:
Yeah, I was thinking as David was speaking, I’m thinking, well, that’s our own selfish ego. Yeah, I think the way we think is the best way rather than, as he mentioned, you know, getting that conversation internally without the ego in place. Sure.

Hugh Ballou:
Yeah. So people are listening to the nonprofit exchange. We interview leaders with thoughts and systems and reversals of thinking sometimes that we really need as leaders to freshen up our skills. And a lot of important stuff’s going by. And you’re not taking you’re trying to take notes. Don’t worry. If you go to thenonprivateexchange.org, you’ll find a transcript of this interview. And this interview is the one about conflict. So, David, in your book, this interview, It is about your book, but it’s about your work and your passion. You talk about four dimensions of constructive conflict. I thought it was all bad. Come on, help me with this. So what are some phrases we might use?

David Dye:
Absolutely. Well, let’s start with that framework of when we think of conflict, a lot of us naturally go to the destructive conflict that tears one another down. We don’t need any of that in our life. Nobody needs more of that. What we do need the constructive conflict or another way to think about that is collaboration. Like that’s harnessing all that positive energy that you mentioned, the bishop mentioned earlier. So these four dimensions that you’re talking about are ways that we can invest to diminish the destructive conflict. And in the moment of these conversations, enhance constructive conflict or collaboration. So these four dimensions, are connection, clarity, curiosity, and commitment. And so the connection is You know, and you mentioned earlier, the relationship, the more relationships we have, the more trust is there, the easier all these conversations get. But we can do that in the moment too. So we’re in the moment of a conversation and we’re feeling it get tense and there’s a disagreement. So, okay, well, a couple of things we can say, some easy ones. How about this? Tell me more. Three words, right? Tell me more. When somebody’s starting to fire up or you feel the amplitude of their emotions are going like, okay, tell me more. Maybe tell me more until they’re played out and you really have, they have told you what they need to, or another one. Um, it sounds like you’re feeling blank. Do I have that? Right. So I’m checking to make a connection at the emotional level. So, you know, it sounds like you’re really frustrated about the way the board is approaching this. Is that right? Or it sounds like you’re really excited about this opportunity. Now, I may not be excited about this opportunity at all. I may think it’s a huge mistake. But before we have any of that conversation, I need to start where you are and connect with where you are. So it sounds like you’re feeling blank. Is that right? We call that reflect to connect, and it’s a great way to establish a connection in the moment. So that’s a connection. Then we go to clarity and clarity. I like to think 90 percent of the conflict conversations I think we have at work come down to a lack of a shared understanding. And we’re working off a different script where we have different interpretations, different about what have you. So clarity in an organization, is so important. But one of my favorite clarity, powerful phrases, and we call these the GOATs. These are the greatest of all time, powerful phrases because they’re so transferable. You use them in so many different places. This is one of the most important of all of the GOATs. What would a successful outcome do for you? So I’m not just asking, hey, what do you want here? Because you might say, well, I want to do the project this way. And if we just stop there, well, now we’re stuck because you want it this way, I want it this way, and we can’t solve that. But if I can ask, what would a successful outcome do for you? And you’re like, oh, you know what I really need from this project is I need to showcase my skills to our CEO or to our executive director. or to our pastor, because I really want that promotion. I want that next level. And this is a great chance for me to do that.” Okay, awesome. And maybe I share, well, you know what a successful outcome would do for me? I’m going to get home by seven o’clock every night so I can see my kids. Now that we know what we both need from this, now we can start to craft a solution that can meet both of those needs. But until we know that, we can’t have a productive conversation. So that’s just an example of a clarity go. So connection and clarity to, to get us started here on these four dimensions.

David Dunworth:
Wow. That’s powerful stuff. You know, the late, uh, um, Oh, his, his name is, is just skipped me. But, uh, the way you’re, you’re explaining this concept is very much like how when two people have opposing viewpoints if they lay down their battle weapons and constructively figure out, you come up with a better solution than either side had. That’s super stuff. Super stuff. Thanks for that. You know what? I’m a person and funny, we talked about this just this morning. I’m a person who spent a whole life saying, yes, what’s the question? You know, the answer is yes. What’s the question? I don’t know how to say no. And it’s taken me a lifetime to figure out how to do that. So how, you know, let’s just use, and I’m not the only one, I know there’s a world of people out there. How can you learn or give us some examples rather of how we can learn to say no and not light a fuse to somebody?

