Managing Conflict For Performance In The Workplace

Managing Conflict To Raise Performance

Clark: [00:00:00] I think there’s definitely room for some sort of devil’s advocate type conversation. It’s not necessary to mention 10th man or any of that stuff, but for instance, I’ll give you an example. We were going to talk about conflict today, and I was just thinking about this, because whilst people get the impression that I like conflict. I don’t like conflict, but I think there’s definitely room for it and there’s a need for it. I’ve had this conversation before with somebody because they talk about conflict when really what they’re actually talking about is just a difference of opinion. I’ve had leaders or managers that I’ve worked with say, yeah, but I think this and they think that. And I say, yeah, that’s fine.

You just have a different viewpoint or perspective on something. That’s not conflict. what happens is, and say, can see why you might disagree because even this person said, Aren’t words violence? 

And I said, what? Sorry.

They said, you can commit violence against somebody by your words. Now I understand that concept of, hate speech and all that sort of thing. I can see where that comes from. But technically speaking, they’re just words. And whilst there may be [00:01:00] different viewpoints, there is no conflict because there is no tension, no antagonistic push pull going on, other than you just have a different viewpoint to somebody. 

Rob, Tony, myself, we may all have different viewpoints of what constitutes conflict. there’s an inner conflict. for me, for instance, talk to people regularly about the conflict within themselves about either being conforming to the tribe or being an individual.

There’s a conflict there because you’ve been pushed in one direction and trying to pull back in the other as an individual. There’s conflict there, where all of those antagonistic, push pull situations cause something. if you have a situation where you can get, a devil’s advocate viewpoint on something. 

Just me saying what I’ve just said, and Rob shaking his head and Tony nodding, there’s clearly room there for a devil’s advocate type conversation, where we don’t necessarily have to agree on the subject. you can probably have that conversation about anything. 

That’s where the [00:02:00] magic lies. Because, there are people that say, No, speech is violence or can be violence. 

Conflict can be caused by the things that you say. Simple as. Whereas somebody else might say, No, they’re just different viewpoints. Ricky Gervais, for instance, says he never apologizes for a joke because it’s just a joke. and that’s to me where the interest lies in having all the different viewpoints around the thing. 

Then seeing, that there’s no definitive truth to any of these. And I think that’s where the magic lies. 

Rob: It’s funny, but before you’d, said that., I’d done a triangle with 10th man, unifier and perform under pressure, and trying to look at what’s in the middle. 

I find that interesting because it all depends on how you define conflict. 

I think when whenever two people meet the conflict is already there it just hasn’t played out in the context or the situation because the makeup of them are different and what they believe are different. 

Sooner or later there’s going to come a point where they have a difference and the conflict always existed it’s just shown itself. 

The earlier that you [00:03:00] can resolve that conflict, the less violent or hassle or whatever it is. 

I think a conflict is when we have different goals. but it all depends on how obviously on how you define conflict. 

I think that the violence comes from like the non violent communication, where people think, there is violence in communication. 

Clark: Yeah, that’s always what it comes down to, whether we’re talking about conflict or progress or success or happiness, there is always a point at which you have to say… how do we define X or Y. 

The whole point of my existence in a work situation is that I’m often introduced into an environment where there is a perceived conflict between certain interests. 

More often than not, it’s between the workforce and the management, let’s say, because they’re expecting one thing and the management another thing.

Actually, the conflict usually is fairly simply resolved by, by emphasizing the fact that they’re talking about two different things and that both things are [00:04:00] not mutually exclusive. 

But you do have to get to that point, I think, as you’ve just said, Rob, where you have to say, what exactly is it that we’re talking about? 

That’s the point of it, the devil’s advocate really just argues the other side of any point. Whereas I personally think that the 10th man is trying to do something slightly different, and that’s to make some progress. 

One of the things I’ve always said, just going back to conflict again, is that our muscles function antagonistically. we move our arm based on the fact that one’s pulling while the other one’s pushing, or relaxing. If you didn’t have that anti antagonistic situation, you literally couldn’t move. And that’s how you make progress, by setting one side of a conflict off against the other, there’s a push against a pull.

You guys I’m sure already know this, but it often pays in a conflict situation to keep that conflict going until the situation is resolved. Because Whilst you’re trying to clarify what people mean when they talk about the conflict, you’re also trying to get to the bottom of what [00:05:00] exactly it is they want. 

