The Buoyant Leader

When someone you care about is struggling with a problem, you might be tempted to give them advice. While coming from a well-meaning place, unsolicited advice is likely to make things worse. That’s because it’s usually received as a passive-aggressive form of criticism: “I know better than you, so I’m going to tell you what to do.”

I recommend a much more powerful technique to help people solve their own problems, using their own thinking and other internal resources. And the first step, the “magic move,” is to guide them to shift from thinking about the problem to considering what they’d like instead.

What Peter Bregman and I refer to in our book as an “energizing outcome.”

The first quality of an energizing outcome: it has to be positive. That is, something to move toward, rather than away from. (Read all about it.)

That’s because negative outcomes aren’t motivating. No cab driver will know where to go if you tell them, “Anywhere but here, please.”

Vague outcomes also aren’t motivating, because they don’t speak to the subconscious, which is the engine of — or obstacle to — change.

That’s because the subconscious mind doesn’t process abstractions. But it loves specifics. (Read all about it.)

And now we’ve reached the third and final quality of an energizing outcome: it’s got to be meaningful.

Meaningful outcomes matter to the people going after them. That’s where the juice comes from; the energy in energizing.

Here’s the thing: problems only matter in context. In fact, they are only actually problems in context.

For example: my problem is that I can’t find a micro-USB charging cable for my old Black Diamond Sprint headlamp — the one that has a strong front beam and bright red blinking LED lights in back (so if I get run over by a truck, I can be confident that it was on purpose).

But wait — I’m not doing any nighttime runs these days.

So not being able to charge the headlamp is not actually a problem. It would become a problem again only if I needed hands-free light during a power outage.

Let’s say you’ve just taken the Clifton Strengths Finder assessment and discovered that your four weakest themes are Focus, Consistency, Competition, and (lowest of the low) Achiever. (Not naming names, Howie.) Is that a problem?

Trick question!

Because the answer is, it depends on the context.

If I have a system to keep me on track day after day, then my trouble with focus and consistency are mitigated. (And boy do I have a system! Between Todoist, Clickup, Sunsama, Google Calendar, and an imaginary poster of Mr T hovering inches from my desk chair, I get shit done!)

My tendency to avoid competition might be a problem if I were in an organization where ruthlessness is needed to climb the corporate ladder, or if I were a sales guy in an setting where second place gets a set of steak knives and third place gets fired. But as a coach/consultant/mentor, I don’t need an ego-driven fire in my belly to generate business. I just need to be curious and helpful and clear.

Achiever, though, is another thing altogether. If something in me really doesn’t care if I finish the next book or not, then that’s a problem.

So what’s the energizing outcome to the problem of lacking the strength of Achiever ?

It’s not the opposite of the problem — which is a good thing, because I’m allergic to motivational posters (and secretly have a fondness for the demotivational ones). I’m not trying to morph into an eager beaver achiever. (Note to self: get the URL EagerBeaverAchiever.com if available. No idea why. Just get it.)

Instead, my energizing outcome is to produce great work on time that enriches others and expresses my values and intellectual property.

That MATTERS to me. A lot.

If I just looked at the problem of not having an Achiever personality, I’d try to solve that. But turning myself into a Achiever (even if that were possible — it sounds exhausting) wouldn’t necessarily address the real issue: I want to put great work out into the world for the benefit of all (including myself).

That outcome makes me tingle.

And it leads naturally to more creative ways of thinking about the problem.

I’ve written 9 books so far in my career. Because I figured out a way to do so without turning into an achiever.

Instead, I signed legal contracts with large publishing houses that scared the shit out of me, so I produced the promised content on time and responded promptly and responsibly to all their queries, concerns, and requests.

Outcome: work that I’m proud of into the world, and me recognized (and compensated) for it. Yippee!

Next week: the second “magic move” to help bring out the best in the people you care about. Stay tuned.

Are you a leader responsible for the activities, mindset, and emotional tone of a team? I specialize in Mindset Mastery, so you and your team can focus on What Matters Most and Uproot your Blockages. Email me at howie AT askhowie DOT com to find out more and book a free 30-minute discovery call.

