How to screw up an offer of apology

Imagine getting a phone call from the gardener at your out-of-state family home. Now imagine your gardener telling you that your house and your belongings are nowhere to be seen.

That’s the call a Dallas woman received recently about her family home in Jackson, Mississippi.

It turns out that a Jackson State University contractor demolished the wrong house after a “prankster” (way too mild a word) made it look like the woman’s house was the one designated to be razed, instead of a university-owned house. Said a University official, “I’m sad that we made the mistake, and I wish that we hadn’t. It was nothing intentional.”

The apology started out so promising…and ended up so utterly ruined. It’s the implied “but” just before the last sentence that ruined it.

And the homeowner agrees, commenting to the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Nobody ever apologized. They just said, you know, ‘It was a mistake,’ if you call that an apology.”

Like the now-famous, “Mistakes were made,” apologies like Jackson State’s come across as disingenuous. They’re better understood as inadequate attempts to sanitize bad impact by claiming benign intentions, or attempts to shift responsibility. They feel like pretend apologies and can do more to escalate bad feelings than ease them.

Benign intentions don’t erase bad impact, anymore than bad impact automatically implies bad intentions. In conflict situations, the two can become tangled and we need to untangle them before more damage is done.

What would a stronger, more effective apology have sounded like in this situation? An effective apology would have admitted the blunder, acknowledged the impact, and been very human. Using the University’s own first sentence, it might have sounded something like this:

I’m sad that we made the mistake. Sad for a valued alum like Ms. Wilson, whose family home has been almost like a part of this campus for many years. Ms. Wilson, we know you must feel a loss, and hope you’ll accept our offer to fly you here so we can sit down personally with you. We want to apologize in person and figure out together what can be done.

For more on making effective apologies, try these two prior posts:

• I’m Sorry: The 4 Types of Apology
• How to Say You’re Sorry. Really Sorry.

A simple way to know if conflict resolution is making progress

This is a Zen koan (traditional story) known as Maybe:

A farmer’s horse ran away. His neighbors gathered upon hearing the news and said sympathetically, “That’s such bad luck.”

“Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The horse returned on his own the next morning, and brought seven wild horses with it. “Look how many more horses you have now,” the neighbors exclaimed. “How lucky!”

“Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next day, the farmer’s son attempted to ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. “How awful,” the neighbors said. “It looks like your luck has turned for the worse again.”

The farmer simply replied, “Maybe.”

The following day, military officers came to town to conscript young men into the service. Seeing the son’s broken leg, they rejected him. The neighbors gathered round the farmer to tell him how fortunate he was.

“Maybe,” said the farmer.

Conflict coaching and mediation clients often ask me, “Am I (are we) making progress?” The best answer I can offer sometimes is, “Maybe.”

We never really know which direction is progress, until time has passed and we see the fruits of our work. The act of conflict resolution, then, is an act both of courage and faith, for who knows where it will lead until we are there.

Conflict zen newsletter, july 2008

Hugh Prather’s on my mind.

I haven’t thought of Hugh Prather for two decades, but he’s come up twice this week. I was chatting with Liz Strauss and she mentioned his work. When she said his name, it took me a moment to recollect who he was.

That very afternoon, as I packed books from my college years (for our upcoming move one town over), I was startled to find a dog-eared copy of Prather’s Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person. It had been sandwiched between two larger books on the top shelf of a very tall bookcase. I didn’t even recall still having it.

It’s one of those synchronistic moments when it seems like the universe is trying to get my attention. So I sat down amidst boxes and packing tape and spent a few minutes with Hugh. Here’s one of the reflections that the book opened to almost immediately:

Emotions are a by-product of some thought we’ve grabbed hold of. I don’t care whether it’s anger, ennui, fear or whiny self-pity — the emotion is manufactured and packaged by the thought. Loosen the grip on the thought, and the emotion will begin to evaporate.

That quote got my attention because that’s part of what I help people do: Loosen their grip on thoughts that are getting them locked in a place they don’t really want to be.

What thoughts should you loosen? Maybe this month’s newsletter will offer some ideas. And there’s always Hugh Prather.

In this issue:

• Featured article from the archives
• Conflict zen now offers mobile edition
• Good reads
• Featured testimonial
• Digest of past month’s articles

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Featured article from the archives

With the warmest part of the summer closing in here in the U.S., it seems fitting to feature an article that’s all about cooling off…cooling off the heat of an escalated conflict.

