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!

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.

 

2 Secrets to Boost Your Success in Conflict

Estimated read time: 2 minutes.

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

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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