Full Transcript for High Conflict Behavior at Work with Michael Lomax

work, withholding information, and then saying, it wasn't me, I don't know what you're talking about, while setting other people up to fail. Filing multiple grievances and complaints over small issues, lying, or even threats and acting on those threats. That's the difference, right? Sometimes we think these things — all of us think these things from time to time — but they act on it and with impunity. I'll go to the union. I'll go to the media. I'll sue you. And then they do. And a preoccupation with blame. Authority figures — they go after them pretty readily, or close colleagues, even the union representative. They may turn on them. And they really do believe that everybody is out to undermine them. And the other piece that's so challenging is they will recruit others to go after their target, and not just — I'm upset with this person — they'll try to destroy them or take down the organization. And so these kinds of patterns can be really distressing for anyone else in the workplace trying to deal with it and quite shocking sometimes. Megan Hunter Yeah, that group that we often refer to internally or in our trainings as negative advocates — those people who have been recruited to support the all or nothing thinking or unmanaged emotions or whatever is being accused of the target of blame. I had someone in a class just yesterday say they call that the wolf pack. So this wolf pack really becomes your — as I like to think of it — your cheerleading squad. Michael Lomax Yeah. Megan Hunter And they believe this victim's story and this narrative, at least for a while. Michael Lomax Yeah, and they can be very charming, and very often it is a genuine desire to help. But they get caught up in it, or they're misinformed, or they themselves have some of their own issues that are being brought up by this person with the way they tell their stories — full of emotion, full of blame. I'm a victim, you need to help me. And people get caught up in that sometimes very quickly and they're shocked later when they realize how they got, as you say, fooled. Megan Hunter Yeah, drawn in. So often there's a lot of reactivity, emotional reactivity, and it seems to be increasing. There's a lot of anxiety globally and there has been for the past five years or so. Are you seeing this in the workplace — an increase in emotional reactivity? Michael Lomax Yeah, I think it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what's going on around the world to say this is definitely getting worse. And I hear this from people all over the world. I talk to people who have been to other conferences and they'll say to me, people come up to me at those conferences and say, are you dealing with this the way we are? And people ask me, what is going on? My wife Tammy and I were actually in an Uber going to the airport in New Zealand and the Uber driver volunteered without me even asking — my number one phrase is "Thank you, have a good day" — and he said, because everyone is so angry. And so that's just him telling me how he deals with it. In my view, there are a number of causes for why this is happening, but it is complex and multi-layered. You can't point to one thing and say this is why it's happening. But I remember a conversation I had with a trauma expert not that many years ago, and she was talking about this concept of the issues in our tissues — that we all carry around stuff in our bodies from things that have happened to us, unresolved experiences, losses or fears, hurts that we've accumulated over a lifetime. And what she was saying is most people manage that by staying busy — routine, work, social life — kind of distracting themselves, just keeping the lid on it. Well, guess what? The pandemic hits and those distractions disappear with lockdowns, and now we've got to deal with that stuff. It's coming up for people. The isolation, the stress, constantly being exposed to negative news. And so what this person was saying is now the issues in our tissues are starting to arise. And most people, when this stuff comes up for them, they don't say, oh, this is my old stuff coming up. They externalize it. They look for a cause outside themselves — and again, back to often our authority figures or someone even close to them. And they get into it with that person. And it becomes pretty incredible because the driver is the emotional stuff inside that person. But then on top, we've got polarization around the world where people are almost primed to see each other as friend or foe. Social media rewards outrage and blame. I remember somebody telling me about this — this person doesn't want to be on the news. They want to be the news. Megan Hunter Yeah. Michael Lomax So you've got that attention-seeking behavior being rewarded. And then we've got role modeling — public figures normalizing aggressive communication. That kind of thing. And so I would say average people are under extraordinary stress for all kinds of different reasons. They're closer to their reactivity threshold. And then the workplaces are where this shows up. Megan Hunter Hmm. So in what ways is it showing up in the workplace? Have you seen a change in the last five years? Because I know you're intimately involved in the workplace and working with people who are experiencing all kinds of issues. Michael Lomax Yeah, we've always had workplace complaints, workplace conflict, as you say. But I remember not that many years ago, it would take a lot for an employee to say, I'm going to file a complaint against my manager, or for a colleague or another manager to file a complaint against their manager. And now people are much quicker to file complaints and they're much more complex in their nature. And very often it is the leader who is the target of that complaint. I would suggest maybe 80 or 90% of the time you can see a leader on the receiving end of these kinds of things, and you're getting more of this high conflict behavior — repeated complaints dragging out, that

