Turning Conflict Into Collaboration

It’s easy to collaborate when everyone agrees. The real test of teamwork is what happens when we don’t.

In this episode of Practicing Connection, Jessica and Erin explore how to stay grounded and connected when collaboration gets tough. Erin shares a reflective practice that helps you rethink how you see the person on the “other side” of disagreement, using social intelligence skills like awareness and generosity of perspective.

Discover how to shift from trying to “win” a disagreement to understanding what motivates others—and why that shift can strengthen both relationships and results.

LinkedIn Practice:

Think about someone you often disagree with—at work, in your community, or even in your friend group.

• What’s one thing you respect about them, even if you don’t share their perspective?
• Can you imagine the most generous reason for why they might see things differently?

Links and resources from this episode:

• Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/ 
• Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org 

Transcript

JESSICA BECKENDORF (00:00)

Hi, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection podcast. I'm Jessica. Today we'll be talking about how to work with people you disagree with, and Erin’s going to be sharing a practice with us. Hi, Erin. I'm really looking forward to learning more about this practice. What's new with you this week?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (00:19)

Hi Jessica, it is a fun topic to talk about. I mean, it's not the most fun topic, but I think it's an important topic, so I'm glad we're hitting it. 

And let's see, what's new with me this week? So I've started in the morning when I'm prepping my workday, I write a little agenda, and then at the end of it, to make it more fun, I write in ‘win’ conditions. So if you're into playing board games, that's like a common phrase for like, “what do I need to do to win?’

I don't know how common win conditions are outside of the gaming world, so I thought I'd just kind of outline that for you. 

JESSICA BECKENDORF (00:55)

I thought you said wind conditions at first. So no, I've never heard of this before.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (01:01)

Okay, so essentially it's the list of things you need to check off in order to win a game. And I've been adding a list of win conditions to my day for like, if I do these things, then I won at work today. And it's a little bit silly, but I'll regularly ask my husband like, “Are you winning?” Like, “Is it going well?” And then I realized I'm asking myself that question too. And I've never decided what winning means.

And it's very similar to deciding what ‘done’ means, I think. You know, it's hard to feel sometimes, especially when your work is lots of emailing or cerebral or text or all on a computer. It's not like a physical thing. It can be hard to remember that you did it. So I've been making little boxes that I check off, and I put a little sticker for each one that I win at. Sometimes I win at remembering to take a walk and drink water. And sometimes I win because I really finish a project on time.

But all of it has been shockingly helpful, and I'm gonna ride that as long as it's still giving me momentum.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (02:10)

That's great. I like this version of, it's not the same thing, but there's a version that I feel like is a little bit similar that I used to do where I call that my ‘good job’ list, where at the end of the day I would just, and sometimes honestly, there would be an item on there that was just like, ‘I sent an email to this person.’ Sometimes it was something really tiny like that. And I know sometimes emails can take a long time, like 30 minutes or more to write if it has to have a bunch of information, but sometimes the email I was referencing in my good job list really had more to do with a small little email that I had just not gotten back to because we're so bombarded all the time with so many messages. 

So I love this. I love this version of that. And I like the question, “Do you feel like you're winning today?” And for me, I'd probably have it be a gut reaction. And that's the beauty of all these things is you can decide how to use them.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (03:09)

And for me, my gut reaction always tells me that I did a bad job because sometimes my brain is mean to me. And so I was like, you know what? We're not going to let my emotional side of my brain have a say in whether or not I'm winning. If I did the checklist, I won. Done and dusted. 

So I do have to like make myself only do actually achievable win lists, because if it's suddenly 15 things, I can't actually do 15 things in a day. But we can talk about this practice more some other time.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (03:23)

Hmm. I like it. That's why, I've brought up before, I think it was in a recent episode. I brought up that I sometimes like to use just one of those really small, not - when I say really small post-it notes, I don't mean like the super tiny one x two ones. I'm talking about like the three x three square ones. I will put down on that little small post-it note the to-dos that I need to do that day in order to feel like I'm winning, right? In order to feel like I won the day at a minimum, I need to do these three or four things.

I try not to make it any more than four things, even though on those you can pretty much fit six to seven things, I think. I've done it before. Yes, I do know that. But yes, anything that you can do to kind of help yourself get the things done you need to do and feel like you're winning your day, I think is a win. 

So we'd love to hear how you're winning. So drop us a line at practicingconnection@oneop.org.

We see and respond to every message and we can't wait to hear from you. 