When someone you care about is struggling with a problem, you might be tempted to give them advice. While coming from a well-meaning place, unsolicited advice is likely to make things work. That’s because it’s usually received as a passive-aggressive form of criticism: “I know better, so I’m going to tell you what to do.”

I recommend a much more powerful technique to help people solve their own problems, using their own thinking and other internal resources. And the first step, the “magic move,” is to guide them to shift from thinking about the problem to considering what they’d like instead.

What Peter Bregman and I refer to in our book as an “energizing outcome.”

In last week’s memo, I talked about the first quality of an energizing outcome: it has to be positive. That is, something to move toward, rather than away from.

That’s because negative outcomes aren’t motivating. No cab driver will know what to do if you tell them, “Anywhere but here, please.”

This week, let’s look at the second quality: it has be clear.

Vague outcomes also aren’t motivating.

That’s because the subconscious mind doesn’t process abstractions. It doesn’t know what to do with “feel better” or “gain confidence” or “resolve the conflict.” Those are just word-noises.

On the other hand, the subconscious just eats up specifics.

And change happens, not when the conscious mind wants it to, but when the subconscious mind gives the OK.

In other words, if someone wants to achieve a transformation, they’d better make their subconscious into an ally.

And so it’s crucial to talk to the subconscious in language it understands — what Unlocking the Emotional Brain co-author Bruce Ecker calls “limbic language” — words that evoke images and strong emotions.

Instead of “feel better,” consider:

Instead of “gain confidence,” consider:

Instead of “resolve the conflict,” consider:

Have you ever gotten scared by a horror movie? Like, heart pounding, rapid breathing, skin crawling? (For me: The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, and Get Out top the list.)

Or have you ever imagined a worst-case scenario and likewise had a strong physiological response? (For me: every unread email in my inbox ends me with alone and in a gutter. I’m working on it with very skilled professionals.)

That can happen because the subconscious mind can’t tell the difference between visualization and reality.

When it sees and hears and feels and tastes and smells the future event, location, or situation, it’s rehearsing it, and believing it, and already searching for ways to bring it about.

Elite athletes know this, which is why visualization of contests and outcomes is a staple of sports psychology.

To get someone to a clear outcome, ask them what you’d see, hear, feel, taste, and smell if you were a fly on the wall at the moment they achieved that outcome. Make the inquiry playful, and persist until you both can be there in your minds.

Next week: the third quality of an energizing outcome. Stay tuned.

Are you responsible for managing the mindset and emotional tone of a team? I’ve got a group mentoring program for you, starting in November 2024. Email me at [email protected] to find out more and apply.

The song is “Wannabe,” by the Spice Girls. I’ve had its intro in my head since I first heard it in the late 90s:

And that’s how I think about the crucial, game-changing step in the process of bringing out the best in people who are struggling with a problem.

It’s the “tell me what you want, what you really really want” step.

Except that since I’m a dusty old consultant, I have to jargon it up. So I call it the “energizing outcome.”

Now, an energizing outcome is not just any old outcome. After all, it’s energizing.

Which is to say, when you think about achieving it, you get a jolt of energy — fuel to feed the engine that’s gonna make it happen.

So what tends to energize us?

In a game of tag, there are two roles: It and Runner. When you’re a Runner, you run only when you’re being chased. And the farther you get from It, the less energy you spend running away.

When you’re It, you’re constantly running after Runners. The closer you get to one of them, the more motivated you become.

Runners try to solve the problem of getting tagged, so they are energized only when the problem looms over them.

It isn’t trying to solve a problem — instead, It is chasing opportunity.

So energizing outcomes are ones where we focus not on solving problems, but rather using problems to achieve higher-level results.

One way I help my clients unearth their energizing outcome is to ask, “What future state would make you say, ‘I’m glad that I had this problem’?”

Or: “What outcome would be so exciting, that it would make this problem worth having?”

When we’re in the throes of a problem, it’s natural to just want to make it go away. But take a moment to ask yourself one of the energizing outcome questions, you’ll find that “making it go away” can be a pretty low bar.