kind of thing. And organizations are seeing the number of complaints escalating, the complexity, the length of time it takes to investigate these things. Yeah, so it's definitely on the rise. And with leaders, and others who want to help — mediators within workplaces, union representatives, human resources — getting pulled into these kinds of things, they themselves feel attacked. Their own ethics, their own competence, their own care being called into question by people saying, you don't care about me? It's really emotionally unsettling for those professionals. This is not your average everyday kind of stuff. This can get very personal. People getting on social media and trashing individuals publicly. And it consumes a lot of time and energy, but it follows you home. It makes people want to quit their jobs — the people who are trying to help resolve these kinds of things, or the leaders themselves. And the sad part is they blame themselves. They say, maybe it's me. I can't get through to this person. What normally works isn't working here, especially when this person is blaming you. Megan Hunter I must not be doing a good job. Michael Lomax Right. And it's those kinds of narratives that we tell ourselves, particularly at two o'clock in the morning. But it isn't that leaders are weak. High conflict behavior is almost designed to pull people into this kind of emotional place. And that's where we really need that structured approach. Megan Hunter Yeah, so speaking of pulling them in — as we refer to it at HCI — we get hooked, emotionally hooked, right? And it's all in the brain. And those hooks can sometimes make us really angry and overreactive. Sometimes we go into our own all or nothing thinking or blame. Sometimes we just shut down. So leaders can get hooked in those moments and get really stuck. So what's happening in the brain for the leader in those moments? Because a lot of times we want to believe that difficult people, so to speak, are the only ones experiencing something. And it's a drain on those around them. But the biological disturbance that those around them, including leaders, are experiencing is really difficult. So what's going on? Michael Lomax Yeah, I totally agree, Megan. I've seen it where it transmits not just one level but a couple of levels. So you'll be talking to people two or three degrees separated from the actual person or the actual conflict. But they're getting pulled in by the manager — they're trying to help the manager, that leader, or the union person. And so you see a cast of characters profoundly impacted by some of these high conflict situations. A lot of it is very natural and almost instinctive human responses. A friend of mine said once, this is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. The visual I give people around the brain is — imagine a human rider sitting on top of an elephant. And I ask the question, which one's in charge? Some people say, well, the rider's in charge — the rider decides where

the elephant is going to go. And other people say, no way, that elephant is in charge. If the elephant says we're going this way, the rider's just along for the ride. And that's a pretty popular image in psychology for how our brains work in conflict. The rider is the thinking part of our brain — logical, conscious. The elephant is that emotional part. And usually the rider's in charge, but every once in a while the elephant takes over. The mouth is still moving, we can still type emails, and then maybe twenty minutes later we're like, oh boy, I screwed up. And they're not good or bad — we need them both. The rider is conscious, logical, deciding what to do. The elephant, much more unconscious, makes decisions very quickly. But the elephant can take over in dangerous situations — and not just physical danger, social danger. We react the same. And ideally, we've all got the skills to calm ourselves down and get back, within that twenty minutes, with the rider back in charge. But in these high conflict situations there are definitely people we're dealing with where they are stuck — stuck where the elephant is running the show even 80% of the time. And so we've got the same threat sensors. We see someone who's angry, or who insults our intelligence, or even rolls their eyes at us, uses a tone of voice or body language — even sometimes more than the words being used — that can, as you say, trigger or hook us. Our elephant takes over. And the research says the problem is we don't realize it happened. We still think we're logical, making these great points. We don't realize how we sound. We don't realize how our own thinking is distorted. And then we may turn to others because we're feeling attacked and transmit that on to others. Say I'm a manager and I've got someone from human resources trying to help me, and I'm blaming them. You're supposed to be helping me with this person. Why aren't you helping me? And as you say, then we want to argue, or sometimes give in, or we just freeze up. So really the key is how do we stay in our own problem-solving brain, keep the rider in charge, when that other person isn't in theirs. And that's really the foundation for a lot of what we're trying to help people with. Megan Hunter Yeah, and often in high conflict situations we do overreact. And like you said, we don't feel it. We don't know what's happening. We're just going about our day, but we might be emotionally hooked and we kind of overreact. And then it really escalates. So what can we do to regulate ourselves before responding? Let's say you're a manager and that person is coming into your office yet once again, and you know there's going to be a problem because there's always a problem. If I'm conflict avoidant, I might be passive. I might just let the person spill out their complaint again about their coworker or whatever is going on, and take on the responsibility on my shoulders to be the problem solver, because that's what I've been hired to do. But with high