If you can start to bring these two parts closer and closer together so that there is an end point, then you can start to reach some sort of resolution. And it’s often nothing like what they thought they were after at the beginning. 

 There has to be an element of taking the other side of the situation.

So for instance, let’s say, when we talk about conflict and people say that, speech. It’s violence. 

Somebody has to take the other side of that and say, no, that’s where you start to get the fuel for an interesting conversation, right? It’s not really important at the outset whether speech is or isn’t violence.

It’s that you’re starting to come to some sort of conclusive, definitive idea of what it means. To have conflict and then how you can resolve that because certainly in an organizational setting conflict is enormously useful to get it out in the open anyway, because very often the conflict that people think they’re having is nothing.

For instance, I had a recent conversation with An organization that had a problem with one particular person. When I sat down with the boss and said, so what have you [00:06:00] already talked to this particular person about what have you spoken about regarding this conversation?

He said, Oh, we haven’t. so there’s no conflict that because the person doesn’t even know. you’ve not even had this discussion, so you literally want me to do your job for you. 

You want me to find out what the problem is. And actually, he didn’t have a problem, you’ve got the problem. As an organization, sometimes just bringing it out into the open is what makes these things resolve themselves. 

I’m sure you see that, rob, with relationships, just talking about it, can sometimes just get the thing cleared up just by listening to people talk about it. 

Rob: I see, Tenth Man and Unifier as being opposite sides of the same coin. Because if the job of the Tenth Man is to challenge, The job of the unifier is to find the differences and then find a common ground. 

So where the 10th man is challenging and opening up the debate, unifying is about, okay, we’ve had the debate. this is where it is. 

How do we rebuild that, to unite? 

The conflict exists anyway. The problem is that we have a problem with conflict. I think it, it’s an [00:07:00] evolutionary problem that for us difference means danger. 

Because when you look at we last evolved 200, 000 years ago, different then meant different tribe, different species. 

Both were life threatening. and so I think bred in our biology, is threat from difference because we think when someone agrees with us, we think they’re like us and then we can understand them. 

We think they’re like our tribe. and when they’re not like us, they, we think were, and I think this is like the same basis for prejudice is that we judge people who are different because different skin, different color, different creed, anything like that. 

Different means that they’re a threat, and biologically, we process them as a threat first, and because of that, we’re in stress mode. 

Once we’re in stress mode, we stop communicating because we either become childish or overly aggressive or we avoid discussing. Then we can’t resolve it and we feel threatened. We don’t even know what we feel threatened about. We aggravate the [00:08:00] situation rather than actually talk it through. 

If we can shortcut that conflict response to stay calm and we can just talk about it, then we find that the differences aren’t as big as we thought. 

Clark: Do you think it’s an evolutionary thing? 

There’s a thought in the back of my mind, which I’ve not really articulated, because it’s just occurred to me that I think we’re worse at conflict now than we’ve ever been, and we’re more afraid of conflict now than we’ve ever been. 

Rob: That makes sense when you look at we’ve evolved long before human civilization and so we’re not evolved for the world that we live in. we 200 000 years ago what we evolved 10 000 years ago We domesticated last 2 000 years. We’ve lived like this last 200 years.

We’ve lived in a modern city like society so We’ve started speaking more so in the sense of I’m offended by this, I don’t want to have conflict and there’s, and I think there’s, as soon as anyone says that they’re offended by something, companies are like, Oh, we’ll pull sponsorship and all of this kind of thing.

So in that sense, there are more avoidant, [00:09:00] but it’s more, but I think the biological response has always been, and I think if you go back, 60, 70 years where there was less equality, women and children didn’t argue so much with their parents. so I think we’re more open, but I think the biology doesn’t change.

The instincts still stay the same, but the context of the culture changes. So our drives still, play out in a different context. 

Tony: I think chronic stress is an accumulation of those innate subconscious stress responses, which are wired into us to avoid threat and danger. But they happened to us because somebody said something that we didn’t like or the boss did something that didn’t suit me.

Or I was told I couldn’t have my holiday when I wanted to. All of these things trigger those, those adrenal glands and the cortisol and all of that sort of stuff that, that in its right place is fantastic, keeps us alive, makes us fight back. It gathers all our resources so we can run faster than we normally can. 

