How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right • Hacker News Board

Re: How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

#51

Post by pmichaud » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #11

cousin_it wrote: post #4

I've seen this pattern a few times now: someone encounters NVC - claims that his interpersonal skills have massively increased - starts trying to recruit others into it - others don't follow because he's mostly talking in canned robotic phrases - when others point it out to him, he uses NVC tools to ignore/deflect - all efforts to reach him fail. In contrast, I've never seen anyone who could be described as an NVC su…

This was my impression after reading the NVC book. It doesn't aim at resolving conflict. It aims at being able to talk about a conflict without joining into it. Most conflicts have a rhetorical side to them, and when you try to talk through them, you almost inevitably fall into the trap of fighting the conflict on the rhetorical level. Even an intermediator trying to be neutral will end up reciting one side's attack…

I almost agree with you, but I think it actually does bring you much closer to resolution.

The reason is that by default the rhetoric and content, (as you've put it) are deeply conflated in the minds of the people who are engaged in conflict. NVC can tease them apart, and often the content that is left is literally nothing (ie. it was all just a matter of feeling respected or whatever), or a trivial disagreement that can be quickly solved.

But even when the conflict turns out to be non trivial, NVC is a boon. If all parties to the conflict are now in a non violent frame, then what has happened is the problem is quite clear, the stakes for everyone involved are quite clear, and all the people are in a collaboration together to figure out a solution that addresses what matters.

So you're right that it doesn't automatically solve any specific, objective problem, but it sets up the environment so success becomes way more likely.

Re: How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

#52

Post by jshevek » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #35

quanticle wrote: post #28

Suppose product development has slowed down, reported bugs have increased 30% since last month, and sprint velocity is down by 40%. Your engineer is feeling desperately unhappy and is terrified of building new features because of the risk to the system as a whole. They want to stop building new features and refactor some of the system architecture. But what do you think their unmet universal need is here? If I were i…

> If I were in a situation like that, my "unmet universal need" would be "a manager that understands the concept of technical debt and taking time for unit testing as opposed to spouting mindless psycho-babble at me". If you cannot state your need without judgmental comments (blaming others, etc), you are not going to get far in solving the problem. Your problems are valid, but you have to be able to communicate them…

>If you cannot state your need without judgmental comments (blaming others, etc), you are not going to get far in solving the problem.

This is not universally true, but you state it as if it is.

>Your problems are valid, but you have to be able to communicate them in ways that don't trigger defensiveness.

Wrong. Triggering defensiveness is something which happens as a matter of degree, and there is no problem with triggering small amounts of defensiveness if the other party is an emotionally mature person who has perspective on their own defensiveness.

Re: How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

#53

Post by jshevek » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:08 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #22

jshevek wrote: post #9

In theory, it seems like nvc should enable higher degrees of emotional authenticity and transparency, but in practice, at least in my experience, it seems to do the opposite for most people. Anecdotally, the vast majority of the nvc people I've observed are some combination of manipulative, dishonest, or severely passive aggressive. I wonder if the explanation for this is found here: because I need [universal need] .…

> It's never because the speaker is selfish Trust me: Everyone is selfish. They just manifest it in different ways. That person who gives everything he has for charity is being selfish. Most sane people do things because it satisfies something in them. The one who is very generous is getting something out of it. Even when dealing with selfish people, it's good to identify what they are getting out of it.

This is an obvious and trivial observation which misses the point of my statement. In my experience, the vast majority of NVC practitioners use NVC as a weapon to manipulate others by righteously invoking "universal needs" while avoiding introspection into their character flaws.

Edit: I acknowledge that my "anectdata" leaves out people who practice NVC without giving any overt indication of it. As with vegans, there is probably a selection bias for other personality characteristics. (The best vegans are not as obviously vegan)

Re: How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

#54

Post by geofft » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #20

cousin_it wrote: post #4

I've seen this pattern a few times now: someone encounters NVC - claims that his interpersonal skills have massively increased - starts trying to recruit others into it - others don't follow because he's mostly talking in canned robotic phrases - when others point it out to him, he uses NVC tools to ignore/deflect - all efforts to reach him fail. In contrast, I've never seen anyone who could be described as an NVC su…

Here's the deal: I've yet to come across someone who is critical of NVC but can provide something better . And in my experience, the status quo is rarely better. NVC has its flaws. It won't always work. Nor will anything else we know of. If something comes along that works better (higher "success rate"), I'll jump on that bandwagon. If you can't be bothered to read the rest of this long comment, here's a TLDR: Most c…

> Just yesterday there was a nasty discussion at work about whether to split a monorepo into smaller individual repos. One side's work is bogged down by it being a monorepo, and the other side would have trouble if it were split into monorepos. Both sides discussed the their problems, yet neither side acknowledged the other's pain. Validating the other's emotions is a core principle of all communications books I've read.

