Tired of Conflict and Drama? Use This Tool

Time to read: It's a long one. 1.5 minutes!

Arguing over walks and feeding your Covid pup? Design your alliance!

Hello Rebels!

As you start to slowly emerge from isolation and find your way back to life, the risk of conflict is great. Returning to the office. Kids back at school. Families with different values. Reuniting with friends and loved ones. Travel. The tool I'm going to share today is a game changer. I use it all the time.

(First, welcome all y'all who came over from Jason Lauritsen's group. Jason is an amazing public speaker, author and world changer. I'm lucky to call him a friend.)

Jason shared the Designed Alliance* process, and here's more to help you get the most out of it. For those of you who have been in the Corporate Rebel Community for a while, you can get the download here.

Here are three things that will make you a powerful Designed Alliance Ninja Wizard.

1. This process is about being in intentional relationship. It's about how you work together rather than what you'll do.

The mistake I see in partnerships and groups is starting with the work. For example, you volunteer for a committee at your children's school and at the first meeting, you do some intros and dive right into the details for the graduation party. Inevitably, someone steps on someone's toes or gets hurt when someone squelches their ideas. All of that drama is preventable with a little up-front conversation.

2. A designed alliance creates strong relationships and makes the actual work much easier. It's worth the up-front investment. Think about any team or group you've worked in. When relationships are sound, the work runs smoothly, even when you run into bumps. When people aren't getting along, it's almost impossible to do the work and hours of your time get wasted in navigating interpersonal landmines.

3. The designed alliance process works for big and small situations.

When my husband and I renovated our house, we used all 8 steps because the risk of marital disaster was great. The process went smoothly and we actually had fun. (And thanks to our alliance, I didn't have to care about dimmer switches.)

If a friend calls and you only have 10 minutes before your next meeting, a quick, "I have 10 minutes. If we need more time, I can call you later" counts as a designed alliance.

One of my clients used this process with her family (including small children) before a vacation and reported that, "It was the best vacation we've ever had."

I taught this process to my parents this weekend. They've had some change and an alliance will help things go smoothly.

Without conscious relationship, we bonk into each other's assumptions, try to read each other's minds, and give people what we think they want (which often isn't what they actually want).

As you start to get back to life, design your alliances early and often. Then hit reply to this email and tell me what happens. I love to hear your stories.

You Can't Afford Not to Deal With the Stress

Time to read: one second less than one minute

Hey rebels!

Many of you replied that you are seeing a lot of stress in your teams or that your leadership doesn't seem to get how stressful life and work are right now (kids at home, furloughs, economic uncertainty, just to name a few).

Here's a story to illustrate:

One of my clients is struggling to support two stressed leaders who have devolved into conflict. The conflict led a potential client to walk away. She made the case to her leadership that these two folks need support to resolve the hurt feelings and develop the skills to move forward productively for the company. The company is afraid to spend the money right now.

Sound familiar?

I have a strong opinion on the subject. Companies are made of humans. Humans have feelings. Humans have human-sized capacity. You can't push people indefinitely or leave them with unresolved stress and conflict and expect them to perform their best. Hoping stress and conflict will go away on its own is magical thinking. When your employees are stressed, choosing to put off addressing the stress because you "can't afford it" is narrow, short-term thinking.

Your stressed employees are less productive. They are unable to be magnetic with customers and clients and may cost you business. They are less creative and innovative at a time when you need them to be MORE creative and innovative.

One angry customer. One lost contract. One employee who quits. Hundreds of employees who can't focus. These cost the company more than any coach or class. You can't afford not to address the stress.

You gotta take care of those humans. When you do, your employees are grateful. They become loyal. They are more productive. They are happier. It's a win-win for the company and for the humans.

These are my words.

With love,

Christina

P.S. Do you need to make a case to your leadership that your team needs support to manage their stress? Email this article to them then reach out anytime to see how I might help.

Waiting

Time to read: 30 seconds and change.

Waiting for Godot

In your fast paced, action-oriented life, what is your relationship to waiting?

Consider these situations:

• You feel like you are not appreciated and are being passed over for promotion.
• A director you know walked by you in the hall and didn't acknowledge you.
• You received your performance appraisal and there was some "feedback" that was hard to hear.

You say something you wish you hadn't said in a meeting. In situations like this, the temptation to do something is powerful. When you feel uncomfortable and confused, the desire to fix it, smooth it over, and make yourself comfortable again is a strong driver. In order to restore equilibrium, you might do any of the following: worry, talk to 10 friends about it, call your mom, talk to the person involved, or take a firm stand for what you want.

What would it be like to wait? What happens if you do nothing? What if your only action is to breathe and be still with it?

When you drop the urge to rush to create comfort and sit in your discomfort, my intuition says powerful things will happen for you.

Give waiting a try this week. Then write and tell me all about it.

I'm experimenting with waiting this week, too.

I'm curious to hear what happens.

With rebel love,

Christina

2 Secrets to Boost Your Success in Conflict

Estimated read time: 2 minutes.

Avoid conflict! Get both! (Ignore my messy bed.)

I hear from my clients that conflict makes their stomachs hurt or makes them want to pretend they never saw it in the first place.

Conflict? What conflict? Did you see conflict around here?

Among many weird things about me, one is that I LOVE conflict (so much so that I used to volunteer as a mediator in small claims court).

Are you on the LOVE it or HATE it end of conflict?

Here's some reasons I love conflict: There's creativity in conflict. There's heat. Conflict leads to cleared air, closer relationships, and more trust. Even if conflict causes separation, there's clarity in the dissolution. You're clear as you walk away and not stuck for years making up stories about what happened.

All this only works if conflict gets handled openly and strategically. Avoiding conflict isn't going to lead to more trust even though through your closed eyes and earnest prayers, you wish it would.

Here are two, actually, it ended up being three, easy to implement strategies to help turn conflict into something that works for you:

1. Shift your mindset about conflict. Start to see the creative power in disagreement. See the opportunities for ideas to get bigger and for you to learn about yourself.
2. Prioritize your relationships. When your relationships are on solid ground, they can withstand conflict. Even big conflict.
3. Find your places of alignment. Every fiber of your being in conflict wants to focus on the disagreement and on being right. (Notice the word is alignment, not agreement). Here's a light-hearted example to illustrate the point:

Say that you want to get a cat and your family wants to get a dog. Very quickly, you can end up in your respective corners taking a stand for CAT! DOG! Instead, experiment with finding where you share alignment - like having a family pet, wanting something to snuggle, maybe having a pet that feels easy to your family. From there it's easier to navigate toward a mutually acceptable solution.

Conflict is creative. Really and truly. Give these tips a try and let me know what happens!

I hope this helps.

Christina

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