[00:10:00] Whereas when you’re sitting in the car and you’re getting annoyed because you’re going to be late for your meeting, the same stress, you’re turning on this stress response all the time and We’re not wired for that. And that’s why people’s immune systems crash and people’s accumulate heart disease and all sorts of things.

I’m one of those subjects. Thank you very much. 

Rob: Robert Sapolsky’s work of why zebras don’t get ulcers. so we’re over responding. So the cues have changed. but we’re still taking them as threats when they aren’t really threats. 

Tony: exactly. So that’s that ability to self differentiate where the skill lies. I’ve worked this out for myself that my natural curiosity. is a antidote to stress and like nature’s antidote to stress. You can’t live stressed and curious at the same time. They don’t work together. So I’m naturally that way. In a high pressure environment, I always found myself somewhat detached from the noise and the commotion and the people milling about going nuts.

 I’m just like the chilled person, which is great. until it’s perceived as, you don’t care as much as we do. [00:11:00] so it’s got good and it’s bad points. Like everything, it’s just a peg in the ground. 

Sapolsky’s work’s brilliant. he claims there’s no free will at all. 

That when somebody commits an act of violence, let’s say, and they are then judged in a court of law, that none of that makes sense. None of it should ever happen that way. the person that committed the acts of violence is based on what happened. He uses the terms like what happened a second ago, what happened an hour ago, what happened a week ago. What happened going back to DNA and all of that sort of stuff. 

So he’s a biologist, obviously, and behaviorist. But it’s fascinating. He talks about Hitler, and he talks about all sorts of really curly subjects. And basically it goes, they didn’t mean it. Do you know what I mean?

In some ways, there’s a lot of fascinating stuff to discover there. But to go back to the conflict state, for me, when you can get into what I would call self differentiated state and get curious about what’s going on. Start asking questions. What do you want? How? What are you thinking? How do you feel about that? 

You’re starting [00:12:00] to understand more about the situation. Going back to what you were saying, getting clarity on. let’s say we were having a robust discussion about what conflict is. We have to define the terms first. 

Otherwise, we might just go round and round with different opinions about what conflict is and never resolve anything, because we didn’t at the front end go, let’s define terms here. 

What do we mean by conflict? 

then let’s have a real robust debate around that. and then going back to what you said, Rob, I think that definitely when you talk about what people want, it lends itself also to what people need. 

Maybe subconsciously, what they’re craving, the need for stimulation and need for love and need for belonging and whatever it is that’s not feeding them in that moment that they may not be conscious of or aware of. 

It’s happening to them and they’re responding in a defensive way or in retreat or in an aggressive way, whatever it might be. 

That’s suboptimal in the interest of having a better interaction to get to get some progress in this conflicted [00:13:00] state 

So I don’t know if any of that made sense but try to piece together what you both said in my own mind and link a few things .

Rob: We’ve had a discussion before and you and I tony both had different versions of like the 12 core currencies I think people only want one of like 12 things And whatever they’re looking for it’s one of those things. Whatever they talk about is the symbol for that core thing.

And I think getting to the core of that is where people feel really heard, where their needs are exposed. and then you can work out how you can meet both sides. 

Tony: That’s brilliant. I would like to learn more about those 12 Things that you speak of ’cause we do have a slightly different model, but I’m sure they’re interlinked in, in, in the same way. 

Rob: Yeah. I remember because you had three buckets that they Yeah, I’m sure the 12 sitting within those three. 

Tony: I’ve just remembered what it was that was annoying me and it fits right into this conversation. It’s this belief that work somehow owes us [00:14:00] happiness. 

Like this, I go to work and it’s incumbent on the employer to keep me happy. It’s excuse me, you’re there to have an impact, right?

Work is there to get results. let’s say black and white, work is there to get results. 

It doesn’t mean you can’t go to work to be fulfilled because you found the thing that you love to do. It gets you up in the morning and you’re connected to what the business is doing in some different way. I think that’s fantastic that fulfillment and that you can be incredibly happy at work. 

 It comes across to me as entitled that you go to work thinking, make me happy today otherwise you’re not going to get all of me. 

It doesn’t work like that. So I’m a little bit irritated by this idea that that goes back to the idea to be made to feel happy by our workplace. 

