mediatorinthemaking.com

I recently attempted to simultaneously play party and mediator in a workplace conflict, and felt the burn of my green tendencies.

With my new skills, I find myself entering into super-conflict-resolver mode whenever faced with a conflict. Hooray for seeking experience wherever one can find it. This is giving me, and folks around me, ample opportunity to experience my strengths and green tendencies to be improved.

During a basic mediation training role play, I co-mediated a heated dispute between a couple who had recently split after infidelity. The characters were drawn to be extremely emotional: yelling, swearing, overflowing with anger. Early in the session, I demonstrated compassion and empathy, without endangering my neutral status, which helped each party feel comfortable and valued. But … as their emotions, decibel levels, and the tension in the room increased, my warmth gave way to an almost robotic persona which frustrated the parties. My coach helped me identify a way out of this in the moment.

In the face of heightened emotion, as I enter super-conflict-resolver mode, I instinctively become flat. Very flat. My speech becomes slow and deliberate, almost monotone. I am aware of the shift, and yet …It’s almost as though I think the only way to diffuse powerful emotions and maintain focus on the path to resolution is to have no emotion myself. Consciously, I don’t believe this.

But alas, we humans do learn slowly and instincts are very difficult to force to evolve.

Recently, this automaton response lead to a quite visceral reaction from one of the three parties involved in a workplace conflict. This party was already on the defensive, as a coworker and I approached addressing an issue in what unfortunately came down to the old two-against-one game rather than teamwork.

She lashed out at me in a way that turned a minor issue into a major conflict, and provided quite a test for my newly developing skills in conflict resolution and relationship preservation.

While her lashing out shocked me, I realize where it came from. The compassionate me engenders trust and comfort. The automaton me builds rage and paints me as a patronizing jerk who talks without listening. As a mediator and as a human being, I would prefer to be the former at all times – or at least most times.

I will be constantly vigilant in avoiding this pitfall.