- break -

So Erin, let's learn more about how to work with people you disagree with. Can you tell us a little more about the practice you'll be sharing, and why you chose it?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (04:55)

Yes, well, we've been talking about collaboration a lot as a team. You'll find out soon. And it got me thinking about, you know, we write a podcast where we have lots of Practicasts, what are practical things to apply. And so that had me thinking a lot about what skills do you need to collaborate? And the most important one that I needed to learn was how to work with people who I disagree with. 

I am a passionate person. I sometimes have very strong opinions. I sometimes think I'm right about everything. Spoiler alert, I'm not right about everything, sadly. But learning how to navigate that has been a lifelong study. I spent lots of time doing it on school group projects, which were the bane of my existence. And I was like, ‘why do we have to do group projects?’ And my mom would always tell me, “Because you have to work with people in life, and you’ve got to figure out how to do it now.”

People are more forgiving when you're a child. Hopefully also we're forgiving of adults who make mistakes. That's not what I'm trying to say here. You're laughing at me. Okay, going back to talking about group projects.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (06:04)

Not laughing at you, Erin, definitely with you. No, can I just interject for a second though, because this is making me think about - it's interesting because there is also in being a person, as you just said, with sometimes having strong opinions and, you know, feeling like your pathway is maybe the right one that the group should be taking. Think about the power in that and how someone else might be like, “Erin seems pretty confident about this.”

And I'm not trying to make you feel bad here, Erin, but I'm just thinking like, right, “Erin seems pretty confident about this. Maybe I don't need to share how I'm feeling,” or whatever. Right? So anyway, let's talk about this. Sorry -

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (06:45)

That's a good point. Just thinking about how are you showing up in a room and how is everybody else showing up in a room or a virtual room for your collaboration. Sometimes group projects are hard because people don't want to be there, or their workload is too big and they really can't afford to be there. Or sometimes it's because everybody is so passionate and they all have a different picture of what it looks like to be successful.

And sometimes it's hard to get into that. It just feels like this person's telling you no all the time or they're always fighting with you. And at least for me, the path of least resistance for my brain is to villainize the person who I disagree with. And then suddenly they become a problem that I need to overcome, or a road barrier, and not a person to collaborate with. So what we're going to talk about today is how to deal with that problem.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (07:45)

Yeah, I appreciate that you brought that up too, because you and I were talking before we started recording and I shared an example with you about someone that I was having some trouble with, way in my past. And one of the things that came out of that was that I kind of villainized that person at first. I was really struggling. I was really fighting with them. All I kept hearing from them was ‘no, no, no, no.’ 

And when I really dug into it and I worked on that relationship with them, I realized, ‘look, I still disagreed with them. I didn't enjoy their ways, but I also really respected and understood where they were coming from.’ And I was able to get beyond that. 

So let me ask you this then, as you were looking into all of this, I'm curious about how you were able to reconcile the idea of winning, right? When two people are disagreeing and maybe both people feel very strongly that different pathways would be better for the project or for the situation. 

Both of them want to win that argument. And so, you know, when we disagree on a pathway, it could really cause a stalemate and progress could be stalled. How can we move beyond that? What were you finding? I'm excited to find out.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (09:00)

Yeah, well, I've got some bad news. Because the only thing you can change about the situation is your own response to the other person. You can't force them to see your perspective. You can't magically make them not part of the project. Look, I hate this answer, right?

JESSICA BECKENDORF (09:21)

But you can work to at least try to understand - you don't have to agree with them - but try to understand where they're coming from is one thing.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (09:27)

Exactly. Yeah, that's what I'm getting to. You're spot on. I think what is frustrating about that is so often it feels like the other person isn't doing that work too. And so it's like, ‘Man, why do I have to do this labor and not this other person?’ That's hard. That is hard to deal with. And I think it's worth it because the benefits of collaboration and learning how to work with other people means that work can get done that otherwise would be impossible.

And so you want to invest in making sometimes impossible seeming things happen, figuring out, ‘Okay, how do I be aware of my own self, be aware of what I'm doing and how I'm responding to people and how can I show up differently so that we can move past this roadblock?’ Because you can't force them to show up differently, but you can show up differently. So we're going to talk about some social intelligence skills.

I was not familiar with the phrase social intelligence until I was really digging into writing this episode.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (10:28)

You know, I've studied via character strings. I took a bunch of their classes a long time ago, so I'm very excited about this.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (10:35)

Well, they actually have my favorite definition of, did they come up with this as a theory or did they just talk about it really well, you know? Specifically the phrase social intelligence.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (10:42)

It comes from the field of positive psychology, yeah, and there's been tons of research done in that kind of area. And I think it's in the virtue of humanity. Yes. Which makes sense, right?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (11:00)

Cool. Okay, so if we just talked about a bunch of stuff and you're like, ‘I don't know what social intelligence is,’ a quick description from Character Strengths is, 

“When a person knows what makes other people tick, he or she is displaying social intelligence. They're aware of the motives and feelings of themselves and others and how to fit into different social situations. They can feel comfortable and say the right thing, whether they're in the boardroom or the janitorial room, in a school setting or on a construction site.” 

