Ouch! Oops... A consulting trick to clear conflict

Help clients have productive discussions by being proactively honest

I regularly Staff with The Mankind Project (MKP) at their flagship New Warrior Training Adventure - an extraordinary modern male initiation experience that I recommend highly.

This necessitates that the Staff team do their own deep personal work. Digging down into our behaviours and feelings, both conscious and unconscious. Trust in the men around us is therefore critical.

Trustworthiness is a function of Credibility, Reliability, Emotional Intimacy, and Low Self-Orientation. With those 4 things in place, a person is seen as trustworthy and other people can take the risk of being willing to trust them.

Building Trust

One way we build this trust is by being deeply honest with each other. Speaking directly, and clearing conflict.

This is directly relevant to consulting work. When you have conflict in a client meeting it can derail a discussion quickly. Trust can be lost. Politics start to take over, and it can lead to poor decisions being taken.

Sometimes that conflict is open. People are visibly and vocally angry, sad or scared. More dangerous is the hidden conflict. The people who don't feel able to speak up and voice what's bothered them. Instead they can sit and stew. Distracted. Not listening because they are processing some anger, or fear.

I've started using a simple tool to get this hidden conflict out. It's called 'Ouch! Oops…'.

Ouch! Oops…

Here's how it works. At the start of the session you set out some ground rules. One of those is to be Proactively Honest. You might say,

"We're going to be discussing some difficult problems today. To get to the best possible answers we need to trust each other. One way we can do that is a commitment to be proactively honest when something doesn't sit right with us."

"If someone says something that jars you, for any reason, I invite you to say 'Ouch!'. That is an invitation to the other person to ask you to explain. You are inviting them in, to learn why what they said jarred with you. If they get some new understanding after you've explained, they can say 'Oops' and decide to do things differently next time"

Here's an example. Say we have 10 people in a session discussing a cost reduction programme. There are likely to be redundancies as part of this process. They are trying to figure out ways to minimise the redundancies.

The HR Director says, "Here's an idea. We have lots of parents in the team, why don't we offer them a chance to go part-time?"

Ouch! The comment lands badly with the CFO. He took it as a dig that parents are less committed than others. Seething, he stops listening to the debate, his mind racing.

If he's committed to proactive honesty that won't last long. He'll say "Ouch!", and explain to the HRD that what she said landed badly with him.

If she's open to it, they'll discuss why. She can say, "Oops…that didn't come across the way I intended". They have a chance to clear the air and understand each other better.

From conflict, they can build deeper connection and trust. Just by saying Ouch and then saying Oops.

That's likely to result in stronger relationships and better decisions. Win win.

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