5 Simple Ways to Keep Your Cool in Conflict
 
People show their frustration and anger in different ways. Some shout. Some sweat. Some grow deadly silent. Some cry. Some become biting with their words. Regardless of how your anger manifests during conflict situations, there are some tried and true ways to de-escalate things for yourself. Here are a few simple ways to manage your anger:
 
1. Take a Brain Break
 
Take a minimum of 20 minutes to allow the emotional flooding to reside. The key here is to do something else. Don’t use the break to keep replaying the conflict conversation in your head, as that usually just increases the heat. Go for a walk and think about your weekend plans. Do the crossword puzzle in your daily paper. Pick something that makes your brain think about anything other than the conflict situation.

Read on at 5 simple ways to keep your cool in conflict.

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Conflict Zen now offers a mobile edition

Like to catch up on your reading on the train, in the airport or other place you’ve got a long wait? Conflict Zen now has a mobile edition formatted especially for reading on a phone’s tiny screen.

Just point your web-enabled phone’s browser to m.conflictzen.com or go now to the subscribe page and use the form to have the link texted to your phone.

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Good reads

I enjoyed and appreciated these articles from around the web and thought you might, too:

• 5 signs you’ve married your problems (and how to divorce them)
• 15 tips for becoming as patient as Job
• 50 remarkable nature wallpapers (these are so beautiful, they’ll transport you just by looking at them)

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Featured testimonial

“You provided an environment that made it feel safe to take risks, to explore difficult subjects and emotions. Normally, my displays of emotion in public would have left me with a deep sense of embarrassment which would then have lead to internalizing negative self-talk and obsessing about my failures. Instead…I can look back on it as a learning experience which leads to self-awareness, positive self-talk and focusing on my successes.” — Donnamarie Carey

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Digest of Conflict Zen articles from the last month

If you didn’t catch them the first time around, here’s a digest of the past month’s posts:

• 7 simple hacks guaranteed to improve your meetings
• 4th of july declaration of interdependence
• 7 phrases you can’t say in conflict resolution
• A father, a son, a story of fury and forgiveness

I’m off to Montpelier, Vermont this week to teach a 3½ day Basic Mediation workshop to folks from around the country. If there’s a conflict management workshop you’d like in your community or for your organization, I’d love to chat with you about it.

Happy end of July,

A father, a son, a story of fury and forgiveness

What happens when you forgive someone?

Sometimes you unlock old memories of their goodness. Goodness that’s been overshadowed by their transgressions, but still exists.

And sometimes, you unlock your own anger and resentment in the process.

Calvin Sandborn, a professor of environmental law and the legal director of the University of Victoria Environmental Law Clinic, sent me a story of his from Canada’s National Post. The Dark Side of Dad, printed just before Father’s Day, begins,

Tomorrow I’ll think fondly of Dad. Which is odd, because I hated him when he was alive.
 
Dad was an angry, hard-swearing, tattooed man’s man. He’d been an Alaska bush pilot, but by the time I came along, he was a California travelling salesman, drinking himself to death. When I was two he got drunk and threw my empty crib across the bedroom. When I was 12, he challenged my brother to a fist fight. He routinely shouted at us in front of our friends. By the time I was 13, I wished he would die.
 
And then he did. I thought that my wish had killed him, and for the longest time I couldn’t forgive myself. I was scared to death I would damage someone else.
 
But four decades on, I’ve forgiven myself for hating him. More difficult, I’ve somehow forgiven myself for the Dad-like fury I inflicted on my own family.
 
…a funny thing happened after I forgave him. A different Dad returned from the shadows, borne by a flood of memory.

While Calvin’s writing about the anger of men, and of fathers and sons, his story resonated powerfully for me because of my own dad’s story. While my dad showed no fury, he kept himself hidden from us.

And like Calvin, when I acknowledged Dad for who he was instead of focusing on who he wasn’t, my relationship with him changed. And like Calvin’s dad, my father was dead by then.

What are you waiting for?

Calvin’s book, Becoming the Kind Father: A Son’s Journey sounds like a powerful, important read.

7 phrases you can’t say in conflict resolution

What if George Carlin had been a mediator instead of a comedian?

I’d like to think he’d have challenged some of the conventions and sacred cows of the conflict resolution world, just like he pushed the envelope with the media.

So I’ll do it instead, though admittedly no George Carlin. While there’s no FCC monitor to bleep you if you utter them, these phrases are dirty words in my lexicon and when I hear them, particularly the first one, I cringe inwardly (and sometimes outwardly).