Clark: That’s, probably central to this idea that we’ve got about conflict. And it was the reason why I was asking Rob whether he thinks it is a genuine evolutionary, response to our environment because I’ve got a, no, I haven’t got a feeling. I only have to open my eyes and we can see that people are far [00:15:00] more conflict averse now than they ever were and one of the, one of the things that causes problems with is that let’s say, for instance, a person is under the impression that they need to be made happy by being at work.

There’s something about the work environment should lend itself towards them being happy. 

The problem with that is there was a meme going around for a long time, a year or two ago about people quiet quitting. giving up on work and just doing the bare minimum. and whilst that, that in itself is a, a conversation that needs to be had because, you’re either doing your job or you’re not doing your job. 

Tony: The things that drive results are often really uncomfortable. If I go back to football, You used to try and train at a level of discomfort so that the game was somewhat easy. That’s the idea. 

Can you operate in the game? 

Are you feeling that you’re right on your limits and pushing that extra bit? 

If we take into account the state that you’re looking for, if we take into account that’s fulfilling, it’s meaningful, it’s fulfilling, but it’s painful, can be. 

Clark: The [00:16:00] difference between football and possibly work, I think, is that. you can have a break football. 

Aston Villa have got this problem at the moment. Our players are tired, they’ve been trained to death and they’re not functioning, at their best. And the thing about a work environment is. And this is where the problem lies, I think, with conflict, because you have a person that’s under the impression that they should be made happy at work. 

And the people running the show, the bosses, the leaders, the management team or whatever you wanna call them, are either unaware of this or they disagree. The thing is, though, nobody was having a conversation.

One of the things that I find most difficult in the work that I do, is that very often for instance, a group of people on the shop floor in a factory, are all unhappy about a particular manager. 

But nobody says anything. There may be lots of reasons for that. Maybe there’s an environment that’s been set up whereby it is quite clear that if you do say something, you get punished.

There’ll be punitive measures taken against you or whatever. Or they feel that there may be, might be. 

The problem is to a great [00:17:00] degree now, even just in the 20 years that I’ve been doing this work People are less inclined to voice their concerns. People may say as Rob said, I’m offended by X. Okay, great. Let’s have this conversation, but people are disinclined to have that conversation by virtue of having said, I’m unhappy, I’m offended, I’m insulted or whatever, they tend to think far more now than they ever did, that’s the end of the conversation. I’m offended. I’m insulted. I’m unhappy.

I’m angry. That’s the end of it. 

No, that’s the start of it. That’s the start of the conversation. And until you say that, we can’t go anywhere. And when a person says, for instance, I’m not happy here, at this place of work, the question then is, why? Is it because your feet hurt? Because your missus is not talking to you?

Your dog’s just died? What’s the problem? 

Or is it because you’re here, that you feel that you should be a neurosurgeon, and actually you’re fixing rubber soles to the bottoms of shoes? Is that why? 

So you didn’t fulfill your potential in life and we’ve now got to make up [00:18:00] for that somehow by making you happy. 

In actual fact, one of the things that I do in my work is say to bosses, look, to the extent that you can, you need to be having this conversation constantly. Because just by virtue of having the conversation when a person says, I’m not happy, and the boss says, what do you want me to do, or, in a nicer way, how can we help? 

Very often, there’s nothing we can do because the person doesn’t want to be there. And it’s that simple. and I often have this conversation with groups of workers when they say, 

The management are rubbish, they’re entitled, they’re oppressive, they’re bullies, they’re this, that and the other. 

When you flip it around and say, yes, okay, so what would you do if you were the bosses? Because I guarantee that within, if you were the bosses, within a month, you’d be doing exactly the same thing because you have the same resources, you have the same access to training and so on. But this conversation can’t take place until you actually voice the truth. That concern. And again, it goes back to what Rob was saying at the beginning.

It’s all about how you [00:19:00] define the things that we’re talking about. As you’ve just said, this idea that work should make us happy. What do you mean by happy? Fulfilled? Satisfied? Should I just be happy to be here? Should I feel that I’m part of something? That I’ve been given enough initiative to do my job?

And usually, when you have that conversation, there is an answer. The problem and the thing that I was saying when I talked to Rob there about whether this is an evolutionary response. 

We seem to be becoming adverse to conflict, much more conflict averse than we ever were. just by having my feet on the ground in places of work, the most difficult part of my job is getting people to say what’s on their mind. 