As negotiation expert Chris Voss says, “Don’t be so sure of what you want that you wouldn’t take something better.”

Next week: the three qualities of an energizing outcome. Stay tuned.

Are you responsible for managing the mindset and emotional tone of a team? I’ve got a group mentoring program for you, starting in November 2024. Email me at [email protected] to find out more and apply.

PS In “Wannabe,” the answer to “what I really really want” turns out to be, “I wanna really really wanna zig-a-zig-ah.” So there you go.

Old Jewish joke: Old man on a train, repeatedly complaining, “Oy, am I thirsty. Oy, am I thirsty.” Over and over. The other passengers are getting agitated.

Finally, a kind woman goes to the dining car, buys a bottle of water and gives it to the man. He drinks it all up and sits in silence. The passengers breathe out sighs of relief.

Then: “Oy, was I thirsty. Oy, was I thirsty.”

Ba dum bum.

The point is, we can get so fixated on our problems, they start appearing more interesting than any solutions.

The mind is a problem solving machine, after all, and gets antsy when there are no problems to solve. Just try meditating for 20 minutes if you doubt this — your mind will start swinging from branch to branch like a coked-out squirrel monkey.

According to our minds, problems are threats to be dealt with. And when you perceive threat, your neurology shifts into fight-or-flight mode.

In this state, it’s impossible to be creative, expansive, strategic, forward-thinking, or generous.

So when a person or a team is mired in problem-based thinking, your most powerful leverage is to shift them out of problem-focus.

One mistake that people make is to hurry this process, and go directly into what seems like the opposite of focusing on a problem: focusing on the solution.

Coaches are prone to this error. “Oh, that’s your problem? Let’s talk about how to solve it.”

The trouble with this approach is it almost always leads to a suboptimal solution. Often, we’re trying to solve the wrong problem, or the wrong framing of the problem.

And jumping to looking for a solution assumes that the best we can do is get back to a state of “no more problem,” when a much higher bar might be “use the problem to achieve a better state of overall functioning.”

A better approach, the one my co-author Peter Bregman and I teach in You Can Change Other People (man, I wish we had titled it Bringing Out the Best in Others, but that’s water under the bridge; breathe, Howie, and release), is to shift from the problem to the Energizing Outcome.

That is, what would be such a cool future state that the person could look back and say, “I’m so glad I had this problem, because it led me to take action that transformed my life.”

But even that shift needs a little bit of foreplay.

If someone says, “My team is toxic and we’re playing politics rather than getting anything done, and it’s horrible,” don’t jump in with “And how would you like it to be instead?”

People need to know that you care, that you are witnessing their struggles, and that you understand them.

So before you started helping, start learning.

Ask your conversation partner to talk about the problem a bit. Ask for context. A little history. An example.

Keep this part of the conversation short — your goal isn’t to reinforce their problem-focus, but to earn the right to ask, “So, in a perfect world, what would you like instead?”

To get there, your partner has to feel understood and cared for.

One thing to avoid: empathizing so much that you reinforce how horrible and intractable the problem is.

One way to do this by subtly changing verb tenses, to create a break between the past and the future:

Them: “We’re barely civil to each other in meetings.”

You: “So you’ve been struggling to get along.”

Notice that their description is in the present tense, which implies that it will continue indefinitely.

And you’ve shifted to the present perfect continuous. (Thanks, Warriner’s Grammar in 9th grade English.)

You haven’t gone straight to the past:

You: “So you struggled to get along.”

That’s a disconnect, and you’re likely to get a response like: “No, you’re not listening — it’s still happening.”

Whereas shifting to “you’ve been struggling” triggers no such objection, but still allows for the possibility that it could cease.

Once you’ve built that bridge from problem to outcome, you can then guide your partner to imagine and get excited about that energizing outcome. We’ll see how to do this in upcoming editions of the Mindset Mastery Memo.

Want your team to hum, get things done, and have fun? Me too! Let's talk.

