641: Mastering Conflict: 2 Paths to Confident Communication - Miranda Beeson

Mastering Conflict: 2 Paths to Confident Communication

Episode #641 with Miranda Beeson

Your greatest challenge as a practice owner isn't the dentistry — it’s managing people. To help you overcome the inevitable conflict you will experience, Kirk Behrendt brings back Miranda Beeson, one of ACT’s amazing coaches, to share two frameworks for addressing challenges between leaders, team members, and patients. Don't let conflict become a crisis! To learn the best ways to resolve conflict in your practice and your life, listen to Episode 641 of The Best Practices Show!

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Links Mentioned in This Episode:

Listen to Episode 529 of The Best Practices Show

Read books by Stephen Rollnick

Read Crucial Conversations by Al Switzler, Emily Gregory, Ron McMillan, Kerry Patterson, and Joseph Grenny

Main Takeaways:

Each person has a different background with conflict resolution.

Understand the difference between conflict and confrontation.

Master the use of “I” and “you” statements.

Let go of your need to be right.

Listen more, talk less.

Quotes:

“Everyone is coming from a different place and a different background around how they manage conflict. And right off the jump, I want to set apart — this isn't confrontation. Conflict and confrontation are two different things. Conflict is just a difference of opinion, in some capacity, between two people or two parties.” (3:55—4:14)

“Three percent of the population are D style personalities, which, D often stands for direct or dominant personality style. If only three percent of the population have a personality style that's willing to take on conflict directly, that means 97% of the world are not. So, anyone listening that's like, ‘That's me,’ it's okay because you're in the majority. That's why we're doing this podcast. So, mindset does matter. You have to be really intentional about wanting to improve the environment and grow as a team or as a leader around taking on conflict.” (6:14—6:53)

“Again, like we said, it's not confrontation. It's just, how can we decrease that gap between expectations and the reality that we're seeing. And we have to let go of our need to be right, or to go into it as if we have to win, or that our solution is the only way. And so, any time we approach conflict, it's important to be really, really open to new possibilities, to new ideas, and listen to the other person. That's a part of that conflict conversation. And then, also gently share our ideas so that we can have a conversation about it. The goal is that both parties end up satisfied, feeling heard, and having a mutual outcome that's going to benefit the practice and our future relationship.” (6:53—7:40)

“There's this thing called resisting your righting reflex, and it's one of my favorite aspects of the concept of motivational interviewing. It's so hard to do. Most of us, in any given situation, want to be right and want to be heard, and it's so important to resist that reflex to want to “right” the other person. ‘No, no, no. That's not how I see it. No, no, no.’ Your version of the truth is not the same as theirs, and so we just have to agree that we have different versions of the truth, and how can we get to a compromise and resist that reflex to “right” the other person.” (9:28—10:05)

“Resist your righting reflex. The example I use when I talk to dental professionals, especially hygienists . . . is when you have a patient who you've recommended periodontal care to, and they didn't move forward but they come in next time and they say like, ‘I'm so excited because I bought that gum detoxifying toothpaste. I saw the commercial. I can't wait for you to tell me it's going to look so good in there.’ And in my mind as a hygienist, I'm like, ‘I know darn well that that toothpaste didn't cure your periodontal infection.’ But I'm not going to immediately stop and “right” them and say like, ‘That doesn't work.’ I'm going to go, ‘Oh my gosh, I'm so glad that you heard what we were talking about last time that there were concerns there, and you went and took some action. Let's look at that together and see how you're doing.’ The reality is, they're not going to be doing any better than they were. But I'm not going to take advantage of that situation and “right” them in that moment. I'm going to resist my righting reflex, and then take it as an opportunity later to work on that problem together. They'll see it for themselves, eventually.” (10:14—11:18)

“The ARCH method, it's an acronym. A stands for acknowledge and agreement. R stands for request. C is confirm. H is hope . . . We’ll start with the A, acknowledge and agreement. What we want to do right off the jump to help ease any tensions around the conflict is acknowledge or agree to what we can about the issue. So, the other person has a point of view, and there's often a common place within the conflict, or within the situation, on which you can agree on something. If you can find one thing within this point of conflict that you can agree on, starting with an agreement or some acknowledgment of an agreement, that can be a really great starting point to immediately diffuse some of the tension within the conflict. So, if you're listening to gain resolution, there's usually something within their perspective that you can agree upon.” (11:56—12:57)

“Sometimes, we need to step away, regroup, and allow that frontal part of our brain to get into a more linear thinking fashion. And I say even write this down. Have a piece of paper that has ARCH, and you sit down and work through those thoughts for each one. Get it on paper. You can even use the piece of paper, if you need to, in guiding through the conversation. You can tell the other person like, ‘I'm really trying to do a better job of managing conflict conversations.’ There's a book called Crucial Conversations that I really love. ‘I'm trying to do better at managing these crucial conversations. I'm going to use this paper because I wrote down some thoughts because I want us to really end up in a good place with this.’ I mean, how cool would it be if you had someone coming to you with that much thought into how they're going to approach you to make sure this goes well, versus just coming at it emotionally flooded?” (14:43—15:39)