This is a technical tooling problem, not a problem about the feelings of the two teams. By all means, dig technically into why one team's work is being bogged down and why one team prefers the current setup. Maybe you need a different design for integration testing or deployment pipelines. Maybe you need another branching strategy. Maybe you need some ground rules about monorepo-wide changes. All of those can be discussed productively between the teams. Perhaps the underlying conclusion is you need more release engineering resources, and both teams might agree on that. (What did you end up discussing, anyway?)

Just like "there are no technical solutions to social problems," there are no social solutions to technical problems. The solution to "people keep breaking the build on trunk" has nothing to do with your feelings about the people who keep breaking the build - it has to do with your lack of a bot that runs tests and only pushes to trunk if the tests pass. (Nor is the reason that they keep breaking the build on trunk about their emotional needs - it's about the fact that they can't make use of such a bot because none exists.)

I'll give you an example from my side - just yesterday there was a nasty discussion at my own workplace about whether we'd perform a certain upgrade despite an ongoing not-quite-change-freeze because of WFH. A couple of people at the meeting were extremely unhappy about the proposal because they thought it was too risky. Tensions were high on the Jira ticket going into the meeting and various managers were overruling other managers. We got the right people on a call, and the folks who were concerned said, I think this is too risky if we're not going to do a production release, because we'll have too much divergence between master and prod, and the team that owned production said, actually, we're going to do a production release soon and we're happy with this upgrade being part of it. The people who were concerned said, great, that addresses my concern. Problem solved, and the upgrade is happening shortly.

Perhaps we were just mature enough to know, going into the meeting, that of course everyone's emotions were valid, and we had enough trust that teams genuinely want to not cause problems for other teams? I don't think we're an abnormally high-empathy workplace... people here are great, but I think we're pretty normal as workplaces go.

Re: How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

#55

Post by dsr_ » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:11 PM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #23

Allow me to explicitly pose the implicit question I see in this thread "What does it mean to be wise, as opposed to robotic on the one hand, and sly on the other?" How might one cultivate wisdom?

Wisdom is hard.

It requires an active life in which you work with other people to accomplish things.

It also requires that you think about those interactions and how they could have gone better -- if only you had behaved differently.

And then it requires recognizing those situations while you are in the middle of them, before you open your mouth or touch that keyboard, and applying those hypothetical changes. And it's not guaranteed.

Practice, practice, practice.

Re: How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

#56

Post by uk_programmer » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:12 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #38

itronitron wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of work discussions, I think people should be strongly discouraged from describing their position in terms of how they 'feel' because what they feel is a result of their focus on work. Therefore the root cause of a person's feeling should be expressed instead and will be harder to dismiss in a discussion. It typically takes a lot of work to understand the root cause but it is also empowering for people…

I think providing an example will help me understand what you're trying to say. And I worry I will soon hit my comment limit so I may not be able to respond. I do not think what people "feel" is necessary a result of a focus on work. I've often encountered upset people at work because they believed a coworker was implying they were stupid. And in any case, things like fairness in compensation/promotions, etc can play…

Why would you need to know their feelings to find the actual root cause of a problem? You need to know the facts and then make a decision based on them.

Re: How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

#57

Post by wintermutestwin » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #20

cousin_it wrote: post #4

I've seen this pattern a few times now: someone encounters NVC - claims that his interpersonal skills have massively increased - starts trying to recruit others into it - others don't follow because he's mostly talking in canned robotic phrases - when others point it out to him, he uses NVC tools to ignore/deflect - all efforts to reach him fail. In contrast, I've never seen anyone who could be described as an NVC su…

Here's the deal: I've yet to come across someone who is critical of NVC but can provide something better . And in my experience, the status quo is rarely better. NVC has its flaws. It won't always work. Nor will anything else we know of. If something comes along that works better (higher "success rate"), I'll jump on that bandwagon. If you can't be bothered to read the rest of this long comment, here's a TLDR: Most c…

Great post. Your reading list is excellent and I'd add Getting to Yes. I think there are some key elements you left out: (1) the concept of emotional safety and the value of brainstorming (Crucial Conversations), (2) seeing the problem as separate from the people (Getting Past No / Getting to Yes), (3) Negotiating interests, not positions (Getting to Yes).

