Recently I have been reminded of this as I watch my clients repeat behavior that clearly isn’t getting them anywhere (ok, I know I do it, too). They get “wound up” and the very same words and actions come out of them, regardless of whether they are having an impact that’s anywhere near what they want to. You can’t interrupt or stop them — once they start “going off” they continue until they just run out of steam.

Why do people do this? I think there is something “numbing” about that behavior — it has become so automatic it overrides and drowns out any emotion, any attempt to actually process input from the situation currently going on. Perhaps they perceive that the behavior “works” — or at least gets them an outcome that they perceive as less hurtful than what might happen if they tried another approach or just let whatever is happening continue.

Sometimes it turns out that, somewhere in the past, they tried doing what came naturally or made sense. Unfortunately, they got a reaction from someone that made them decide “ok, it’s useless to really engage and try to work through the situation”. Maybe they were ignored, or criticized, or punished…but they certainly didn’t get the reaction they wanted. Somehow they stumbled into some behavior that at least helped them FEEL better — and that is the behavior they fall into under the same kind of stress.

Some clients yell. Some withdraw. Some become overly compliant. Others begin reciting everything they are good at or have done well. (Sometimes I am reminded of the scene in The Wizard of Oz when the “great and powerful Oz” is shooting flames and loudly exclaiming….trying to cover up for the fact that Oz is really some doctor from Kansas).

What is your “wind up” behavior? Here’s a clue — how do you answer the question “what is the behavior you HAVE to do to be heard/paid attention to/appreciated?” If you don’t know, ask someone close to you to describe the behavior you do over and over — where you resist hearing that you might be able to get what you want better by trying a different approach.

So…wind up toys have no choice. Their repetitive behavior is all they are programmed to do. We as humans get to change…if we are willing to be who we really are.

Why? These are smart people, with lots to do. Why would they waste time (and frustrate themselves) like this? Why is it so hard for them to find solutions?

The simple answer is…they are “choosing to lose”. They have ceased to focus on solving the “presenting problem”, choosing instead to “make up for past hurts” or “make sure they aren’t vulnerable” or “make sure they aren’t seen as weak”.

One of my favorite authors, Terrence Real, identifies five “losing strategies”:
- Needing to be right
- Controlling the other person
- Unbridled self-expression
- Retaliation
- Withdrawal
He says that in relationships where conflict has happened over and over, people choose one of the strategies above rather than choosing to actually try to work together to solve the problem. Have you seen others (or yourself) demonstrate any of these behaviors?

I tell clients to pay attention to non-verbal behaviors in both themselves and the person they are in conflict with. When voices rise, people lean forward, talk faster, start bringing up extraneous examples, break eye contact…all of these are indications that one or both has launched a “strategy” and stopped really being engaged in problem solving. And it’s a pretty good indication that one of you has “chosen to lose” (if you define “winning” as solving the problem without ruining the relationships).

Choosing a “strategy” might feel better in the moment. You might feel powerful (or at least not vulnerable) or feel like you have “stuck up for yourself” or “not let yourself be pushed around”. But don’t ignore the fact that in using a strategy, you are choosing not to “win”.

So next time there is conflict, take a deep breath and “fight clean”. If you do, your “opponent” may also…and you’ll be surprised how you both might win.

Many of us do. Business, in general, is biased towards having and managing against a plan. Certainly, in order to align a team or a company, it is important to have a common understanding of who is going to do what when.

I, myself, am in “to do list recovery”. I realized that I was addicted to having a plan. I got nervous when I didn’t know what I was going to do about a situation in my life. I felt guilty when I approached a day without a concrete list of what I wanted to get done. I loved those “flashes of brilliance” that sometimes came to me out of the blue…but hated not knowing whether one would come the next time I needed one.

Sure, I studied Buddhism. I read about “being in the moment”. I talked about “trusting” that if I relaxed my mind, the “knowing” would come. And as I tried to sit in meditation, I was already thinking about what was next on my to do list.

However, recently I have been forced to surrender to the unknown. I have gotten to know the emptiness that comes from having a problem without a solution, a desire without a plan to achieve it. And I am beginning to realize that, in order to be inspired, it is first necessary to be empty. And to sit in that emptiness, in the fear of not knowing, and be willing to face whatever comes up. Even if what comes up is the fear that if you just leave life to it’s own devices, it won’t work out in your favor — if you don’t “struggle” and “dominate” and “make something happen” that nothing will. My friend Kathy calls that “waiting to be inspired” rather than doing just because it feels better to do.

And sometimes, it doesn’t come right away. Sometimes you have to face emptiness and fear and a sense of not being smart enough. Sometimes you have to accept that you don’t know how to get from here to there…even though you want to.

Eventually, you relax. You stop being so invested in the outcome and start being able to pay more attention to the process. Sometimes the process leads in interesting directions and to valuable insights. Sometimes there are emotions to feel and resistances to confront. Sometimes you get so involved in the journey that you forget what the goal was…

Until you suddenly realize that you got to where you wanted to be…without a plan or a timeline or a list of actions.