Now, of course, we’re hopefully trained to do this and, whether we’re trainers or coaches or whatever other background we have, we should be able to draw these things out and we can. By and large, it’s a much more difficult conversation to have when, for instance, as you say, that person’s not happy, but they’re not telling anybody.

They’re just walking around with a flipping lip on the floor. If somebody’s just walking around [00:20:00] glum all day and not saying anything, and I’ve literally had this conversation with people when you, when they, a boss will say, but you’ve got a problem to somebody. And I say, no, I haven’t. 

Eventually they say, I have got a problem with this. why didn’t you say, we’ve been talking about this for half an hour. I was just offended. 

Okay, so what should I have done? And very often the thing that the person or the organization has done is something that they didn’t even know about.

They didn’t know they’d offended them or hurt them or insulted them or made life difficult for them. So how on earth could they have fixed it? 

To me the biggest problem. is the tendency, of a lot of people these days to not engage in conflict and just expect that it should be understood that they’re unhappy or whatever. 

Rob: That’s a cultural phenomenon. This is a complex situation, which has built up over decades. A hundred years ago, we were all scraping for survival, and people were working 70 hours just to survive. Then [00:21:00] we went through the swinging sixties, you had the eighties, very materialistic, and it was about what you could buy. Now with social media. Everyone has a big telly, everyone has, most of the stuff that everyone has, everyone else has, there’s such a consumerist society.

It’s not stuff people want, but experience and emotional satisfaction. 

People never wanted emotional satisfaction in the same way a hundred years ago because lives were too short, lives were too harsh. It wasn’t something they were brought up to expect and part of it is It’s like you say that there isn’t the honest conversations being had. 

There is always a conflict between employer and employee and there Sometimes it’s a lack of honesty, where companies are saying we really value our employees.

That sends mixed messages, when it doesn’t tally up with how they behave. and so we’ve got generations of people who think that they should find happiness in their relationship, they should find happiness in their work, they should [00:22:00] find happiness in everything else, apart from what they actually do. 

Happiness, when you look at Mahali, Csikszentmihalyi, his work on flow, happiness is what you do, happiness is something that only you have control over. It does take that challenge and working at it. 

We’re in a society so economically driven that most of what we get is sales messages. 

If you just buy this, if you just have this, you deserve it because you’re worth it. All of these messages tell people that they should be having. 

Then politics buys into that. And so you have this, the whole thing of being outraged and offended. 

Companies aren’t always honest in, what they present, when the job offers and what they say about the culture, and how that actually plays out.

Then there is, a level where we’ve been trained to be entitled. 

I think the problem we have with politics is politicians aren’t giving us honest answers.

People vote for the person with [00:23:00] less taxes, and then they’ll complain about the NHS and defence and education aren’t getting enough funding. 

As voters, we should be adults and we should know that we have to balance one with the other. Companies are maybe, not being honest. They’re driven by shareholder value, so in the end it comes down to money. 

We have to make people happier because in knowledge work, that’s how you get them to be more productive. I think there isn’t enough transparency to have that honest conversation. 

Tony: There’s a lot to take in there. I’ve got a lot to pick through, but there’s a fair bit of what you said was quite profound.

So if you imagine, there’s this two party dance taking place when there’s an interview process takes place. The business is saying, we’re fantastic. We’re the best, got the best culture, come and join us.

This is how we treat our employees. I think the applicant is also in that dance somehow, and perhaps, maybe mostly, don’t feel in a position to be [00:24:00] truly authentic. let’s tell this business what I think they need to hear in order that they give me the job. 

For example, if I enter that business, having been bought back, bombarded by this social influence that’s going on out there, social media, television, all of these things where we get Our imagery and our aspiration from and all of that sort of stuff. 

So I’m sitting there across from the table, great company, managers who are selling the business to me. If I’m sitting there thinking, I’m expecting you to meet all my psychological needs. 

I know that you want to make a ton of cash, but by the way, this is what I need. I need to feel this. I need this. Now this is a paradox for me because if I’m leading a group of players or I’m leading a group of people in an organization, then there’s massive value in getting close enough to people to understand what’s driving them, understand what their needs are.

Is there something that I’m not doing that could just flip that switch to get them where they want to go? 

That’s what I’m looking for, but it’s the entitlement factor I think that is, that gets in the way. 

