Dealing with conflict

(dynamic music) - When you're dealing with conflict, whether it's at work or home or whatever, you know, it's really important to think about the internal part of yourself and whatever you're bring to, to that. I read this book, when I was at a particularly stressful job and, and it's called Crucial Conversations. And there's a chapter in there that says something like, manage your internal stories or something. And, and I, I saw it, I was like, oh yeah, you know, that's perfect, you know, like, when they say this, I'm gonna say this. And, you know, I'm kinda one of those people that I think that way and I, I, you know, I kinda have this internal dialogue with myself before I go try to have a conversation with somebody. But that was not what the chapter was about at all. The chapter was saying we create internal filters for how we view ourselves and how we view other people and then we process all the stuff that they're saying or what we think through those filters. And they may not actually reflect reality. I felt that to be really helpful when dealing with other people so you can kinda take some of the emotion off the table and really like deal with the situation at hand and through the words that are, that are actually being used instead of like building up all these past experiences and kind of the, the filter in how you interact with someone. So don't just take your, your baggage and your, the filter that you've built up of this other person. Like, try to, try to break that down or at least, at least know that you have it there as that's kind of colorizing your view. - So what happened recently was, I was working on some backend code. And the module from the backend was completely ready and tested. However, the front end code was not really getting done. So I had to ask my colleague to actually tell me why this thing is not working and why is the app not shipped yet. So the important part here was that I didn't know that he was actually fixing a very crucial bug on the front end side. So I got to know this only when I talked to him, sat with him for half an hour, and tried to understand what the problem was. Put yourself in your colleague's shoes, see the problem from their perspective, and actually understand what's going wrong because everybody here is for a reason. - The first time I presented the first version of the room book at College Council, one of the people who was in charge of the spreadsheet said, "No, "I'm not gonna allow this. "Nobody touches my data." And it scared me away, to be quite honest, so I'd sorta hidden in the background. And I realized the person who had brought me to College Council to talk about it, I said, you know what, he's more politically savvy than I am, I think I'm going to let them hash it out and then they'll come back to me with a decision. And eventually they decided that, okay, as long as I'm only reading the data and the people who are altering the database aren't altering the original spreadsheet, will just generate change forms, and that will, those change forms go to the person who was in charge of the spreadsheet and they'll do the changes, then everybody was happy. So I left it to, I said, wiser and cooler heads to prevail. - I suffer from anxiety and sometimes panic attacks. It can be difficult, you know, in a office situation, especially if somebody doesn't know I have anxiety. Getting some space and setting some boundaries and knowing your limitations, I think is the other thing, like I know if I'm keyed up, you know, perhaps now is not the time to bring up that conversation with a coworker. You know, I think the one thing I have learned is, you know, we're all just a little bit weird, I guess. And, you know, I used to run away a lot. (laughs) You know, run away from jobs or run away from situations. And, you know, if you can get control and just, you know, set some boundaries and, you know, get to a place where you can have a conversation, or if you just freak out, come back the next day. It's not, you know, you just gotta power through it. - I was kind of a new developer and I, and I wasn't really that confident and I hadn't been doing it that long and I just joined this new company. And we're in a big meeting with the development team. And there was just one guy that just, he said something very condescending to me and he made me feel stupid, he made me feel embarrassed in front of everybody. And I was horrified, it was like, I was so upset. That guy that embarrassed me in front of everybody, six months later, apparently, I had implemented a feature that his boss really wanted on their department and so he was told to go and build the feature that I had built and he didn't know how. So he came to me and was very nice to me and wanted to know if, if he could have a copy of the code that I had written. And I said, of course you can. So I gave him a copy of my code and I was happy to do it and was very nice. And I know how painful it had to have been for him after the way that he treated me to come and as me for help and I could see how uncomfortable it made him. Earning their respect, it takes time but it's the most wonderful thing. And the people who treat you the worst, I think it's the sweetest victory when they have to respect you as a professional because you're really good at your job and it's just a good feeling. (dynamic music)