I recently posted a Podcast with Jack Levin partner at New York Law firm Covington & Burling. Jack reminds us that sometimes the real issue in a conflict can be very different from the thing we think we are dealing with.

Jack tells a story about his 96 year old Mother who lives alone in New York City and had just opened a joint account with Jack to help manage her finances. In what seemed like a simple administrative mistake, the new cheque book was sent to her son with her son’s address printed on the cheques. At first Jack couldn’t understand why his Mother was so distraught at this simple error but as he asked her about why she was feeling so upset she shared with him that not having her address on the cheques was indeed a big issue for her because she didn’t want anyone to think that she no longer lived at home and was now in a nursing home. What she feared most was a loss of independence and she assumed that Jack and the bank had deliberately printed his and not her address.

As Jack reflects, taking the time to understand what is most important from the other person’s perspective and giving them the opportunity to express their emotions is vital in a relationship.

You can listen to this story in full and to Jack’s interview here http://www.corpeace.com/podcasts

Why partnerships and businesses based on friendship often fail

Entrepreneurship can be a lonely existence. We all need someone to bounce ideas off and socialize with at work. Added to that most people starting out in business whilst they may be good at generating the big ideas simply do not possess all the other skills necessary to turn them into a functioning business.

Many small businesses are started by friends or relatives, where one of them has an idea, spots a gap in the market and they then decide to work together. Think Ben and Jerrys or Innocent Smoothies, the Body Shop and even Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. But in many cases the friendship or kinship that started it all turns sour and the business folds because the people involved did not take the time to consider what might go wrong.

As a Corporate Peacemaker I spend my time helping people to solve some of the conflicts and disputes that arise from such ill-fated partnerships. So what is it that so often goes wrong and why?

The main problem that I see is lack of communication. That’s not to say that the friends or relatives are not talking to one another, they’re just not talking about the most important things.

They either do not take the time or they do not know WHAT they need to talk about.

Typical arguments that arise as the business grows and matures are about:

· Time and commitment

· Roles and responsibilities

· Finances

· People

· Intellectual property

To avoid these pitfalls, I advise people thinking about starting a business or who are some way down the road but have not yet had the BIG CONVERSATIONS to discuss and agree on the following:

· VISION – what is the big picture? What are you hoping to achieve together? Who else needs to be involved?

Have a clear agreement of Roles and Responsibilities and of WHO will do WHAT by WHEN.

· RESULTS – know what success looks like and how you are going to measure it.

What does success look like for each of the people involved and what does it mean to them?

What evidence will you need that everyone involved has achieved his or her objectives?

What will the consequences be for the business and the individuals if those objectives are not achieved?

· RESOLUTION – what concerns, risks and fears are there? Think about what might go wrong and agree how you will talk about and deal with it.

No matter how strong the friendship or relationship that underpins a new business venture, everything will NOT go as planned. Conflicts and differences will arise and all the people involved must be committed to resolving them.

Circumstances will change and it is critical to anticipate this at the beginning of the venture and to have a plan to deal with it. If you are going to avoid the common pitfalls, it is critical to acknowledge that the RELATIONSHIP matters most and to agree that planning for the challenges that lie ahead is the best way to start out on the path to success.

Mary isn’t talking to Fred. He arrived home from work late last night and forgot that it was their anniversary.

Emotional Overload

Penny arrives home from work tired and hungry to find the kitchen bin overflowing. Freddy the baby, handed over by the nanny, is running a temperature and on top of all this, Penny has an urgent report to finish for work in the morning

Penny’s husband Ben arrives back a short while later and Penny immediately challenges him about the bin with a raised voice. “Why don’t you ever take the rubbish out in time!!” Ben stares at the newspaper he is carrying and replies “Penny, that is wrong, I remember quite clearly taking the rubbish out last Wednesday and on the Sunday before that”

Let’s take a quick look at what’s happening here…………..