So [00:25:00] whilst, yes, the companies may not be there, everybody’s putting their best foot forward or the imagery of what their best foot forward looks like, and then they get into the real world, which is actually you’re here to get results. 

And the other person is going, yeah, but I want my psychological needs met on a daily basis. Otherwise, I’m not happy. What are you going to do about it? 

Rob: It’s exactly dating. Everyone’s on the dating app. They’re taller than they are The pictures are younger. They look younger than they are.

They are younger than they actually are. They go out the first date doesn’t quite match up, but they’re still on the best behavior. 

They’re perfect. It’s their ex all of this stuff and it takes three months six months three years To find the problems of the person. 

Tony: The Ricky Gervais scene where he’s gone on a blind date and he he is, oh. The way he responds to the girl not being what he was expecting was priceless. Like he’s a bed of roses himself. 

Clark: what you were saying there though, this entitlement thing, Tony, that. interests me because, when Rob, you were saying, politicians are not straight with us. 

Straight away I’m thinking, who’s [00:26:00] us? 

Who are we talking about? 

who are they not straight with? 

Because they’re straight with somebody. But not straight with everybody and as soon as you said that, what came to my mind was the riots up in Southport and Leeds and these places where this apparent or alleged right wing, basically white working class people in the north of England were rioting. 

They were demonized to a certain degree by the media. 

Regardless of whether I agree with them or not, they felt That they haven’t been listened to. Exactly what you just said that the government hadn’t been straight with them, but the government was straight with somebody. 

the government gets in on a platform of meeting somebody’s needs. Otherwise they wouldn’t have got in and whilst they may lie to some people, they certainly can’t get away with lying to everybody. And that’s probably easier to see that situation 

when we talk about, for instance, in a working environment, when Tony talks about having your psychological needs met. I know that most upper management have their [00:27:00] psychological needs met. They’re looked after. If you’re working a lathe on the shop floor in the corner of the factory, by and large they’re not. When I say who is the us that we’re talking about. 

What often happens, as you quite rightly say in relationships, a person may say to their partner, I was expecting that you were going to show me love and consideration.

And the other one said, I didn’t know that was what we were getting involved in. I just thought that this was sex, or I just thought this was a business transaction, and therein lies the issue, right? 

We spoke at the beginning about defining the terms that we use, but we also have to define the parameters within which we’re going to work. when a government says we’re going to do X, Y, and Z. 

We’re going to raise taxes for these people. And we’re going to lower payments to these people. That’s catering to a section of the society and somebody is losing out always. 

It’s always the case. And when we talk about, they weren’t clear with us, which us they were clear with. With everybody, you obviously either were expecting something, or you misheard, or you misunderstood the [00:28:00] definitions that they used. 

Because if you’re voting for a particular group of people, or if you go to work for an organization, and you’re sitting at the interview table saying, I’m going to do this, and you’re going to pay me X. If your needs aren’t being met, then clearly your expectations weren’t laid out at the beginning. 

Very often when I’ve been involved in situations where there’s a disciplinary or a disagreement, the, one of the first things you have to say, what were you expecting from this situation? 

Were those expectations actually spoken out loud to somebody? 

Did they agree that was something that they were going to do? 

The parameters are very often not defined and, when, for instance, a conservative voter sees a labor government come in, and they say, they weren’t transparent with us. yeah, because you’re not a Labour voter, you were voting for somebody else. 

The other people got in, you’re not going to be happy, are you? 

One of the problems that we have, when people talk about this idea that my needs aren’t being met, did they say they were going to meet your needs? Is that a conversation that was had? And very often those expectations were never laid out in the [00:29:00] first place.

And when somebody says, my happiness is not being met, I didn’t realize that was what we were supposed to do. We just said we were going to pay you. We didn’t have that conversation. 

Rob: Politics is a great, metaphor because politicians promise things that they don’t deliver. 

People voted for Brexit thinking that the NHS was going to get 350 million a week spent on it, and it wasn’t. They just took that figure, never said that they were going to spend it and never did use it. I think politicians are economical with the truth in the sense of they say what they’re going to do. They try to imply. so basically when you vote, when you look at the mandate, if you looked at it properly, I’m pretty sure that you would show the conservatives would weight their budget in a certain way. They would emphasize certain projects. Labor would do a different set, but sometimes they imply that they’re going to spend more, through massaging the figures and what statistics they use. 