Social intelligence involves two general components, social awareness or what we sense about others and social facility, which is what we do with our awareness. And our practice today is going to focus more on the awareness piece and how we are thinking about others.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (11:52)

Great. Let's get into that practice then.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (11:55)

Okay, so this is a reflection for someone. I wrote it with this scenario in mind, but you can expand it past that if this is not your scenario. But what I was imagining is you are already mid-project with a person that you have to collaborate with, who you disagree with, and they are driving you crazy.

So this is a thing you can do kind of silently inside of your own head during a meeting, or just after a meeting, or like an email chain, some kind of interaction you're having with this person who you disagree with when you're feeling really agitated. Notice that, and then do this reflection after you've kind of noticed some of that. 

So the first step is deciding that you want to do something and committing to changing your mind about this person. That feels like kind of a silly first step, but unless you commit to it, you're not going to do it. So step one is, commit to do the work of figuring out how to get along with this person, even if they aren't doing it back. 

Step two is finding a reason why you want to commit to doing it, because it can be challenging and it can take longer than you want it to. I personally find it really helpful to reflect on my values. They're different for every person, but I value doing good work. Usually I'm doing work that is creating something for other people. So I'll think about the end user or who is going to benefit from us doing this work together and putting that reason in the front of your mind. So when you're agitated and irritated, you can say, “I'm doing this because the outcome is worth it to me.” And if it's not worth it to you, that's another conversation for a different Practicast. But find your reason, find your value that's making you want to commit. 

And then step three is, observe your interactions with the person. This can either be while you're in a meeting with them, or it can be after the meeting. You can just kind of reflect on, ‘What do you remember about how they showed up in the room? Do they have a lot of emotions? Were they not expressing a lot of emotions? What was their body language like? What did they share about what was happening in their day or in their workplace? Did they share anything at all? Did they just show up and be task and business focused? How were they showing up to the meeting? Was that what you expected?’ 

Notice those things. Another really helpful thing to observe from your interaction is, ‘What is one thing, no matter how small it is, that you can respect about how this person showed up? What's one thing that you wish you did?’

JESSICA BECKENDORF (14:41)

In that example that I was talking about before that I didn't give any details on, the thing that I was able to respect about them, which completely changed to me, changed our entire relationship, because I really respected them for it was that they really felt a huge level of responsibility to be accountable for things that our department was doing. And so once I understood that, I felt like I was able to, you know, navigate that conflict, right? 

We're talking about disagreeing with someone. I disagreed with their methods, but we weren't really in conflict. We were actually in sync because we both felt that same responsibility, but they felt it much more acutely than I did. And so once I understood that, I felt like I was able to respect them as a person and respect them much more, respect our relationship a lot more. 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (15:37)

Yeah, I love that. And a lot of this observation section is helping you notice what maybe you weren't paying attention to. It's being aware of what's happening in the room, both what the other person is doing, but also internally inside of your own self. 

So the last thing that I encourage you to observe is, ‘What are you thinking about this person throughout the meeting? Are you automatically dismissing whatever they're saying? Are you internally going, “of course,” or internally going, “this again…” Are they going in circles? Are they talking about the same thing over and over again?’ 

I am guilty of this, so no judgment. Just noticing your own responses to them. Are they positive? Are they negative? What evidence do you have to support the opinions that you're having? Is it just an opinion that's left over from a different meeting and you're bringing it into this new meeting? So just observe and kind of notice you're not being judgmental, but you're noticing what you're bringing into the interaction and making note of it. 

And then the last step, I think, is the hardest step, but it's also the most important step. And I call it the imagination section. It is the part where you're trying to imagine what is the most generous interpretation of why they're acting the way they're acting or why they have the opinion that they have.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (17:01)

That's probably where my example fits, is here, except that it was my observation of our interactions that helped me to realize and imagine that the most generous reason for them having the opinion they have, or acting the way they were acting, was that they felt a ginormous amount of weight on them for our department's accountability. Does that make sense?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (17:24)

Yeah, that makes total sense. And I think what can be challenging about this is, you know, at least for me, sometimes I just want to be mad. Like I want to be annoyed, because it's hard, right? And it's easier to be annoyed at the other person than like be stuck in the feeling of stuckness. 