Even in humming, high performing teams, conflict occurs. (In fact, little to no conflict is a giant flashing sign that what you’ve got is a polite team, and NOT a high performing one. Just watch Bohemian Rhapsody to see an example of a high performing team (Queen) that was fueled by intense conflict.

But there’s generative conflict, where the parties involved are both looking with curiosity and passion at the impasse, and there’s destructive conflict, where the egos are battling it out for supremacy or survival.

Generative conflict is fueled by outcomes.

Destructive conflict is fueled by stories.

When you get triggered, it shows that you’re attaching an interpretation to what happened. And not just any interpretation — if your nervous system gets involved, it’s a story your mind has created to motivate you to fight-or-flight action.

That is, your nervous system has detected a potential lethal threat and alerted your mind, which told a story to make you feel a strong emotion like fear or anger or shame designed to get you to do something to protect yourself.

Stories like that come in three main flavors:

• stories about you and your worth
• stories about other people and their motivations
• stories about the world and the rules that apply

it can be hard to see that your story is an interpretation rather than the truth. After all, it feels so true to think, “She’s out to get me” when she asks a challenging question on a Slack project channel or “He’s so inconsiderate” when he shows up 7 minutes late to a meeting you’re chairing.

The problem with stories like those, that fire up your limbic brain circuits into a frenzy of fight-or-flight impulses, is that they severely limit your creative options and ability to respond appropriately and effectively.

Traditional cognitive approaches focus on highlighting your “wrong” thinking, disputing it, and replacing it with something better.

If that worked, I’d be all for it — but it’s all but impossible to totally counteract a thought that is generated by a nervous system facing organismic destruction. No matter how many affirmations you repeat, your survival instinct will keep the story alive in order (in its estimation) to keep you alive.

There’s a quick and easy way to loosen your grip on the story — or more accurately, to get the story to loosen its grip on you — so you regain agency and can be effective in dealing with whatever is going on.

Just name the story.

For this, I recommend a simple 6-word prompt, borrowed from Chris Niebauer’s No Self, No Problem: “The story I’m telling myself is…”

And then just allow your mind to complete the sentence.

• “The story I’m telling myself is that when she asks a question about the compatibility of my code with the backend stack is that she’s out to get me.”
• “The story I’m telling myself is that when he shows up seven minutes late, he’s letting me and everyone else know that he doesn’t respect me and doesn’t care about me.”

Notice that you’re not arguing with the story. You’re not berating yourself for having an interpretation, even a negative one.

Instead, you’re creating, with your words, a space between you and the story.

This allows you to look at the story rather than look at the world through the story.

That’s the difference between wearing dark glasses that color everything you look at and taking the glasses off and seeing them as another object in your visual field.

When your story becomes an object, you can become more objective.

You start to see your story as one possible interpretation, rather than the only one.

Your mind might even come up with other, more charitable stories, even unbidden.

• “She’s just worried about what happens if this thing goes over budget.”
• “He might be dealing with a sick child.”

When you address her question, you’ll be much more effective if you assume positive intent — even if your original story of sabotage wasn’t fully off the mark.

When you deal with his tardiness, you’re much more likely to get a cooperative response if you assume positive intent — even if your original story of inconsideration wasn’t fully off the mark.

One of the most powerful findings in all of psychology is that other people tend to rise or fall to your expectations.

When you’re triggered, your words and behaviors communicate that you view them as a threat — and you can make it so.

When you allow for other stories, and intentionally act on the basis of a more charitable one, you can make that one true instead.

So — what’s your story?

Are you part of a team that’s stuck in conflict, battling egos, and high tension? Let’s chat about what’s going on, and whether my Mindset Mastery for High Performing Teams Master Class can start to turn things around.

We’ve known for decades that most soft skills training doesn’t change behavior or improve business outcomes.

And despite all the innovations in adult ed and technology, the situation is no better now than in the old days of Death by Powerpoint and building towers out of dried spaghetti and marshmallows to teach creativity.

According to a 2022 Gartner survey, just 29% of employees say learning and development “helps them learn effectively from available people, experiences or content.”