Here are the links to the reading list (and I added Getting to Yes):

https://www.amazon.com/Difficult-Conversations-Discuss-What-...

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-...

https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif...

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Past-Negotiating-Difficult-Si...

https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Wit...

Re: How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

#58

Post by will_pseudonym » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

uk_programmer wrote: post #45

llamataboot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO this stage of NVC lasts about 6 months, and it is rarely "doing NVC" - ie; if you get really angry/scared/etc you prob haven't built up the muscle memory yet to even reach for those canned phrases (probably applies more in more intimate relationships than the workplace - partner(s), parents, kids, etc) but maybe you do, and surprisingly even a clumsy canned phrase about your own feelings or needs rather than jum…

The very acronym itself redefines violence to something it isn't which is always a red flag. This all sounds like the worst parts of working in a lot of modern offices where people don't speak frankly and instead everything is done through this sort of political office speak which is lets be honest here all about politics and not about solving problems. When I read things like this. I find it very insidious.

Absolutely. Newspeak is an abominable practice, and I can't stand its inevitable progression. Even "Non-Aggressive Communication" would be too "aggressive" of a phrase to describe the framework.

Re: How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

#59

Post by jshevek » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

Ididntdothis wrote: post #44

jshevek wrote: post #9

In theory, it seems like nvc should enable higher degrees of emotional authenticity and transparency, but in practice, at least in my experience, it seems to do the opposite for most people. Anecdotally, the vast majority of the nvc people I've observed are some combination of manipulative, dishonest, or severely passive aggressive. I wonder if the explanation for this is found here: because I need [universal need] .…

I think for all these methods to work there is the prerequisite that the user has some level of internal balance already or at least is willing to develop it. Otherwise something like NVC is just a way of papering over one’s own flaws. I had such a phase too a long time ago when I learned some communication skills. I enthusiastically applied my new methods and was constantly pissed off at other people because they di…

Thank you for your response.

Would you agree that introspection and character development are important parts of a healthy NVC process? That an individual's application of NVC suffers without it?

Re: How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

#60

Post by pmichaud » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

wintermutestwin wrote: post #48

One critical NVC concept that this article leaves out is that people often express judgements as feelings. A small cut and paste from the list of "non-feelings:" Unheard Unimportant Unseen Untrusted Unwanted Unworthy Used Violated Worthless

Yeah this is huge, and the sophomore mistake here is to try to "aikido" the people who are using feeling words to describe judgement. Ie. to immediately rephrase their statement into more a "correct," NVC-style format. It's a mistake for a couple reasons.

First, it's a violent move (in the sense of NVC)--"I hear that you have a judgement that I don't want you" is a dangerous rephrase specifically because it substantially changes the meaning (both denotationally and emotionally) of what the person said. It tries to force the person into a different ontology (that's the violent part). Your way of parsing the world may be more correct, but it doesn't change their internal reality. Their internal reality includes a feeling they are identifying as "unwanted," and you magic-ing it away with a reframe doesn't remove the feeling. It just attacks the validity of the feeling and makes it harder to see or talk directly about. That's exactly the sort of rhetorical warfare that NVC is trying to avoid.

Second, the aikido is defensive in an unproductive way. The reason someone attempts the move is to remove the implied responsibility the other person laid on you. If they "feel" unwanted, then that means you don't want them, which makes this whole thing your problem, rhetorically speaking. Your rephrase doesn't clarify their feelings or beliefs. The only function it serves is to remove your potential responsibility in an indirect way.

Maybe you're a very clever person who deserves a gold star because you already know that unwanted isn't a feeling, it's a belief. But at this point in the conversation you don't know whether you're responsible for wanting the other person, or if you want to be responsible, or if you know what they mean by "want," or if you do or do not "want" them in that way, or what any of that implies to them, or what the the true feeling they are gesturing at is actually like for them to experience. All of this stuff could be (and probably is) hugely important to actually resolving the issue, but the sophomoric aikido move has moved you farther from unearthing it.

I wish I could provide a concise alternative, but I think the details here are why skilled facilitation and communication is a practice/discipline/art, instead of a listicle that everyone already knows by heart. I think if I had to gist it down to a sentence it would be: In addition to your usual truth-seeking faculties, cultivate profound openness to other perspectives, and learn when to apply either mode.