Which gives people the belief, okay, education is still going to be the same, even though we’re going to put more in the [00:30:00] NHS. 

And then you’ve got the problem of it’s generally a minority government.

So it’s less than 50%. vote of the population, and so what you’ve then got if you’ve got people like Nigel Farage in those cases who are agitating Because they’ve got something to gain 

 I think you have the same in the workplace where you’ve got people agitating, just generally somebody doesn’t like the boss or whatever it is. But I think something that companies need to understand is yes, you offer people, right?

When someone sits in that interview room, I think they’ve got every wish, to give their best. but at that moment, they’ve got a need, they need the money. it might be sound like a wonderful job and they might think, oh yes, this is it. 

People join feeling excited about the opportunity. But everything from then is downhill because there’s going to be things that they didn’t never foresaw. Their problems in life are going to change, their priorities are going to change, and that’s human nature. 

 We agree to at one point, [00:31:00] We change and when we have the money coming in, yes, the money’s nice, but we forget what it was like to not have the money. 

So that contract is, as far as we’re concerned, as an emotional being, the money’s just taken for granted. 

It’s other things. Someone didn’t talk to us nice. I don’t get that office. I don’t get, whatever it is, and human nature, we have to understand that people aren’t cold and rational beings who think like that.

They’re emotional creatures that react to their basic human needs. Part of it is understanding what they’re going to need, which is a very difficult job. It all just comes down to communication. but the problem often companies are tending to have bigger teams.

People have, more people reporting to them, which makes it more difficult to have that communication. 

Clark: What you just said there about emotions, when emotions get involved, you clearly got a recipe for things to escalate. The reason I mentioned about defining the parameters, all the rules of engagement within a [00:32:00] particular relationship, it’s important then because emotions arise as a consequence of Thinking. 

This is why cognitive behavioral therapy works, because if you can change a person’s thinking, you can hopefully at least influence to a certain degree their emotions.

What often happens though is, there are certain things we know, we can take for granted, for instance, that bullying is not okay ever anyway. 

So in the workplace, no boss can say, you never told me that you didn’t want to be bullied. No, because that doesn’t need to be said. 

There are certain things that don’t need to be said, however, if a person says, I don’t feel valued, then that’s a conversation to be had, because it’s a gray area, whether you feel valued, and whether I feel that I’m valuing you are two completely different things. 

That’s a conversation, if you can have the conversation, You can hopefully help a person adjust their thinking slightly to be more in line, so they can start to meet in the middle of the bit.

This is where this idea of what are the rules of engagement. Sometimes it’s so important to make that clear, because an [00:33:00] obvious example that always comes to my mind is when I was asked to sit in on a disciplinary with an organization, because somebody had made a mistake and sent thousands of pounds worth of equipment to the wrong customer.

It cost them a fortune in missed deadlines, having to get this stuff back, cranes. It cost a lot of money. Before we actually had the disciplinary, I said to the senior leaders that were involved, what are the guidelines for this person that he should have been following? So that we know what we’re comparing it to.

And he said, there aren’t any. And I said, you forget the disciplinary. There are no parameters. How can we have the conversation with the guy? He was just making a judgment call and he made the wrong one. 

That’s not his problem. 

You asked him to make the judgment. He got it wrong. You can’t ask somebody to do something and then complain when he doesn’t do it the way you want.

So there has to be, and we’ve had this conversation before a standard or a benchmark to, to work against. 

In a relationship, when two people are together and they fall out of love, usually one person will say, look, we got married, we made certain vows.

I have a reasonable expectation that [00:34:00] you should stay true to those vows. or both of them do. If for whatever reason, as you’ve just said with politicians, they start to go against the things that they said they were going to do. then we have the basis for a conversation because we said we were going to do this and now we’re doing this. And the likes of Farage and people like that, that are agitating.

The great thing about having defined the parameters of a situation is you can always say, and the perfect example is at the moment in South Korea. Political analysts are trying to decide whether the military will take the side of the government or the president.

Is it the president? I think that’s imposed martial law in South Korea. and they say, we don’t know. We don’t know whether the army’s gonna take side of the president or the parliament. 

what does the law say, ? What are the rules? Once we know what the definition is for the parameters of this particular type of situation, or maybe they don’t exist and then they need to be made.

