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How to resolve a conflict when both sides are right

medium.dave-bailey.com

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

#131

Post by teddyh »

lobotryas wrote: post #42
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally find NVC to be degrading and belittling. It presumes I am not a grown up who can handle important criticism, which infantilizes me. It is also a political weapon. It may be non-violent in one domain (the tone and language presentation) but it is very violent in other domains like undermining valid criticisms, changing the conversation so it’s not about the problem but instead filibustered with metaproble…

Agreed. The name NVC reminds me of the DPRoC. A country that is, unfortunately, neither democratic nor of the people nor a republic.

Is has been observed many times that there seems to be an inverse relationship between the qualifiers in the name of a country and the conditions in said country.

Example: http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2019/08/22/1108-republics/

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

#132

Post by davesuperman »

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…

While there's lots of interesting points in the thread, I'll focus my response on this one.

1) I completely agree that the title 'Nonviolent' is awful. It doesn't even follow the NVC principle of 'say what you want, not what you don't want'. The original author conceded to this. However, you shouldn't judge NVC by its title.

2) NVC doesn't purport to resolve the issue of the bugs or velocity, it aims to help resolve the conflict between the sales manager. Gosh, if NVC actually changed reality that would be awesome. Instead, it helps you find solutions given reality, which is actually very helpful.

3) I sense a lot of irritation and frustration in your tone because you want to be spoken to like an adult. Fair enough—that is a universal need. If you'd like to get your boss to 'give it to you straight', you could NVC to get what you want, without sounding self-righteous :)

Hope this clarifies.

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

#133

Post by BeetleB »

geofft wrote: post #115
BeetleB wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 di…

> In the past my thought process almost exactly mirrored yours. It's only due to a bunch of years of observing these dynamics in multiple teams did I realize that these expectations I had were off. SW folks, as much as they try to deny it, are as emotional as anyone else. Everyone is emotional - they just manifest it in different ways. That does not describe my thought process at all. Of course software people are as…

I'm not seeing how the choir director example relates to mine. In my particular case, if you mean someone like the manager is the choir director who decides: Well, at the moment he can't, as he isn't actively involved in the code base, so he doesn't know all the issues. He wants the team to discuss it (and he'll monitor the discussion) so that all the issues come to the table. Then with all the feedback, he can make an informed decision/suggestion.

But he's stuck at the stage where multiple people are arguing in a very non-constructive manner, and so he can't see all the issues on the table. How can he get the different parties to talk without merely repeating their stance?

There are clearly emotions involved. And yes, I do agree with you that it is not necessary for people to discuss them. However, if they are discussed well, then it makes the rest of the discussion easier. The "discussing well" is what many communications books are trying to address. Trying to get to the technical aspects that are causing these feelings is a good idea, but a lot harder if you don't know the feelings.

One person involved is quite senior, incredibly competent, and very rarely gets into arguments. He's definitely getting into one. So there are clearly strong emotions at play. If he's upset, he has a good reason. And at the moment he's refusing to engage and is building walls. Now this might be because the other party is perceived as being dismissive, so he doesn't want to waste time in the discussion.

When one person is appearing dismissive, and the other person is clamming up, how do you get them to talk so that the manager has all the factors to consider on the table? Note that the notion that one is dismissive and the other is upset are merely how I have observed the dialogue - and I may be off. Any attempt at starting a discussion where it is accepted that one side is being dismissive and the other stubborn is likely to blow up.

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

#134

Post by btilly »

jdc wrote: post #128
btilly wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience situations where the bug-count goes up by 30% and sprint velocity goes down by 40% don't just happen out of nowhere. In every situation I've been in where that's happened, management has been warned repeatedly and well in advance that engineering was implementing short term hacks that would come back to bite us later on. To respond to something you were warned about with NVC baby-talk (as opposed to…

(Hint: Refactoring is usually an inefficient way to write a second system, with all of the downsides of the second system effect.) Sounds like you are saying that refactoring is usually incompetently done to me.

Sounds like you are saying that refactoring is usually incompetently done to me.

Not at all intended on my part. Nor would I say it is usually what went wrong.

The primary root cause is an underestimation of the true complexity of the problem. The details of which only start to become apparent after you've begun the rewrite.

An inevitable secondary cause is organizational pressures to add features to the rewrite. This happens after frustration builds because other departments have been unable to get features into the legacy code. I can't fault developers for lack of skill in managing these organizational pressures. That skill is not a core competency for developers, but it generally is for the people who are trying to get their agendas into the development roadmap.

If there is any additional challenge from the lack of skill of the developers, then you had much bigger problems from the start.

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

#135

Post by davesuperman »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #39
BeetleB wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I personally find NVC to be degrading and belittling. It presumes I am not a grown up who can handle important criticism, which infantilizes me. It is also a political weapon. It may be non-violent in one domain (the tone and language presentation) but it is very violent in other domains like undermining valid criticisms, changing the conversation so it’s not about the problem but instead filibustered with metaproble…

I honestly don't understand your point. Listening to how you feel (you're frustrated) and uncovering out why (you want to be treated like an adult) isn't theatre, it's how adult resolve problems. It's worth considering whether you're projecting onto NVC here... after all, NVC doesn't infantilize you, although this may be an area you're vulnerable to shame.