Take negotiation, for example. To negotiate effectively, you need to learn, practice, and master specific skills and techniques. They aren’t secret or esoteric; from Getting to Yes to Never Split the Difference, the best books on the topic are perennial bestsellers.

I took an online negotiation course a few years ago and totally mastered the material. I could have passed the written test in my sleep with my eyes closed (since that’s how I sleep), and possibly with one hand tied behind my back. (Preferably my right, since I’m left-handed.)

In the real world, however, things weren’t so rosy. I froze when trying to renegotiate a contract with a client. I backed down when haggling over the price of a new car because I didn’t want the sales guy to dislike me. And I did another thing badly because this paragraph needs a third example.

And don’t get me started on my attempts to get better at conflict resolution. I’m a ninja at expressing empathy, asking clarifying questions, and exploring interests rather than positions. I can count to 10 like a Buddha before blurting something hurtful. And it can all come tumbling down when I get triggered, and I can end up pouring fuel on the flames of conflict like a right arsehole.

And as the Gartner stat shows, I’m not the only one.

So what’s the problem?

Why are we so bad at installing skills like communication, creative or strategic thinking, and self-regulation?

I’m going to answer by comparing humans to computers, an analogy that I really dislike in general, but it’s too useful here to let that stop me.

Think of soft skills like active listening, negotiating, time management, creativity, and so on as software. The goal of training is to install the software in trainees, or in most cases update their existing software. Get them from passive ignoring to active listening 1.0 to Active Listening 2.0, and maybe even ACTIVE LISTENING 3.0.

Software, of course, gets installed on top of an operating system. And if the operating system is too old or too buggy, the software that sits on top of it won’t function well and may not even open.

In our analogy, your operating system is your mindset.

We need to define that word to make it useful.

Your mindset is everything you’ve learned about how the world works: what’s safe and what’s dangerous; what kind of person challenges ideas or keeps their head down; and so on. These are the rules our minds have created in service of our survival, and for the most part they are as unbreakable as they are unconscious.

If training ignores the operating system, that’s like trying to install Autodesk Maya on top of Windows Vista (still the worst OS I’ve ever used — even MSDOS 6.22 was so much better!)

Drilling one layer deeper, operating systems float on top of hardware.

If the hardware is too old, you can’t upgrade the OS. This happens to me a lot because I read the tech press about the amazing cool features on the last iOS version and then feel sad because it won’t install on my 7-year-old iPhone 8.

Your neurology is your hardware. By neurology, I’m talking about how your body perceives and responds to inner and outer cues of safety and threat, before your conscious mind even gets a say.

When your body and nervous system code a situation as “potential lethal threat,” your body goes into fight-or-flight, ready to bite or run, even if that threat is an email or a snippy comment.

And in fight-or-flight, the circuits that say “curiosity” and “creativity” and “strategic thinking” are all in the OFF OFF OFF position. When means you default to, well, your defaults, which are all the habits you attended that training to change.

If you want to change your own habits and behaviors in high-stakes situations, or upgrade those of your team or organization, you need to work at all three levels simultaneously.

You need all three for profound transformation that’s effortless to maintain, and that doesn’t revert during moments of extreme stress.

If that sounds like a long, slow process, it isn’t.

In fact, the most efficient approach is the one that deals with all three levels — skills, mindset, and neurology — at the same time.

That way the mindset can upgrade effortlessly to support the wanted skills, and the neurology responds in real time when its old assumptions are made conscious and can be jettisoned like that package of pickled beets I forgot in the crisper drawer for two months.

As you pursue high performance in your career and organization, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What’s the one skill or habit that, if changed or upgraded, would make the biggest difference to your happiness and success?
2. What’s the one behavior change that would have the greatest positive impact in your team or organization?
3. What are the elements of mindset and neurology that are blocking those upgrades?
4. What would have to happen for the shifts to occur spontaneously and effortlessly?

If you’d like a hand answering those questions, hit me up at askHowie.com. I’m a high performance speaker, trainer, and coach, and I love the work I do helping executives, leadership teams, and fast growing small businesses do great things with wisdom, joy, and ease.