“First and foremost, stop. Instead of, ‘I want this person to understand where I'm coming from,’ it's, ‘Maybe I should take a minute to try to understand where they're coming from.’ That's responding versus reacting. And we've all done that with the text message. You type it out, and then you erase it, and then you type it out, and then you erase it. If you're doing that, just don't reply until tomorrow morning. Good rule of thumb.” (16:19—16:46)

“With acknowledge [in ARCH], a common occurrence within a dental practice is when somebody feels like they're the primary person managing sterilization — it comes up a lot. ‘Only so-and-so is in there. The other person is not.’ So, say you have two dental assistants and they're in conflict because one of them feels like they're carrying way more of the load around managing sterilization, and the other one is just seeing patients and not doing any of the extras. So, if we look at acknowledge, and you're being confronted by this person in this conflict way, again, easy. ‘I totally agree with you, Suzie. There are a lot of responsibilities that we're both responsible for, and we should share the load.’ So, Susie comes to me and says, ‘I don't think you're doing enough to help with sterilization. I'm in there all day long. I never see you come in there when I'm in there, and I'm just really frustrated.’ So, to acknowledge or create a place of agreement, I can say like, ‘Susie, you're exactly right. There are a lot of extra responsibilities outside of just seeing our patients. I think we should share the load.’ Now, that doesn't speak to why I'm not, and, ‘Yeah, but you did this last week,’ because we have to be moving forward in the conflict. But we can at least agree that there are a lot of extra responsibilities outside of patient care and we should share those responsibilities.” (17:19—18:44)

“Once we've reached that place of acknowledgement and agreement, the next piece, which is the R, is request. So, making a request, either for a solution for an idea from them to contribute, possibly to request bringing someone else into the conversation if we feel like it's elevated beyond what we can facilitate on our own. But the main thing is we want to keep the conversation moving forward. So, we start with an agreement piece. And now, to keep moving forward, we're going to make a request. So, in that same example, I might say like, ‘I really do try to help throughout the day. I just get so busy that I really can't find the time very often. Maybe you can share with me how you're working the time in. If you feel like you're in there throughout the day, maybe you can help me figure out what you're doing different than what I'm doing so that I can be in there more often.’ So, that's a request from that person to start moving into solving the situation.” (18:45—19:41)

“After we've made the request and we discuss what that looks like, so, Susie has shared with me, ‘Well, what I normally do is this. Maybe you could try doing that,’ or, ‘Hey, what if in the morning we look at the day, and I'm in there in the morning, and then you go in after lunch, and you're the one who primarily does it after lunch?’ ‘Okay, great.’ Now, we want to confirm what that solution is that we've discovered together after making our request. We want to make sure that once we've made an agreement, we confirm the details. Too many conversations go wrong, or the conflict repeats itself because we weren't clear. So, we might have discussed a solution, but we both heard that solution a little bit differently. If we actually verbalize and make a lot of clarity around what we've decided to do to help solve this, then we're all going to be really clear on the expectations. So, literally say out loud a summary of what you heard the conclusion to be and what that path forward is.” (19:48—20:46)

“Once you've confirmed what this solution is, what our path forward is, we now have this level playing field, this new expectation, that if we honor it and we do both move forward and honor this commitment we've made to each other, now you do have this elevated level of trust between each other where you're going to feel more comfortable next time going right into that conflict conversation because it was so successful the last time.” (22:23—22:48)

“We all know that sometimes it does work out where that person still doesn't go in after lunch to do their part of sterilization. But we've created this new, clear expectation where we can now go back to that conflict. This is where you and I say often, we can't argue with our own data. Someone can't argue with their own data. If you have verbalized this commitment to each other and you've set this clear expectation, if it doesn't happen, we can come back to this conversation using the same method and go back through our ARCH steps and say, ‘We made this commitment. Here's my request from you. And now, we're going to have to find a new path forward.’ So, what I really love is it does help to build that vulnerable based trust because the majority of the time, it ends up really solid. We all take action on that path that we agreed upon and we go, ‘Oh my gosh, I can have a conversation about a difference of opinion or something that's bothering me, and I can have a really positive outcome from that. How about that? Maybe I'll try it again sometime.’” (22:52—23:47)

“Hope is ending that conversation and that conflict conversation with positive gratitude around being able to take this on together, looking at the good of what's to come from it all. What is this better outcome that we're going to be moving into? Really communicate your optimism and hope for the future that's going to come from this new agreement. So, if we look at the example we were given, ‘I'm really glad, Susie, that we were able to talk about this. I really don't want you feeling like you carry my share all day as well. I hope that trying this new way where we split the day is going to lighten the load for both of us. This might be a better option than we ever would have come up with if we hadn't had this conflict.’ So, looking at the future and being really hopeful for what this decision and resolution that we came to together can really provide that's going to better our lives in the end.” (23:54—24:47)

“A lot...