And what I think is so helpful about imagination is it doesn't even matter if the most generous reason is true or not. The point of imagining why the most generous reason for why someone might behave in the way they're behaving is so that you can shift your resentment and frustration and be more open to this person, maybe not being wrong, or maybe seeing them as a person, not a problem. The goal here is to shift how you're thinking, not to shift the person. And the goal of imagining is to see them as a fully complex person, and to be able to be generous.

I think there's sometimes this idea that, if I imagine them that way, then that is the reality, and I'm writing the reality for them. And that's not what we're saying at all. We're just saying, imagine why someone might have this opinion. And maybe you're right and maybe you're wrong. But being open to them having good reasons for why they are responding the way they were responding really helps, I think, in building patience.

But then also in building your own curiosity. And then maybe there's like a secret step five where when you're not in an agitated space, you can circle back and be like, “Hey, what's going on with you?” Or, “I've noticed you seem really passionate and you really value this X, Y, Z thing. Can you tell me about that?” And that's where you can really build a relationship with a person and not just have them be a problem.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (19:10)

And I told the person that in the example I've been giving, once I told them that I appreciated the amount of responsibility they felt and how they really valued the work we were doing, I just told them that I appreciated that they felt that level of responsibility. Again, I didn't agree with the methods. Did not love the way they did things. And also that started to shift their opinion toward me because they felt noticed, they felt seen, they felt heard.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (19:39)

So you know how at the beginning of this meeting you were talking about how if I come in super definitive about my opinion, maybe someone feels like there isn't space for them to disagree? I think this is like me being, I think sometimes I am this person that people need to reflect on to be less annoyed about. 

Gosh. 

And not in a bad way, but just in a like, you know, interacting with people who are different, there's conflict, there's friction there. And that I think also helps me show up differently.

And one of my personal values is kindness. I think that's really important. I try to think through how can I show up in a way that's more kind. And so this has also been really helpful in shifting my own ways of being in a group. This practice really focuses on helping you shift your thinking about another person. But it has side benefits of shifting your own view of yourself and being kinder and more patient with yourself too. It's pretty good stuff.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (20:35)

Yeah. And the last thing that I want to bring up, just because it comes up so commonly and I've seen it over and over in my career. And also, you know, given that I've done a lot of interpersonal work with groups, one thing that comes up over and over that this is really reminding me of is that idea of the people who've been around a while saying, “But we've done that before, we've done that before.” And it feels like it's a ‘no, no, no, no, no’ constantly, when people are bringing up ideas. 

And I've talked with a number of people who have been very concerned over the years about how they come off, like folks who know that they're the ones who are always like, “Well, we did that once before, we already did that.” And I would say most of the time, at least of the ones I've talked to, they don't want to do that. What they're looking for is new solutions that their experience could be respected and inquired about and gotten curious about, and like thinking about what new things we could all come up with.

That might utilize some of that knowledge, but also utilize the new ideas coming in. And I've heard from a lot of people who are like, “I'm not trying to say no, no, no to everything. It’s just, we've learned a lot from what we've tried in the past. And so could we maybe just come together and say, ‘Hey, what have you learned from doing this in the past? We learned all these things. And what are your new ideas? Let's try to mash all of this up together and see what new solutions we can come up with.’” 

So it’s slightly, I mean it's on topic, slightly off topic, but I wanted to bring that up because I think it's a common point where people are feeling really passionate about the work you're all doing together, but some people want to go one pathway, some people want to go another pathway, or some people want to go one pathway, but they feel like the other people are just constantly telling them no, no, no, no. And I think that there's a way around all of that for us to come together.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (22:25)

Yes, that is a great example. Thank you so much for sharing it.

JESSICA BECKENDORF (22:29)

Thank you for guiding us through. That's a really great thought experiment. 

So commit to doing the work. Find a value or reason that you want to do it. Observe your interactions with the person or people that you're feeling at odds with. And then imagine the most generous reason for them to have the opinion they have. What was that fifth bonus one?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (22:52)

The fifth bonus one was engaging in a conversation about them as a person, where you acknowledge the thing you respect about them. Or notice, ‘Hey, it seems like you really value XYZ. Can you tell me more about that?’

JESSICA BECKENDORF (23:08)

Yes. That's great. I think that's a great spot to stop this practice. Thanks so much, Erin. 

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA (23:14) 

Thank you!

JESSICA BECKENDORF (23:15)

Well, that's it for this episode. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We'll be back next week with a new episode. Until then, keep practicing.

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.