David Dye:
David, I am so glad you brought up that question because I think this is my favorite, possibly my favorite chapter in the entire book. Chapter eight is what to say when you need to say no, even to your boss. And let’s start with a mindset here. You may not have thought you were saying no, but all of us are saying no hundreds, if not thousands of times a day, constantly, we are saying no. And so this is the place to begin. Every time we say yes to something, we are saying no to everything else. So if I say yes to doing this interview with you right now, I’m saying no to client work. I’m saying no to reading that good book. I’m saying no to time with my son. I’m saying no to a thousand other things. Those are conscious decisions. So what we want to do are make our yeses and our nos intentional. And so that’s the mindset to start with. Then we get into how do we use these powerful phrases to do it? So let’s say your boss comes to you. You’re feeling overwhelmed. Your executive director says, Hey, I’ve got this new project. It’s really going to serve our clients. Here’s what, here’s what we need to do. Well, we’re going to start with connection. Hey, executive director. I see what you’re out doing there. Tell me more, maybe. I get to learn a little bit. OK. I see what you’re after. That is exciting. I see the impact that will have. So I can start with connection. What is it that the value that they’re seeing? Or maybe I affirm my commitment. Hey, I am really committed to this project. I’m really committed to the team. I’m really committed to our clients, and our organization’s success. So I’m going to affirm the relationship and the value of what it is that they’re coming from. Then I go to clarity. So listen, right now I’ve got these three priorities, these three projects that I’m working on that are taking up everything I got. And I could divert my attention to work on what you just said. If I do that, here are the consequences as I see them to the existing work. So I’m getting clear, drawing that clarity. Then I might propose an alternative solution. So another way of addressing this might be to or another way to resource it, or another way to schedule it, or another way to shift priorities might be. And I put that on the table. And then I asked them their perspective. So how’s this look from your perspective? What do you think we could do here? And then as we have that conversation, we can move to commitment. And a footnote on that CEO that I said lacked integrity. A couple of years later, I was a chief operating officer in that organization. And he had one of these visionary ideas that took us in a radically different direction. And I said, you know what you’re asking me to do here? is to take the axle off of our bus and use it as a flagpole to put on top of this mountain that you’re wanting to climb. And he said, you know, that’s a really good analogy. And so, but it was, that’s the kind of conversation we were having about those trade-offs. Now let’s talk about it. And so that’s a way to say no, but I’m starting by saying yes, and then asking what’s possible.

Hugh Ballou:
And what are the consequences if we do that? And at least he didn’t say, oh, we’re going to miss you around here. Moving from that question. Now we could talk about leaders and there’s myths that we inherit about nonprofit work. There are assumptions and dysfunctions that we think are normal. So many times leaders set up conflict. But let’s go more specifically if you want to comment on that. We think that nonprofits are exempt from this, because, oh, we’re doing charitable work, and we’re all good people. But there’s a special place for conflict. And you and I both have worked inside the nonprofits and outside of nonprofits, so internally and externally. So what kind of lens do you have about conflict in nonprofits, and how do we deal with it?

David Dye:
Yeah, and I actually feel really strongly about this because I have observed over the years and have helped and consulted or seen it from the inside and the consultant chair perspective where some organizations, whether it be they mission-based, faith-based, what have you, can get really toxic because of this emphasis on the mission and that that should subsume everything. Well, if you really believed in the mission, you would XYZ. That immediately shuts down meaningful conversation. It keeps us from having conversations about alternative paths, about more efficient ways to do things, about tradeoffs. You know, it may be if I really cared, I would actually challenge if this is the best use of resources, time, money, talent, whatever it is. And so the ability to have those conversations in service of our mission is critical. and recognizing that as mission-driven people, there is an Achilles heel, a tendency that can happen where we say, if we really cared, we would. And we have to be really, really careful about using that phrase because often it’s used to shut down constructive, collaborative dissent that would really help us to build a better future together.

David Dunworth:
Interesting stuff. Wow, let me move in a slightly different direction. We all from time to time and nonprofits are no different than a business or even if you’re an entrepreneur of overwhelmed, taking on so much that you just can’t take anymore. And you as the leader recognize that maybe you overburden somebody how do you talk about that overwhelm and not create conflict, but help them to either delegate some of it, or push back a little bit? What do you do with that person?