conflict, we really have to do something else. But before we even get to that something else, we have to regulate. So what's the best way to regulate, whether you're conflict avoidant or conflict comfortable? Michael Lomax I think in a lot of ways we are trying to bring ourselves into the middle, right? If avoiding is my default — sort of hoping this will go away, or maybe giving in to the person, or trying to talk to them about it indirectly, hinting around it — how do I bring myself into the middle where I'm more comfortable being assertive and putting things more matter-of-factly on the table? Or if I'm someone who's very comfortable getting into conflict and arguing and trying to win, how do I come back into the middle? Because I know either of those two extremes in a high conflict situation is not going to work well. I want to find a way to be assertive and confident but also connected. And so I really do need to regulate myself, calm myself in the face of stuff that is very natural to get hooked by. And so a couple of big tips that I try to talk to people about — and that work for me too. I make mistakes all the time with this stuff. I blow it all the time. Pretty much all of my stories when I'm doing training are about how I blew it and then somehow got back on track, right? Megan Hunter That's how we learn. Michael Lomax I don't walk on water with this. And in the world of high conflict, that's actually impossible. You could be doing everything right and it's still going to be extremely challenging. So a couple of big ones: just asking myself, checking in with myself — am I in reactive thinking right now? Has my elephant taken over? Because as I've said, we can click over and not realize it. And yet by doing that, just asking ourselves a question, we're getting kind of cognitive on our feelings, checking in with ourselves. That alone sometimes can help you click back, because you're thinking about it instead of just reacting. Or you realize, I need to go for a walk around the block and take a break here. And really, telling ourselves encouraging statements. We're always telling ourselves something and our brain is always listening. I remember going for a walk with Tammy once and I said, do you ever rehearse conversations with other people that you hope to never have? And it's like, yeah, all the time. We're always rehearsing worst case scenarios, worst case conversations. We can actually feel our physiology change with that. We almost feel like we're in it. And so we can do the opposite — phrases like I'll get through this, affirmations. Those work. I'm a good supervisor. Or I have friends that like me. It's okay if this person doesn't like me. That's all right. Megan Hunter Yep. It's not about me. Michael Lomax And it's not about me. This is about this person. They're having a hard time regulating their emotions. So even if they call me a name or blame me — and maybe I really do want to help, and that is hurtful, it is

hurtful to hear that — I realize this is not about me. And sometimes when they say I won't do any of the things you've said, that can be distressing if we're really worried about the outcome. How do I instead tell myself, the only thing I can control is how I interact with this person, how I engage. I cannot control what they think, what they feel, what they do. And so if I focus on staying connected and calm and focus on choices and information, they may listen to what I'm saying. They may see me as someone who wants to help solve their problem. And they themselves may make a better decision if I'm staying connected with them, bringing them back to the middle. They're going to do whatever they're going to do. I can't control that part. All I can control is what I'm doing. So those are things I always try to tell myself in these stressful situations: what can I control? Checking in with myself. Yeah, those can be hugely helpful strategies. Megan Hunter Yeah. So now let's say you've managed to keep your emotions in check, and even if you got a little spicy within yourself, you gave yourself that moment to calm down and maybe give yourself that encouraging statement or remind yourself that I get along with most people, so I just have to try to use skills here. So now we've moved on to how am I going to shift someone — as a manager or leader — who's really upset? We've got that same person coming into the office again, right? Complaining again. Now the problem is on my shoulders because it's my job. And I'm a little wound up because they've said something and I have a million things to do and now I have to listen to this again, right? So how do we then shift that person from being upset? Can we de-escalate them, or connect with those upset feelings and shift them into problem solving? Michael Lomax Yeah, and again, sometimes our experience makes us think we have to spend a couple of hours with this person to hear them out — hear them vent, complain about everything, complain about me, the organization, everyone else. But my experience might be that at the end of those two hours, we're actually no further ahead than we were at the beginning. We might even be worse off, and I feel like I'm drowning with them. And as I talked about the brain, unless we actually do something to shift it, it's just going to stay stuck there, and it's going to cost more of ourselves than we're able to give. We might just be outside our skill set — I can't resolve this person's emotions for them very often. So it really is about how do I connect with this person and then intentionally shift to problem solving and move away from the emotions. And the term we use is calm before think. I think that's a really memorable strategy and it does work really, really well. We can't just skip to problem solving and over the emotions. This person is upset, they're hooked in blame and all or nothing thinking. And so the calming is using those EAR statements to really communicate to the person, I'm not a threat. Megan Hunter I like that. I'm not a threat. Michael Lomax By communicating I'm not a threat, we're reducing the other person's anxiety level. Megan Hunter And reactivity. Michael Lomax And then we're trying to help them shift — calm that reactive brain and shift back over to problem solving. We're not trying to resolve the person's feelings or make them feel better in the sense that we resolve that for them. That may not be possible. We're acknowledging, connecting. And then very intentionally moving to things like, let's look at your choices, or I have some information for you, or inviting them to make a proposal. Those are all cognitive problem-solving activities, and now we're in the space we need to be in. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy to resolve. An example I can think of — and I've been struck by this a number of times — I've worked with managers on what could be a routine performance conversation about mistakes an employee is making. And right away the employee becomes very upset, over-the-top unmanaged emotions, and starts blaming, saying, you're actually taking me back into a traumatic experience right now. That's what you're doing to me. Or, you don't care about me at all. You hate me. And the manager gets hooked because they care. They care about this employee. They want to be seen as a caring manager. And they shift into defending themselves — I do care. And suddenly the conversation becomes about the manager's character, arguing about whether or not the manager cares about the employee, instead of staying on what the meeting was actually called to address. And that never gets dealt with. Both walk away from the meeting feeling way worse than they did at the beginning. Whereas I've seen and worked with managers who start practicing this calm before think strategy. And sometimes it isn't necessarily going to make the other person easier to deal with. It is also about how do I calm myself and feel confident engaging with this very challenging person. So when this person is reacting — you're putting me back in my trauma, you don't care about me, you hate me — we connect. I respect how difficult this is, hearing this information. Or, I care and I want to help. Or, I want to work with you on this. And then very intentionally redirecting back to the task in a matter-of-fact way: now let's get back to what we're talking about. And that can become the new pattern. In lots of cases I've had managers say to me, actually, that did improve things. And even in some cases with the employee moving on and saying, thank you for your support in the relationship. So we can shift things. Megan Hunter It really can. And sometimes just using the calm part, using EAR statements, seems to make the problem go away. So you might not even have to shift into the thinking parts and focusing on choices and things. It's kind of interesting — different leaders I've talked to who thought they would have to use both parts of

the strategy, calming with an EAR statement before getting them thinking with choices, options, or proposals, find they're done after the EAR statement. It's like, oh, okay. I feel better. Michael Lomax Because if you are successful in helping to calm this person and they do kind of return to a problem-solving frame of mind and exhale a bit, well now we can problem solve together. We're in the space we need to be in, right? Megan Hunter Yep. Michael Lomax So a genuine attempt to connect like that can be amazing in de-escalating. And this person is in distress very often. You can just lean in there. When you feel the pull to attack, lean in instead. Megan Hunter Yeah, I love that. Okay. All right, so Michael, let's talk about the email that lit the fuse. We're going to talk about how a leader should respond in a situation like this. So I think you have a scenario? Michael Lomax So the example we were talking about was, let's say you're the boss of everybody involved here. That's your role in this scenario. And there's a senior director that reports to you who sends out a late-night email criticizing a project delay and CC's everybody on the leadership team. And by morning, team members are forwarding the email defensively to each other. Slack channels are buzzing with blame and sarcasm. A project manager refuses to attend the next meeting and a high performer threatens to transfer departments. So there are some pretty reactive folks on this team. Megan Hunter Yeah. Michael Lomax HR receives complaints about a hostile tone. And now — we are that person. How do we restore trust, calm emotions, keep the project on track, and manage our own reaction to being publicly challenged? Megan Hunter Well, I'd yell at him. Michael Lomax There you go. Yeah. All the persons are all in your office, yeah. Megan Hunter Is it something you would address right away? Or is it something you'd let sit for a while and see if it goes away, or is it something we should address immediately? Michael Lomax Well, there are some dilemmas here. This scenario, as simple as it sounds, is complex to read out. There are probably more ways to respond ineffectually than there are to respond really well to it. Overall, I would say responding quickly to events like this — where there's misinformation — with accurate information in a calm way, and trying our best to settle things down, almost trying to pour cold water on these flames — that's a good strategy, because this has the potential to really explode. So one needs to think about responding pretty quickly. But then there are dilemmas about what to do. The first thing I'd actually ask myself before launching is — there's a great thing someone said to me once about being a leader: when things are going well, look out the window. When things aren't going very well, look in the mirror. Megan Hunter Okay. Michael Lomax So have I clearly set expectations for how disagreements are handled on this team? Have I modeled the tone