In last week’s newsletter, we saw that unsolicited advice typically backfires. That’s because you’re coming in as a critic, knowing better — and that triggers people’s defenses. Neurologically, defending against threat narrows focus and suppresses creativity.

Instead, we need to request and receive permission to have an uplifting conversation.

So how do we do it? In our book You Can Change Other People, Peter Bregman and I share a three-step process. In case you haven’t read it (gasp), here are the steps:

1. Empathize
2. Express confidence
3. Offer to think it through with them

Let’s explore each step.

Why empathize? Two main reasons.

First, if someone feels understood and valued by you, they’re more likely to accept your assistance. In their mind, you’re an ally, rather than a critic.

Second, empathy can help shift their neurology from fight-or-flight into social engagement, which brings their creativity and opportunity-seeking brain systems online.

What does this sound like? It could be as simple as, “It seems like you’re having a hard time with this.” Or, “That sounds like a tough position to be in.” Or, “That’s really challenging.”

It’s also the perfect opening when someone complains to you about their situation. That way, you can avoid giving advice or inappropriately reassuring them, and simply acknowledge that you are paying attention to what they’re feeling.

You’re expressing confidence in their ability to handle the situation, to overcome the challenge.

This may sound like overly positive thinking, but it’s not. In fact, expressing confidence is tautological; by definition, you wouldn’t bother offering advice if you didn’t think they could benefit from it.

Letting them know that you believe in their ability to deal with this thing strengthens your position as their ally. And this kind of belief is contagious — people often rise to the expectations of others. (Check out this classic 1965 experiment by Rosenthal and Jacobson (no relation to me, as far as I know) for a stunning example of how manipulating teacher expectations significantly changed the educational outcomes of some students.)

Expressing confidence can be overt: “I believe in you, and I know you’ve got what it takes here. I’ve seen you deal with stuff like this before.”

It can reference the fact that they’ve “earned the right” to this challenge: “As team lead, you’re the one they’re looking to right now.”

And it can point to their aspirations for the future: “As you move up in your career, you’ll need to handle stuff like this on a regular basis.”

This is such a hard thing to refuse, especially when it follows empathy and an expression of confidence. And it’s the simplest thing to offer:

“Would you like to think it through together?”

“Want to think about the situation together?”

“Can we think together about how to approach this issue?”

Here’s an example from You Can Change Other People. In this example, Ben is complaining to a colleague, Dara, about Ramona’s unhelpful behavior as a member of his team.

Ben: Ramona is bossing everyone on the team. She’s so annoying, especially because she’s the one with the least experience.

Dara: That sounds tough. [Empathy]

Ben: Yeah, it is. Everyone’s spending so much time defending their turf that we’re not accomplishing our mission. It’s infuriating.

Dara: Sounds like it’s a larger dynamic than just Ramona. Something you probably need to handle as the team leader. [Confidence] Want to think about the situation together? [Think together]

Ben: Yeah, that would be great. Thanks.

Think of someone you’d like to change in some way. Imagine they come to you, not for advice, but just to complain. What does your 3-part permission formula sound like? For kicks, share your response in the comments (anonymizing, of course, to protect both the innocent and the guilty).

Want to create a team culture where everyone’s a pro at bringing out the best in each other? Reach out at [email protected] and we can chat about how to make it happen.

What if someone in your life is struggling, and you know you could help them if they just let you?

It feels cruel to just let them suffer on their own, making the same mistake over and over again, when all they have to do is listen to you.

• Maybe you’ve been where they are, and you can offer support from a place of wisdom.
• Maybe you’ve helped others with this same issue, and you know you can ease their pain.
• Maybe you’re simply a composed and caring sounding board, someone who can listen and ask smart questions to upgrade their mindset.

In a perfect world, they’d ask for your help. My bat-phone would ring, and someone I care about would say, “Hey, Howie, Help me if you can, I’m feeling down.”

In a slightly less-than-perfect world, I might notice their distress and say, “Hey, I can help,” and they’d say, “Oh, yes, that would be amazing.”