David Dye:
Yeah, well, the first thing I want to do is if you are listening and you’re feeling that way, is to recognize that your manager may not know. And so many of us tell ourselves this story that, well, my manager certainly knows they have to understand what’s going on and they may not. In fact, they probably don’t because you’re the one with your experience. They don’t have your experience. They have all their own stuff they’re dealing with. So for you, this is again, a mindset. The first conversation is with ourselves is that you do have a responsibility to speak up because if you don’t, all of your responsibilities are ultimately not going to be met when you burn out and crash. And that will happen if we don’t solve this problem. So, so having some of these conversations, investing in, so starting with connection. I might use a phrase like, Hey, I really care about our success here. And then I moved to clarity. I am feeling overwhelmed just to say that, like, I am concerned that a ball is going to drop, that I don’t have the ability to do all these things at an equally good level. And then if I say yes to something else, or if I don’t say no to something, here are the consequences as I see them. And then you can have some, there’s some different phrases we give you to have these conversations. Like, let’s say you’re talking to your manager about this. If I had to drop a ball here, which one should that be? Right? Just that’s a practical question. And often your manager will have a really good answer for you. Oh, well, that’s not as important. Oh, it isn’t. Oh gosh. Okay. Right. Sometimes it’s just asking for help. Hey, I could use some help with this or to achieve our goals. Can we agree that? And you propose a solution. Here’s what I need. Um, if you have a team that’s feeling overwhelmed, do they come to you with these things? One of the most important things to do from a connection standpoint Connect and acknowledge the feeling, hey, that’s not okay that you’re feeling this way. We need to fix this. So this can wait. Let’s reprioritize this. Let’s figure out a different way to do this. These are all phrases that you can use. So, you know, we have to back those with action. That’s the commitment part. We need to take action on them, but those are the phrases to get us started.

Hugh Ballou:
You are so careful, precise, and intentional with your language. So people are clamoring. This has been so useful today, David. People are clamoring to know how to find you. So we’re going to show them, if you’re listening to a podcast, you can go yourself. If you’re watching the video, you can see it on the screen. But you can go to letsgrowleaders, plural, dot com. So David, what will they find when they go there?

David Dye:
Well, at letsgrowleaders.com, the first place I would guide you is over to the Books tab, and you can go down to Powerful Phrases. And we have got a wealth of resources there that you can put your email in, and it’s all free. And we’ve got a Collaboratory Guide. So as a leader, you can walk your team through some exercises to have these conversations together. Don’t keep this stuff to yourself. Share it as widely as you can, right? Equip your people with the same skills that you’re getting. And so that’s all free and available there as well. If you want to get in touch with us, obviously we do a ton of work. We’ve got some great nonprofit clients as well as the for-profit ones. So we do leadership, human-centered leadership development, and team development in really practical ways. You get a sense of that from what we’re talking about and all that’s there. Weekly newsletter, all that sort of thing. But my first suggestion for anybody listening right now, You can get sample chapters of the book. You can get that leader’s guide to walk your team through these conversations. And that’s the first place I would start.

Hugh Ballou:
It says for a human-centered leaders. That’s brilliant. It’s been so good to have this time with you. And, um, this is the core work that I’ve been doing for 35 years. Uh, I’ve learned some new stuff today. And for people that have this written on their forehead, I already know that I’ve encouraged people to take it. I should have said this beginning, take it off, open it up. Cause there’s always things to learn. So, uh, I’ve, I’ve learned a lot today. What do you want to leave people with a challenge or a thought or. What are tips for going forward?

David Dye:
You know, a couple of weeks ago, I was having a conversation with a young nonprofit professional, uh, 31 years old, and he was struggling with something in his organization and we coached through it. He asked me some questions, called for some coaching. And the ultimate outcome of that was equipping him with some of these phrases. And why don’t you go have the conversation? And he said, well, okay, I’m going to think about that. He texts me three days later and he says, David, I’m going to get a tattoo. I’m like, well, what’s going to be on the tattoo? He said, the tattoo is going to say, just have the conversation. And I said, why is that? He said, well, I, I didn’t do it perfectly, but I had the conversation and all of these things I learned and no, they weren’t thinking the things I was thinking. And then, and we made forward progress and it’s not a hundred percent what I wanted, but it’s certainly closer to way that he’s like, why didn’t I have the conversation? So I got to have that reminder. And that is my request. If you’re listening and there is a conversation at work, you’re thinking about that. You haven’t had what’s at stake. If you stay silent. Go have the conversation.

Hugh Ballou:
What’s at stake if you say silent? This has been the Double David Show. David Dunworth, thanks for co-hosting. David Dye, thank you so much for being our guest today on the Nonprofit Exchange.