of behavior I expect from senior leaders? Have I set that down clearly for everyone? And if not, those are things I need to be thinking about going forward. But the dilemma — how do I stabilize the team? Do I send a quick email right away saying, I see what's going on, maybe correct some misinformation in a calm tone, and say I will be connecting with everyone and we'll sort this through? Is that the best course of action right away? Or do I say, I'm going to talk to individuals or a small team as quickly as I can in one-to-ones to settle this down? I can see both sides in real life, and it would come down to deciding which one. In some cases, that email right away might be the best thing if things are really starting to escalate and get off the rails. But the risk is you look like you took a side, you don't have all the information, and you look like you're reacting — panicking. But if I wait and say I'm just going to meet with people, well, that might take too long. And meanwhile, things are happening. People are having side conversations. And it may look to some like you're doing nothing. So somehow it's a combination of those things. Definitely having one-to-ones with people to hear them out, and then doing the calm before think — empathizing, respecting, and then shifting to helping them remind themselves of their own values. How do they want to show up? What are their choices? How do we move forward? With the senior leader — again, complex. Is this high conflict behavior? I honestly don't know. It's one email. I don't know if this is high conflict behavior, which is a pattern. There's a problem. But is it a one-off where maybe the person, the leader, was in some distress or just had a moment? It doesn't mean it's okay, but it's not a pattern. If this is out of character for them, I might handle that differently in that conversation than if this is a pattern. And if it's a pattern, the challenge with senior leaders is — is this what they've learned? This is how I motivate people. This is how we deal with mistakes and failures, by blaming and chastising people. And that can happen where some senior leaders are very good at getting results but they leave behind damage. In some organizations, they actually plan for it and know who they're going to send in afterwards to clean up after that person's moved on. So in that case, the calm before think strategy with a senior leader is helpful. Hey, I respect what you're trying to do. And yet here are some consequences and impacts I see, and we need to look at how to address this. In your role, here's where you're not meeting the expectations. But it may take something more sophisticated than that. If this person is what's called an abrasive leader, it may take some real structured coaching with them to help — because very often these senior leaders think this is just how you do it. Megan Hunter Absolutely. You're in charge. It's what you were hired to do. Michael Lomax They may have seen others do it. That's how they were mentored. And they've been rewarded for it. And so it isn't one conversation that's going to fix any of that. And they may go, I can outlast you. You'll be moving on and then I will carry on. Or even, I'll get you back. So I would say it's going to take some highly structured coaching to focus on those issues and really help that leader shift patterns. And that's going to take a concerted effort on your part and their part to do that. Megan Hunter So it's a little bit different depending on the situation, who's involved, and whether this is a repeated pattern or not. So the best way to address something when you know there's conflict and you're not sure exactly what to do — sit down and write a list of your options for how to handle this. Then go through the list and check your own reactivity. Am I being all or nothing with this option? Is this coming from a strong emotion? How will this land on the other person or the team if I do it this way? And you just take out any of those that have a yes answer, and you're left with probably the best response in a high conflict situation because it extracts any bit of your own high conflict thinking. And then we can figure out what to do from there. Michael Lomax Yeah, you're absolutely right. That urge to act, to do something now, instead of stop, think, check in with myself, and then look at a couple of options and start to weigh the pros and cons. I've gotten emails from Australia that I thought, oh my goodness, I have to respond right away. And I'm like, wait a second. It's two o'clock in the morning there. I probably have a good twenty minutes to just sit and think about this before I launch. But it's almost my own distress — I want to do something so I've acted now, I feel better. So as you say, absolutely. Just take a minute, think about it, look at the different options, weigh the pros and cons, and say, right, this is what I'm going to do. Megan Hunter Absolutely. Well said. Well, thank you, Michael, for being with us today. We are keeping you around for a second episode and we're going to talk even more in depth about the tools for leaders to deal with high conflict situations. So to our listeners, thank you for listening today. You'll find links for the training that I mentioned earlier that Michael teaches called New Ways for Work for Coaches — that's coming up March 3rd and 5th, which is really soon. And he's teaching Managing High Conflict Behavior in the Workplace for Leaders on April 23rd. So we'll put those links in the show notes and we'd love to have you sign up. He'd love to see you there. It's a virtual training. We'll also put links to our books, It's All Your Fault at Work and BIFF at Work. We're going to be talking about BIFF in the next episode. So if you're looking for training or consultation about a high conflict situation or for your organization, visit us at HighConflictInstitute.com. Or if you have a high conflict situation in your personal life, visit ConflictInfluencer.com. Keep learning and practicing the skills. Be kind to yourself and others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing peace.