But in the is-world, as opposed to the wish-it-were-world, people often don’t want to admit they need help. They might feel weak, or needy, or not-enough.

And it’s even harder for folks to ask for or accept help from people who have “skin in the game” of your life. If I’m their employee, colleague, or boss; spouse, parent, or child — then they have extra reason to be wary of my motives in wanting to help: Am I trying to make their life better, or my own?

Depending on the power dynamics in our relationship, I might have the power to plow through their reluctance or resistance and insist that they talk to me about the issue.

But I guarantee that doing so will generate a superficial conversation at best, with no buy-in on their end, no matter how brilliant the solution we devise.

That’s why the first move in initiating a helping conversation is to obtain permission to have the conversation.

And that involves being totally willing to have them withhold that permission.

In other words, your ability to influence depends on giving up control.

That’s not quite right. Here it is, better: Your ability to influence depends upon giving up the illusion of control.

Next time: An approach (and a script) for asking for permission to help.

I support leaders and their teams to achieve high performance through mindset mastery, individually and collectively. Find out more about how I can help at askHowie.com.

Today, I want to share with you a really powerful way to instantly deescalate a conflict.

And before I do, I want to explain why it’s so hard to deescalate conflict. Why we get drawn into conflict when we know it doesn't serve us. Why we become angry, agitated, passive, disengaged, avoidant, or whatever our repertoire of states and behaviors in response to conflict.

Conflict is seductive. Amanda Ripley, in her book High Conflict, uses the metaphor of the La Brea tar pits, where one animal came in and got stuck and then all the other animals who wanted to eat that animal came in and they got stuck and they started rotting. And then the scavengers came in. And that went on for thousands of years.

It’s so seductive and contagious because our inner minds code conflict as a threat, just like a wild beast that’s trying to eat you.

Even though what’s actually happening may be an email, or a conversation, or a glance, your inner mind senses danger. And it does things to get you to take immediate and decisive action to deal with that danger — either fighting back or running away.

Of course, that doesn't work in a workplace. It doesn't work in a family situation. It doesn't work in most of the human situations we find ourselves. It's actually worse than useless, because it can contribute to that whole La Brea tar pit effect:

Now the other person’s drawn further into conflict, also in self-defense, and everyone’s feeling worse and worse. Things get said that can’t be unsaid, and the initial conflict can morph into an ongoing battle, a feud, a vendetta.

The method of deescalation that I promised comes from the musical Grease, from the song “Summer Nights.”

The chorus of that song keeps repeating, “Tell me more, tell me more.”

Those are three incredibly powerful words when it comes to deescalating conflict.

I recommend that you practice them. Train yourself to say them, and mean them, when you feel anger or fear or whatever your emotional conflict signature is.

Look at the other person with as much respect and curiosity as you can muster and say, “Tell me more.”

This works because it shifts your mind from the fight or flight networks in your limbic brain back into the prefrontal cortex — back into the cognitive state where you're now thinking about the topic under discussion rather than being captured by the neurobiology of fight or flight.

Your inner mind is OK with this because it wants to keep you safe. And one of the best ways to deal with a potential threat is to learn as much as you can about it. So it’s willing to let you gather intelligence, to find out what’s going on in the other person that’s triggering their reaction.

You can get good at this by practicing “Tell me more” in everyday conversation. People love it when you’re genuinely interested in what they have to say.

Then start using “Tell me more” at the beginning of the teeniest hint of conflict — little things that you might ordinarily just let slide by. “You seemed a little annoyed just then — can you tell me more about what’s going on for you?”

And then start using it in more heated situations: “Tell more about what you’re thinking and feeling. Tell me why this matters to you. Tell me more about what upset you about what I said or did. Tell me more — I really want to know!”

Your prefrontal cortex gets to take over, and your limbic brain is satisfied that you’re acting in a protective way.

As you return yourself from fight or flight into a state of calm and curious presence, you also help your “conflict partner” regulate their own nervous system. You’re showing them that you aren’t a threat, and signaling that fight or flight isn’t needed here.

And from that state, you can both start to get good stuff done.

