Does your team have the foundations to succeed?
Teams fail because of conflict, lack of communication and failing to work well together.
The UNITE method gives teams the foundations to build trusting relationships and resolve conflicts so Leaders can steer them to success.
Why don't my intelligent high performers talk and work well together?
Most teams underperform.
Even teams of intelligent, hard working and committed people fail. They fail because of poor communication, politics, power struggles and disengagement. They fail mostly because of human issues.
We don’t join together under pressure well.
We can be friends for years, but things change when we are put under pressure. That’s why more marriages fail than succeed. It’s why 70% of business partnerships breakdown.
If you want your team to succeed you have to stop the relationships disintegrating within your team.
I teach teams how to fight and unite
I’ve spent the last 30 years understanding the core problems individuals face.
As a Happiness Coach and Author, a Relationship Counsellor and a Conflict Mediator I learned that people need to join together with purpose. But we’re not very good at it. We struggle because we don’t know how to deal with conflict.
After watching thousands of interactions, after studying the psychology of individual and relational dynamics and conflict resolution, I started to understand the deeper problem.
After years of trial and error, I developed and refined the UNITE method and now I want to share it with you.
How you handle conflict is what makes or breaks relationships
If you’re looking for the 20% effort that gets you 80% of results, the answer is in handling conflict.
It’s the skill that we’ve never learned because we’ve never needed it as much before.
Up till the Second World War couples that married stayed together whether they wanted to or not. There was less ability to divorce and up till then survival was more the focus than satisfaction. From the 60’s on, divorces sky-rocketed because marriage stopped being an economic unit and we wanted emotional satisfaction.
Work teams were less challenged until recent decades.
Henry Ford could fight pitched battles with his workers because all that mattered was keeping the production line running. But the world has changed. We’ve moved from the business of logistics to the business of knowledge.
And that requires deep specialised knowledge and highly refined abstract communication.
Stress reduces our creativity, intelligence and productivity. When the production line is ideas, we can no longer just keep the line moving. Emotional wellbeing directly impacts our output.
conflict needs Communication
Conflict is a different of opinions.
Maybe we want different things. Or we want different strategies to get the same thing. Either way it needs us to talk.
But… conflict activates the fight or flight response.
When we go into fight mode we stop listening. When we go into flight mode we stop talking. The result is a breakdown in communication.
When we stop talking, we lose connection and soon the other person becomes our enemy and the relationships descends into hostility.
we need a new solution
The UNITE Method is a new frame for conflict.
It starts with understanding that there’s a process for conflict. When we normalise the problem, we take away the emotions. Each stage of the process it shines a light on where the conflict originates.
It gives both sides a shared language to understand where they are.
The it opens up the discussions they need to have to work together to solve the problem they face.
The direct cost of Conflict (£28.5 billion) is the tip of the iceberg
Every year conflict costs organisations £28.5 billion and one hundred million working days.
It affects 9.7 million employees. That averages £1,000 per employee. And it costs 1.7 million employees lost from the organisation.
But these are just the headline figures.
What about silent conflict? The power struggles, politics and personality differences. The resentments and bitternesses that block communication and lead to poorer decisions.
The stress and depression leads to disengagement, time off and poor productivity.
Unite is the solution To joining together
Google’s Project Aristotle found that what matters in teams is Psychological Safety.
Patrick Lencioni talks about trust and fear of conflict being at the core of team’s dysfunctions.
I came to a similar model from a very different background. My journey has been about helping people navigate the big challenges of life. Divorce, redundancy, relationship struggles and personal challenges.
What I learned along the way is that people need three things;
- To belong
- To be valued
- And to contribute something meaningful.
I realised that relationships are the key to our wellbeing. And ultimately relationships are about being a team, whether it’s our marriage, family or work. But these relationships are fragile because we have an inability to cope with conflict.
Personally, and professionally, we need to find where we belong and join with others in pursuit of meaningful goals.
A Team That unites can conquer anything
Jurgen Klopp took over a sleeping giant.
They’d not had sustained success for nearly 30 years. They were underfunded with little money to spend and a poorer squad than their rivals. His secret was to unite the team.
While being outspent by 3 to 1 by his rivals, Klopp led them to win every competition and to become one of the best teams in the world.
No Amount of money can save a divided team
Todd Boehly took the opposite path with Chelsea.
He spent £600 million in the first year, despite already having one of the most expensively assembled squads. The result is his team languishing in 11th place having had four different managers this season. Manchester United spent three times what Liverpool spent over a decade and little success.
Money can build a great team, but without unity it’s wasted.
three ways to learn the unite method
Curious and want to find out more?
I’ll walk you through the UNITE Method through a free email course
You’ll learn how to unite a team and resolve conflict.
Ready to learn In a Workshop?
I will work with you so you fully understand the process and all of the nuances that can crop up.
You’ll walk away with a mastery of conflict that you can use at work, at home and anywhere else.
Want me to work with your team?
You want your team to thrive and achieve, but you don’t have time to master yet another skill.
I’ll teach your team and I’ll work with them to resolve their conflicts.
Master The UNITE Method in 30 days
The Fight to UNITE Method is a five step process to bridging differences.
Step 1 is to reframe conflict from something stressful to a calm and collaborative conversation.
Step 2 is to recognise the sequence of thinking that triggers the emotional hijack that makes conflict so often childish and aggressive.
Step 3 is to see where the conflict came from. Understanding the cause creates deeper self awareness and enable more sustainable solutions.
Step 4 is where you begin the dialogue to understand each other’s motives at a much deeper level.
Step 5 is where we have now identified the problem we have and we can work collaboratively to resolve the issue.