Your doorbell rings; you get up, startled, and make your way downstairs. You open the door and see a man standing before you. He wears two diamond rings and a fur coat, and there’s a Rolls Royce behind him. He’s sorry to wake you at this ridiculous hour, he tells you, but he’s in the middle of a scavenger hunt. His ex-wife is in the same contest, which makes it very important to him that he win. He needs a piece of wood about three feet by seven feet. Can you help him? In order to make it worthwhile he’ll give you $10,000. You believe him. He’s obviously rich. And so you say to yourself, how in the world can I get this piece of wood for him? You think of the lumber yard; you don’t know who owns the lumber yard; in fact you’re not even sure where the lumber yard is. It would be closed at two o’clock in the morning anyway. You struggle but can’t come up with anything. Reluctantly, you tell him, “Gee, I’m sorry.”

The next day, when passing a construction site near a friend’s house, you see a piece of wood that’s just the right size, three feet by seven feet – a door. You could have just taken a door off its hinges and given it to him, for $10,000.

Why on earth, you say to yourself, didn’t it occur to you to do that? It didn’t occur to you because yesterday your door was not a piece of wood. The seven-by-three-foot piece of wood was hidden from you, stuck in the category called “door.”

– from Mindfulness by Ellen Langer

Categories help us navigate our world. They help us order, understand and distinguish between things, people, ideas. But there’s a dark side to categorization: When we over-rely on our categories, they blind us to other ways of viewing and understanding what’s around us. Notes Langer, “We build our own and our shared realities and then we become victims of them – blind to the fact that they are constructs, ideas.”

We suffer from category error in conflict, too. We see someone acting out in a tense moment and label them “aggressive.” We see someone running from a conflict and we label them “avoider” or “wimp.” We observe someone doing something that seems out of character and conclude they’ve become “unpredictable.”

And as we act again and again based on that original diagnosis, we narrow our sight and tune out evidence that contradicts it. We fail to see the loving dad in the man labeled “unpredictable” because we’re too busy viewing his unpredictability. We fail to see all the non-aggressive things that would counter our categorizing the woman in the next cubicle as aggressive. This is precisely why I consider the “dealing with difficult people” approach to conflict resolution a profound failure and disservice – to ourselves and those we work and live with.

There are much more effective ways, and they begin not with diagnosing the other, but with turning our gaze to ourselves.

Hat tip to Dr. Ellen Langer, author of Mindfulness and Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility for permission to user her door story in this post.

Conflict Zen by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConflictZen.com.

I was watching a new short video about the colony and it ended with this line quoted from Marian MacDowell, wife of composer Edward MacDowell and the driving force behind the creation of the Colony in 1907:

“My purpose was to prevent the non-writing of a great poem.”

That’s just brilliant. And I thought, ah, that’s what great conflict resolution and negotiation is about. Preventing the non-success of a great business. Preventing the non-sustaining of a great interpersonal relationship. Preventing the non-peace of mind in a great human.

Conflict Zen by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConflictZen.com.

Following the interview, I had a chance to coach someone for a few minutes and she then put my negotiation coaching immediately to work in a call to her cable company. Five minutes of coaching and almost $200 saved on her annual cable bill. Not bad.

Here are the series of stories and videos available online from the feature:

• Everything’s negotiable: lower your bills with a phone call
• Negotiate to save on your next car purchase (short video)
• Negotiation mythbusting: Women are worse at negotiations than men? (short video)
• Negotiation mythbusing: Making the first offer is a bad move? (short video)

What do you want to know more about when it comes to negotiating really successfully for yourself or those you represent?

Conflict Zen by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConflictZen.com.

So notes change expert M.J. Ryan in her timely new book, AdaptAbility: How to Survive Change You Didn’t Ask For (amazon affiliate link). When the review copy Ryan sent arrived in the mail, my first reaction was that a book couldn’t be more apropos for the times than this one. It’s written not for those who manage change (they don’t really need yet another book on the topic), but those who are the recipients of major changes – folks who’ve lost jobs, had their work restructured substantially, and are dealing with major financial losses.

With bite-sized chapters that are easily digestible, it’s tempting to just read Ryan’s book, set it down and say to yourself, Oh that was very good. But that would be missing its real power. The right way to consume this book is to read with some writing material next to you. Read a chapter, set the book down, and reflect on what Ryan’s just offered you. And she offers a lot: Ways to think about change that get you out of paralysis, tips for moving past the pain of change that’s smacked you upside the head, and ideas for actions you can take to move yourself forward. It’s not Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm – it’s optimism coupled with habit-changing action.

So what are the consequences of the kind of finger-pointing Ryan described above?

In The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why, Amanda Ripley points out that people who tend to survive catastrophes such as fire, flood, bombings, kidnappings, etc., accept what’s happening more quickly and therefore take action faster than others. Blameis one of those human impulses that creates interference with acceptance. You can afford the time or mental energy it takes to lay blame, much less to fight with others who want to point the finger at you. You’ve got more important tasks to attend to. When a tidal wave is about to swamp your boat, it’s not the best idea to fight over who’s responsible for the fact that you’re sitting in a dinghy rather than a battleship. You just need to pull together and row like mad! [emphasis added]

I’ve discussed this very idea before: Survivors abandon rigid and ineffective paradigms that limit their thinking. Ryan would call this “killing your little darlings,” those treasured beliefs that served you well but don’t work for you anymore. If you’ve ever worked with me one-on-one or in workshops, you know this is very much the approach I use for helping people learn new conflict resolution habits. So it’s not really a surprise I’d find Ryan and her book kindred spirits.

Over the years I’ve given out numerous copies of another book on navigating life’s big changes, Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes. Now I’ll be giving out AdaptAbility, too.

If you know someone who’s navigating challenging change waters in their workplace, someone who’s lost their job, or someone who’s life dealt them quite a curveball recently, I highly recommend Ryan’s book as your gift to them. Don’t even wait for the holidays.

Conflict Zen by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConflictZen.com.

A Middle Eastern man died, leaving 17 camels to his three sons. The first son was to receive 1/2, the second son was to receive 1/3, and the third son was to receive 1/9. They were unable to figure out how to divide the camels fairly.

After arguing among themselves, they consulted a wise old woman for a solution to this difficult problem. She offered to lend them her one camel. Of the now 18 camels, the first son took 9, the second took 6, and the third son took 2. One camel remained, so the sons gave it back to the woman.

Mediators call this kind of thinking “expand-the-pie.” Fixed-pie thinking results in blindspots because it assumes that for one person to have more of something, another person has to have less.

And we mediators know that in many, many cases, it just ain’t so.

Conflict Zen by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConflictZen.com.

Woman 1 to Woman 2: You wear red a lot, you know that?

Woman 2: No, I don’t.

Woman 1: Sure you do!

Woman 2: No. I. Don’t. I only have two red suits and I only wear them every few weeks.

Woman 1: Well, I must notice you wearing them on those days, I guess.

I loved this conversation because I hear versions of it all the time – usually a tad more tense, though – in workplace mediations.

Woman 1 made a classic perceptual mistake: She confused her experience of a person with the totality of that person (or in this case, that person’s clothing choices). She then concluded her experience must be the complete reality.

Conflict Zen by Tammy Lenski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at ConflictZen.com.

[Can't see the embedded video? Click here to view it on the web.]

Happy laughter,