Want me to “tell you more” about how I work with leaders, teams, and organizations to build cultures of positive and productive conflict? Reach out at askHowie.com.

I want to share two cool facts that I learned from the book High Conflict, by Amanda Ripley.

Fact #1: The word “categorize” comes from ancient Greek and originally meant to accuse. 

That is, the linguistic origin of the idea of putting things or people into groups has an embedded negative connotation. If I’m in one group and you’re in another, one of us is a bit tarnished or diminished. There’s something wrong with one of us — or possibly both of us, if there’s a third group out there!

Fact #2: In the 1968 movie Planet of the Apes, the actors in gorilla costumes and the actors in chimp costumes self-segregated at lunchtime, sitting at different tables. They reported feeling more comfortable with people who shared their pretend roles. 

Think about that. Despite the presumed enormous similarities in people who put on ape suits on a Hollywood set for a living, the differences in costume (and by extension species) created a powerful salience that told them, “I am this and you are that, and we are different, and I feel safer with my own kind.”

Cohesion Creates “Thems”

There’s a ton of social science research on how separating people into arbitrary groups creates powerful impulses of “Us against Them.” (Amanda Ripley does a great job of summarizing them — get her book if you’d like to go down that rabbit hole.)

So what about team cohesion? 

In order to get things done, organizations need to organize in teams. And for teams to succeed, they need cohesion: to feel safe in the in-group, to have each others’ backs, and to root for team members to succeed.

Which begs the question: How do we avoid the downside of cohesive teams, the creation of “Thems” who are not “Us,” and who therefore are less trustworthy, less noble, and less deserving of respect and generosity.

Which is to say, everyone in the organization who’s not on your team. And all your vendors and clients. 

How can we benefit from the magic of teamwork without paying the price of silos of tension and suspicion?

Here are three suggestions:

Rather than forcing people to identify with a single team, put them on multiple teams with people from other primary teams. 

Create cross-functional teams that operate at the same time as day-to-day teams. 

If you have recreational leagues, make sure they include members from all units and divisions within your organization. 

In any sufficiently complex organization (that is, any one I’ve ever seen or worked with), different functions are set in structural conflict with each other. 

Business Development promises the moon to get the sale, and then Operations grumbles at what they have to deliver at a discount price.

Marketing wants to share these amazing testimonials, and Legal cautions against false advertising or violating confidentiality clauses.

R&D wants to allocate money to innovation, while Quality Control wants to keep improving the current model.

I’ve seen these natural tensions turn into nasty internecine fighting, with the different factions “categorizing” each other in very accusatory terms. 

And I’ve run workshops and facilitating meetings where the two groups came together to look at the issue from a structural perspective, and forms alliances to turn the dynamic itself into the problem that they collaborated to solve. 

Top-down decision making and power structures can not only pit teams against teams in other functions, it can pit different levels of oversight against each other. 

“Those turkeys in management have no idea what the customer wants,” the Sales team fumes.

“The sales team is targeting the wrong market segment because it’s easy to get appointments with them,” the Senior Leadership Team decides. “Do something about it, Charlie” (Chief Revenue Officer).

One solution is to create feedback and governance loops across different levels of the organization, as in the example of Sociocracy. (Check out Sheella Mierson’s work with the Sociocracy Consulting Group if you’d like to find out more.)

When there’s a Operational Leader from the SLT at all Sales meetings, and an elected representative from Sales at all the SLT meetings pertaining to sales issues, feedback can flow back and forth. 

This can dramatically reduce the “Us vs Them” tensions inherent in top-down organizations by allowing information and governance to be distributed among different levels. 

And ideally, those levels are characterized by perspective more than power. If you’re the scout on the hill with the binoculars and I’m the repairer of walls in the citadel, we’re glad for each other’s existence. And the differences in our perspectives enhances our value to each other.

What do you do to mitigate the “Us vs Them” dynamic and create camaraderie and shared purpose?

And have you considered issuing gorilla suits for all your employees?

Looking for help in creating aligned purpose and high trust and safety in your organization? I’m happy to chat. Find me at askHowie.com.