Phrases like these are traps and black holes for engaging conflict effectively. They complexify conflict even while they purport to simplify it. And they may be giving mediators, mediation and conflict coaches a bad name.

1. Let’s compromise. Compromise is the dirtiest word of conflict resolution, because compromise isn’t the goal, it’s the fallback if nothing better can be achieved. When you start with compromise, you’re tacitly inviting everyone to give up something important in order to reach resolution. That’s no place to begin because there are other highly effective ways to approach problem-solving that have little to do with compromise. A good mediator or conflict coach will have a deep enough toolbox to help you explore the conflict using those other paths. If you resolve conflict in personal and professional relationships primarily by compromise, you create a negotiation pattern that’s all about giving up and horse-trading…not the greatest foundation to build the relationship for the long run.
2. Don’t take it personally. I consider this one of the most useless pieces of advice for effective conflict resolution, and I know saying so is anathema to some. Conflict gets tricky because it reaches into us very personally…into our identities, our values, our beings. Ordering someone to ignore this may be asking the impossible and can actually distract the conversation from the deeper issues that need attention. When have you simply gotten over something because someone told you to? Taking a conflict personally helps you figure out why it’s eating at you, what’s pressing against you, and how to address it. Go for it.
3. He’s a difficult person. If anyone’s in a position to say how many difficult people there are out there, it’s a professional mediator and conflict coach like me. And in my literally thousands of cases and clients, I’ve run into very, very few people I think are generally difficult. Psychologist Jeffrey Kottler once said, “Every person you fight with has many other people in his life with whom he gets along quite well. You cannot look at a person who seems difficult to you without also looking at yourself.” Enough said.
4. She can’t handle change. That’s just utter nonsense. People change all the time – their hair color, their homes, their jobs, their careers, their towns, even their partners and spouses. That’s a lot of change in a lifetime. Chalking up someone’s resistance as dislike of or inability to change causes you not to look any deeper for more meaningful information – like unhappiness with the way the change is happening, fear caused by lack of concrete information about the way the change will affect them, or dissatisfaction with genuine opportunities for their voice to be heard in the change process.
5. Be respectful. No one seeks to be treated disrespectfully, but telling someone to be respectful is like saying nothing at all. To make this point in a workshop once, I asked 20 people to describe what disrespect looked like to them. Not surprisingly, I got 20 different answers. Instead of regulating respect, make your request in simple behavioral terms like this: “Please let me finish my sentences.”
6. Control yourself. While it’s reasonable and fair to expect basic anger management from your family, friends and colleagues, smoothing over disagreements because of your own discomfort with conflict – and demanding others to do the same – may prevent the real issues from getting aired and addressed. Anger is a signal that there’s something important eating at us, and quashing it unduly ignores signals that something’s in need of attention.
7. I don’t have a Number 7. I couldn’t think of another one that I find as irritating and ineffective as those above. So I’m asking you…what should go here?

Thanks, George Carlin, for the laughs, the wit, and the inspiration. And thanks, Ann Michael, for encouraging me to write about this when we chatted at SOBCon and before we knew George would be leaving us.

4th of july declaration of interdependence

I created this a while back and the 4th of July holiday seems like the right time to share it again, particularly since so many of you are new readers (thank you!).

Here’s my Declaration of Interpendence:

(Can’t see the video in your feed reader or email? Click here to go to My Declaration of Interdependence.)

Happy holiday weekend for those of you here in the U.S.

7 simple hacks guaranteed to improve your meetings

When important matters and decisions are on the table for discussion, conversation can get a little tricky and difficult sometimes.

You can prevent the conversation from getting tangled and tripped up by common pitfalls with a little care in language choice and a few simple strategies for staying on track and making clear decisions.

I’ve compiled my 7 simplest meeting and conflict resolution hacks to help:

1. When you’ve got a problem to solve, don’t waste valuable face-to-face time. Learn why blamestorming is a waste.
2. Avoid a common decision-making mistake with silence does not equal yes.
3. Don’t fall into the trap of this guaranteed disagreement sidetracker: always, never.
4. When things get a bit hot under the collar, make sure you’re taking the right steps to really cool them down again.
5. Learn why the phrase I hear you is one to avoid and what to say instead.
6. Understand why “and” can be a much better word than “but” in conflict situations: Yes, but…
7. Don’t fear that truly effective listening will inadvertently convey that you agree. Acknowledging is different than agreeing.

What are your favorite meeting and conflict hacks?

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