·      Instead of trying to look for the meaning in Penny’s message Ben has immediately responded to what he feels was an attack on him

·      He has focussed solely on the facts – does he or doesn’t he take the bins out – and has ignored the underlying message from Penny which is that she’s having a tough day and that finding an overflowing bin in the kitchen is simply the last straw

·      The last thing that Penny needed was the voice of reason. What she most needed was SUPPORT. Someone to tune into her emotional wavelength and MATCH the intensity of her feelings

·      She needed some response to the drama she was facing and some recognition of HER state

·      Almost regardless of what Ben said he needed to respond with appropriate CONCERN and with appropriate passion

·      Ben could have said something like “It sounds as though you’ve had a terrible day. Why don’t I get Freddy into the bath”

Tricks Good Listeners Use

When you look at the habits of people who are Good Listeners you notice a number of “Tricks of the Trade”

So what are some of the things that Good Listeners do??

1. Receive the message BEFORE responding to it

Good listeners try hard to postpone making judgements either about the speaker or about the message until they are sure they have understood what is being said

In other words we have to receive the message before we try and interpret it

This can be very difficult to do in practice because we have to be prepared to run the risk of having to change our minds

2. Work HARD at listening

Listening is actually HARD WORK – both physically and mentally

10 minutes of concentrated listening is about as much as most of us can handle in one go – then we get distracted

The more you can listen in small chunks, rather than large slabs, the more likely you will be to receive the correct message

3. Harness their thought SPEED

We can actually THINK much more quickly than most people SPEAK – or even than most of us read

To avoid being distracted by other thoughts crowding into their minds Good Listeners try to give their FULL ATTENTION to what is being said – to fill their minds with the listening task

They CONCENTRATE hard on trying to identify the meaning – the ideas and the feelings – in the message

4. Try to EMPATHISE with the speaker

A big part of the job of understanding what the speaker is driving at involves trying to feel what the speaker is feeling

To sense how it feels to actually be the other person and to have his view of the world

What does it actually feel like to BE him or her?

Being empathic may mean commenting on or reflecting back to the speaker how they may be feeling

But it can also mean – matching the energy level of the other person

For example if a speaker is angry or irrational, a calm and rational tone in your response can actually make things worse rather than better

5. REFLECT what they have heard

Simply listening carefully to someone and understanding what they are saying and feeling is NOT enough

Good Listeners give the speaker a SUMMARY of their understanding of what has been said BEFORE they react to it

Good Listeners develop the habit of saying something like “Let me see if I got this right. What you’re saying is…” or “So what you’re saying is…”

In other words you need to PROVE that you have been listening by reflecting or paraphrasing the main points of what has been said

NOW here’s the point. You need to demonstrate your understanding of WHAT someone has said (the FACTS) AND of how they FEEL (the underlying EMOTION)

6. Give FEEDBACK to the speaker

Learning to REFLECT back to the speaker what you’ve heard is a great skill and one we all need to practice. BUT it can come across as very mechanical leaving the speaker intensely frustrated

Most speakers want more than to simply have their message summarised and played back to them. They want to know what YOUR reaction is to what they have to say and how you have INTERPRETED IT

What the speaker longs to hear is how WE FEEL and what WE are THINKING in response to their message

There is one important rule though

Don’t be tempted to offer judgemental or evaluative feedback

“You don’t know what you’re talking about”

Or

“You seem a bit obsessive about this”

Instead the feedback should be SELF-descriptive

“I don’t think I quite understand what you are saying”

or

“I can feel myself getting angry in response to what you’re saying”

DO YOU SEE – instead of attacking the speaker (or appearing to) you are simply giving them feedback on what they have said.

De-escalating Conflict

You can see from the Penny and Ben story just how easy it is for a conversation to escalate into a conflict and then into a dispute. Learning to suspend our own defensive reactions and assumptions about what the other person is saying and taking time to CHECK OUT the real meaning in the speaker’s message and then respond appropriately is the key

Good Listening is at the heart of every successful relationship and poor listening is the root of many relationship breakdowns and the basis of most conflicts and disputes