The Moment Where it All Goes Wrong: The Blowfish Zone

Manage Conflict Better by Minding the Blowfish…

Katelyn Carey does a fabulous TED Talk in which she talks about Conflict and Blowfish. A brilliant talk from an A&E Doctor who must navigate such sensitivities as, ‘I know your Mum is 86, she’s had a bad fall, and we can’t see her for 6 hours’. As someone on the frontline of conflict, she has considerable experience to share and a unique take on how conflicts look and should be managed.

Katelyn describes that moment in a conflict when you are talking, and the other person becomes a blowfish. That moment when they have stopped listening, become emotional, and the discussion has turned into them now assessing the threat. They are now feeling attacked, and the fight, flight or freeze response is taking over. Let alone when you both feel that way because, as she jokes, two blowfish spell nuclear. Now neither party is listening, both assessing the other for threat, and deciding how to respond.

We’ve all been there, you wanted to deliver a piece of feedback, thought a little about how to approach this difficult conversation and before you know it, boom – blowfish, and then you reacted and now twin blowfish.

What was a tough conversation is now really tough, and managing this issue and the relationship is going to take hours and then months to resolve the relationship. All the while, you are constantly wondering how we got here, and reminding yourself that you only said <insert something very innocent you wanted to say> and then add your emotions riding high because you’d thought about it a lot (Plus, maybe a sleepless night), and suddenly…a blowfish appeared from nowhere.

According to Myers-Briggs, we spend between 2 and 3 hours in conflict each week. And yet it is a skill we are woefully ill-prepared to manage effectively. This means you have a 1 in 2 chance of a conflict escalating on you, and then you only have a 1 in 2 chance of that escalation de-escalating. All in all, life at work has become harder to manage, and what was small is now gigantic.

To navigate this modern workplace, I have created a template for approaching a difficult conversation (Search ‘MBM Mind the Blowfish’). I know you haven’t got time, but you don’t have time not to have time.

Here are the 10 parts of this 1-page A4 template that will help to prepare you better for a difficult conversation:

1. What is the outcome you want? (Clue: Ripping them a new one isn’t an objective you should have!
2. Your baggage? For example, every time you speak to Bob, you feel xyz.
3. Your ‘I’ statement (Worth Googling the structure of this).
4. Your irritators? The things you do that wind others up, that you must refrain from.
5. Their irritators? The things that wind you up that you must ignore.
6. Learnings from last time? For example, show more empathy.
7. Reminders for you? E.g. Mind the Blowfish at all costs.
8. Common ground? Write one thing you both have in common.
9. OPV? An Edward De Bono technique which stands for Other Persons’ View – what are they thinking?
10. Practise? Do this 3 times.

Good luck and Mind the Blowfish!

This article was written by Darren A. Smith for The Grocer. View the original article.