But by and large, when people like Farage or whoever is agitating, they’re just causing trouble. and if you can directly point to the standard or the benchmark by which we [00:35:00] operate under these circumstances, then there’s no conversation. You can have the conversation because you’re a benevolent work, manager or leader, and we want to help you as best we can. But if you’re not happy, you’ve got to tell me, and we’ve now got to decide whether one of us is operating outside of the parameters that were set down in the first place. 

Tony: I love David Marquet’s, use of the word we.

He banned any other word than we. So if supply chain haven’t delivered a part to operations, And supply chain had the issue. They weren’t allowed to go in and say supply chain haven’t done it and his methodology was such that he talked about it over time It rewires everybody’s brain to start belonging together. 

I can’t remember the term exactly, something about using language to change leadership behavior. Very clever guy. 

Rob: It’s so important to have that transparency. And it reminds me of when you talked about, Unai Emery, when his set piece was, Guy was making the excuses and he’s no, It’s having that parameters when they’re so clear, then everyone knows where they [00:36:00] are. 

I’ve never liked being told what to do. And because of that, I’ve never wanted to be the leader.

Tony: That’s the antidote to leadership. I’m going to tell you what to do. 

Rob: Perhaps it was my definition of leadership, but I remember I went to school. hated being told what to do and I remember I made friends at the end of in one year we went to a new school. He had these kind of people that always used to follow him around and he started bunking off and everyone looked at me and go well, okay, what are we going to do?

And I’m like, what do you need me to tell me tell you what to do? 

Because I didn’t because like I didn’t You know, it’s like they were looking for someone to lead the group and because I didn’t everyone splintered off I never wanted to be in a leadership position because I feel Yeah, I don’t know.

It was probably something I need to work out of the definition of leadership 

Clark: the idea that they all splintered off that’s interesting because you know, you immediately think of sheep, if there’s not a sheepdog there, they would all, they will all just wander off and fall off cliffs and into rivers and get eaten by bears or whatever. 

it does need to be some sort of, some guidance. but I [00:37:00] remember back many years ago, there was a point where I had a conversation. 

So I was in prison in the military, and I think I posted about this. I was in 30 days, in solitary and I was given the job, and it was a luxury, this job. 

I was given the job of washing up at the officer’s mess, because there was a ball on at the officer’s mess. which is a really cushy number if you’re a prisoner. Because what happens is you wash the glasses, but they’ve got drink in lot of them.

So you drink the drink and then wash the glasses. I knew that this was a perk that had been given to me about halfway through my sentence because I’ve been behaving myself. and so by about 10 o’clock at night, I was completely trolled. 

I kept looking over at the guards because there were two military policemen at the door watching me because they were there to stop me from, I don’t know, doing stuff, running away or whatever. They didn’t seem to be taking any notice. So I just kept drinking this drink. 

Anyway, I ended up talking to a guy who was an officer. He was the paymaster of our regiment. He was a captain, but prior to being a captain, he’d been a monk, believe it or not, in [00:38:00] Liverpool. 

So we were chatting and we were talking about this whole idea of being a monk, because I was saying, isn’t that interesting that the army chaplains and, my contentious approach to things, goes back years, 30 odd years, because even then I said to him, why is it that the army chaplain is an officer? Why has he got rank? 

surely, if Jesus had been in the army, He wouldn’t have been an officer. He washed people’s feet and stuff, surely. So what’s, you should make him the lowest rank. Because he’s a servant of everybody. And that to me is the idea of being a leader. You’re there to help, to guide, and to do things for other people.

Why do you need rank? if you need rank, it’s because you personally don’t carry the authority to make people listen to you. A sheepdog doesn’t need to be given a badge. It just does what sheepdog dogs do and the sheep listen. Because he does sheepdog stuff. if you’re a leader, when the time is right, you will lead.

But you don’t need to go and tell people or to ride around in a great big jag and whatever it [00:39:00] is. 

I think between us, we need to define what leadership is, because I don’t disagree with any of you. 

But this idea of formal authority and informal authority is the world I claim, right? 

You can lead from anywhere. It’s about building trust. If people trust you to say, yeah, I’ll go with you there, that’s a great idea. then that’s it. 

If they wouldn’t go there on their own, but I can show them how we could do it. if that client scales a tree when they’re, and other people are afraid to do and he shows them how to do it, helps them build new capacity.

That’s a proper leadership, right?