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

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

#71

Post by BeetleB » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

jshevek wrote: post #53

BeetleB wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Generally, people using the NVC template that you recognize are "beginners". So your edit is probably very relevant. As I said in another comment: Actually observe those who communicate very well in stressful situations (very well = both parties not upset after the fact, with some resolution on the issue at hand), and you'll find their approach is fairly similar to NVC - they're just not using the templates your recognize.

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

#72

Post by danShumway » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

> 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?

No. There is no unmet universal need here; the engineer is informing you that you have widespread technical debt and that debt needs to be addressed.

I'm all for finding ways to communicate in ways that aren't off-putting or confrontational, but what this post is suggesting is to obscure actual problems by focusing exclusively on people's reactions to those problems.

> What possible solutions are safe and fun for engineering, and give the sales director more independence and support?

When you launch a production system 3 months from now and it has a bug that leaks customer data, none of your customers are going to care whether or not your engineering environment was safe and fun.

Again, finding ways to communicate effectively is good. But when someone tells you that your house is burning down, it is not helpful to focus on how that makes you feel instead of the actual tangible problem. That's not healthy communication, that's avoidance. If you make the engineer feel safe and engaged but don't actually address the bug count, you have not solved the real problem.

If your house is burning down, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is water. If you are bleeding, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is a bandage. If your bug-reporting is increasing at a rate of 30% every month, the only thing that is going to fix that problem is to fix bugs, test more, and to refactor code so that it's less error prone.

Understand: when your engineers tell you that there are systemic problems in your software, they are doing you a favor as a business owner -- not asking for one themselves. They are letting you know that the quality of the software your company puts out is going to start suffering soon if technical mitigations aren't taken. You can't navigate yourself around that problem with communication. You can't rephrase that problem to make it go away. But you can use communication to make it easier to confront.

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

#73

Post by wintermutestwin » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

jshevek wrote: post #59

Ididntdothis wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Here are a list of soft skills that should be practiced to strengthen your ability to resolve conflict: Empathy, Non-judgement, Active Listening, Calm presence, Interrupting gently, Reframing, Asking effective questions.

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

#74

Post by SolaceQuantum » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

uk_programmer wrote: post #56

BeetleB wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Someone feeling a certain way is a fact. In fact, if a conflict is that someone is upset, it is the critical fact before we can conclude a decision requires making!

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

#75

Post by frobozz » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #72

> 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? No. The…

Totally agree.

> If you make engineer feels safe and engaged but don't actually address the bug count, you have not actually solved the problem.

Even more - I don't think you can make that engineer feel safe and engaged without addressing the problems they raise.

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

#76

Post by uk_programmer » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 6:00 PM UTC

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #74

uk_programmer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Someone feeling a certain way is a fact. In fact, if a conflict is that someone is upset, it is the critical fact before we can conclude a decision requires making!

In the scope we are talking about (solving a problem). Their feelings are mostly irrelevant. Their feelings are their own responsibility not others.

Going back to the facts and going through them dispassionately is the only way to solve a problem properly.

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

#77

Post by wintermutestwin » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 6:03 PM UTC

pmichaud wrote: post #60

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 substanti…

I think you are pointing out that reframing can be misused. Do you think that this cut from my conflict resolution doc is a "concise alternative?"

"The art of reframing is to maintain the conflict in all its richness but to help people look at it in a more open-minded and hopeful way." -- Bernard Mayer

How to reframe a statement:

Acknowledge the emotion

Restate the problem or issue removing the inflammatory language

Request or wait for clarification or validation from the speaker

Repeat as necessary

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

#78

Post by crimsonalucard » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

The problem isn't always about a persons' needs. It's can be about who is actually MORE right.

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

#79

Post by munchbunny » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 6:07 PM UTC

0xEFF wrote: post #46

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…

> Your problems are valid, but you have to be able to communicate them in ways that don't trigger defensiveness. This isn’t the only choice, but it’s presented as though it is. Communication goes both ways, the people on the team can also choose to not get defensive. Sure, nobody likes a full on attack but a perfectly sweet sugar coated message isn’t always great. In bad situations it’s ok for people to feel bad.

> This isn’t the only choice, but it’s presented as though it is. Communication goes both ways, the people on the team can also choose to not get defensive.

There's an important distinction. You can't control whether your teammates tend to get defensive, or how much it takes to make them defensive. However, you can control how you deliver your message to optimize for getting what you need, which requires steering around their defensiveness long enough for them to understand your point. (Try telling someone to stop being defensive... that's never worked for me. However, anecdotally, conflict resolution and mediation focused around mutual understanding of communication style, working style, and project related needs has worked most of the time.)

Communication goes both ways, but effective communicators understand that they have personal agency in the matter and that exercising it is good for getting what they want.

As a manager I've told direct reports something like this about working with people on other teams who were being difficult. It's not strictly their fault that the counterparty got defensive, but they're a lot more effective (and more likely to be promoted) if they can work through it without me intervening, because that means I can trust them to work autonomously on projects with lots of stakeholders.

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

#80

Post by crimsonalucard » Thu, Apr 02, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #25

lidHanteyk wrote: post #19

When I see people teaching "non-violent" communication, I become disappointed with their selfishness and inability to empathize with other people. I don't need anything from them, but I mark them well so that I understand that I will have to constantly have word-duels with them when they come to me with their passive-aggressive bullshit. > When you didn’t bring me a cup of coffee, I felt disappointed because I have a…

If this is how you're going to behave in these situations at work, I'll have you off the team/company in a heartbeat. Your concerns are valid. Your method of expressing them is problematic. And your automatic assumptions are lethal to a good work environment. I was going to address some of the specifics, but you're not exactly giving the impression of someone who wants input.

Unlikely he actually behaves this way. The internet is partially a platform where people can lay it all out and tell it like it is.