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

#136

Post by davesuperman »

peterwwillis wrote: post #26

When my boss asks me "How are you feeling?", that feels weird. I don't know this person very well, so it's odd that they would ask me how I feel, out of the blue. But then I realize it feels weird because I'm cynical; I don't expect people that I don't know well to care about my feelings. So in some ways, the NVC framework is like "level 2" of developing empathy, whereas "level 1" should really involve developing tru…

Just to clarify, asking how are you feeling isn't NVC. Getting to the specifics of a contentious issue, and then asking how you feel about them is.

Also, what you say about vulnerability being incidental to connection contradicts a lot of widely-accepted social science research.

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

#137

Post by davesuperman »

quanticle wrote: post #49
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally find NVC to be degrading and belittling. It presumes I am not a grown up who can handle important criticism, which infantilizes me. It is also a political weapon. It may be non-violent in one domain (the tone and language presentation) but it is very violent in other domains like undermining valid criticisms, changing the conversation so it’s not about the problem but instead filibustered with metaproble…

The other problem that the article completely ignores is the difference in power between the manager and the engineer. NVC and NVC-like forms of communication work when the participants are relatively equal in power, when one person can say honestly and forthrightly what they feel and be reasonably certain that they won't be retaliated against for being honest. In my experience, that describes very few business setti…

> NVC and NVC-like forms of communication work when the participants are relatively equal in power

Could you suggest a general approach to mitigating conflict when there is inequality in power without getting to the specifics, listening to both sides, and attempting to find a win-win?

If the less-powerful don't try to get what they want, the more powerful wins by default.

> "I feel belittled by the fact that you constantly ignore my feedback and impose unreasonable deadlines because a salesperson put you on the spot in front of the VP"

Let's work with this. Are you feeling resentful because your need to be listened to? If the answer is yes, how about we take 15 minutes and you can explain the extent of the issues? If not, I haven't understood—could you try again?

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

#138

Post by friendlybus »

BeetleB wrote: post #129
friendlybus wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Controlling someone else’s language and implying they are selfish for not changing is a lack of the social skills this framework purports to instill. You do not need to control someone’s language with a framework to enquire about their feelings. The majority of your comment is waffle littered with unsolved problems. This NVC is fundamentally predatory on another’s mindset by controlling language under the guise of ca…

I'll bite. > Controlling someone else’s language and implying they are selfish for not changing is a lack of the social skills this framework purports to instill. This is explicitly false. Please tell me where in the NVC book this is recommended. It never suggests criticizing someone else's language. In fact, quite the opposite - it puts the burden on you not to be upset at how people phrase things - even if they're…

The nature of pushing a packaged book with ideas about elevating a certain type of language with a certain type of goals over anything else and expecting people to conform in the work place, is controlling someone else's language.

You have the opportunity to create an individual approach that works well in most situations. That is your social advantage in the workplace that on the whole you don't need or want to share because it dilutes the advantage. It is also tuned to your identity, your past, your needs and your goals that are not the same for everyone.

Why are you changing other people's worldview? The enterprise seems predatory, it depends on others changing to a framework that privileges it's proponents. It demonstrates a lack of skill in the speaker. It's politicking under the guise of caregiving, a negative act.

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

#139

Post by ClumsyPilot »

quanticle wrote: post #81
codingdave wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> situations where the bug-count goes up by 30% and sprint velocity goes down by 40% don't just happen out of nowhere. In every situation I've been in where that's happened, management has been warned repeatedly and well in advance that engineering was implementing short term hacks I've found those result are just as likely to come from a team with low morale. Still a management problem, but if people do not feel val…

Ah, but why is the team's morale low? Could it be because the team's feedback is consistently ignored by management? By their deadlines being unreasonable? By the leadership of the team signalling (and, in more than one instance that I've personally witnessed, outright stating ) that quality doesn't matter, what we need to do is ship? Of course that will erode the team's morale. Of course that will reduce the team's…

The issue with this line of argument is that while you have a point, anything and everything is intimately fault of the management.

Even if the team is incompetent, the management needs to upskill or replace them.

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

#140

Post by uk_programmer »

llamataboot wrote: post #114
uk_programmer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It sounds like you are worried that using communication frameworks like this will inhibit being able to communicate freely and honestly and that instead of solving problems and working together (and even having some sharp disagreements), those disagreements will just be avoided through some sort of unclear speech in the name of not offending someone or hurting someone's feelings, and that as a result honesty and qual…

It is more simple than that. I think it is snake oil. I believe in anti-fragile and being objective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile

I don't particularly like speech codes, I don't like "communication frameworks" and I am enough of an arsehole (because I don't care if people like me, and ironically that is why a lot of people like me) to call it out. Obviously you can't go around being generally abusive, but this is another insidious thing that we really don't need in an office.

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