Our society, especially in business, is so focused on action. That’s why we like the idea of “getting” — it sounds powerful and active and makes us feel we are taking control. It feels so hopeful — every time you take an action you can rest in the anticipation of impact, and can reassure yourself you are DOING something to address the issue.

But what if the action is counterproductive? What if you are just doing more of the things that get in the way of having what you want? Or what if for every conscious action you take, some of your unconscious resistances are activated — in effect the positive and negative net out to no impact at all (other than yet another opportunity to feel powerless).

This “having” stuff is hard work. Few of us are conscious of ways we resist having what we want. That’s what the mind does when we are conflicted or ambivalent — it choses one side of the conflict to hold consciously (in this case usually the “want”) and so the other side (the resistance) is unconscious. Sometimes we can only begin to bring our resistances into conscious awareness when they are pointed out to us, or when we get quiet and “feel” rather than “do”.

Sometimes we can get insights by using a different part of our brain. I drew a picture for a client this week. On one side of the paper I put her, on the other side I put a goal she cares very much about. Then I gave her the homework to write down every thought and feeling that came up as she pictured herself traveling across the page to achieve her goal. She was amazed to hear “You are selfish” and “you aren’t being fair to others” and “you will turn into a mean person”…

Do you have the courage to look — and feel — deeply at having?

If only it was that simple. Instead,it seems to me that people create their own blockages. Our conversation frequently sounds like this. Client: “I want X”. Me: “Then do A, B, C”. Client: “I don’t want to” or “I can’t because…..” or “But I want to do D”. it can begin to feel like the more I provide hope and ideas, the more reasons the client has why those ideas won’t work.

Recently I read a book on The Law of Attraction. The theory in the book says that we can have anything we want…when we let ourselves. The challenge is that we have somehow “blocked” our willingness to let ourselves have it — with fears or beliefs about how it has to happen, or why it is dangerous, or why we can’t do what it would take.

The book used the analogy of a GPS in a car. We put in the desired location, it tells us how to get there. But what if we held beliefs that said “it’s not safe to turn right” or “I’ll be a bad person if I pass someone else” or “people will be mad at me if I get there before they do…even if they aren’t going there”. It would make it awfully hard for us to follow the GPS directions, even if we knew we’d get to our desired location if we did.

It’s even more complicated in the real world. When I was in shrink school, the teachers said “don’t worry about making an intervention the client isn’t ready for — if you say it too soon the client just won’t hear you”. I didn’t believe that was possible…until it happened. I said something, the client looked at me, and went on speaking as if I had never opened my mouth. Amazing! But that takes our GPS example to an even more outrageous level — what if you couldn’t even HEAR the GPS some times.

So…our emotional GPS is giving us clear directions on how to achieve our goals, but we either don’t hear them or are afraid to follow their directions or want to argue with them so that we can do it our way. (Actually, i have heard plenty of people argue with their GPS and insist on going their way….even though the GPS directions are sure to get them to their destination…)

That’s why I believe that achieving goals is more about “letting yourself have” than “getting”. Which should make it easier. Except sometimes we would rather fight anyone in the world…except ourselves.

You can learn management skills — giving feedback, running meetings, managing accountability. Once you learn the skills and practice for while, you can be pretty good at it (as long as you continue to believe that doing the skills well leads to good performance). People will value you as a manager because you help them be more effective in reaching the results they are rewarded for.

But those people who become effective leaders are those who are willing to let “who I am as a person” become part of the mix — those who are willing to, in public, grow and change. And see their job as helping others do the same.

This may involve some of the same activities, just to a different end. Leaders set goals — but in the process are willing to look at concepts such as initiative, risk, fear of failure. Leaders give feedback — but by emphasizing honesty, being real and recognizing and taking responsibility for the impact you have on others. Leaders motivate — by taking the time to discover the hidden passions of each person and helping to resolve the blockages.

This makes leadership harder. To me, the most important characteristic of a leader is to be willing to model the behavior you want to see from others — looking honestly at what you do well and what you don’t, being willing to change (even if it means you look less than competent for a while), being willing to give and receive help. And being willing to show that you care.

OK, I would hope we are all “smarter” than an amoeba…except I see the human equivalent of this behavior happen every day.

When people encounter something they are fearful of, something they believe threatens their emotional world, they contract. They seem to immediately freeze, quit taking in new data, build a wall around themselves, and revert to some old pattern of behavior that they have probably done over and over. They then feel “safe”, because they imagine they can “control” what happens and bring their lives back into the state they are used to. Sort of like the amoeba freezing.

However, usually that is the absolute WORST thing they can do. Usually the “threat” has arisen because something they are doing isn’t working. In order to address the threat, what they need to do is to relax, observe and understand the feedback they are getting, and be open to trying new approaches to get a different result.

But all that requires you to do the very scariest things — be open, ask for help, try something you haven’t perfected and might not be good at yet…and wait to see what happens. These all can be very hard to do when you are scared. but it’s the only thing likely to get a different result.

Remember, the amoeba dies if it freezes too many times. What might happen to you if you never break out of your frozen patterns?

Which reminded me an awful lot of what I, and my clients, have been doing over the last few years. During the first year of the “recession”, we all cut back on the stuff we didn’t really need/care about anyway — the stuff we had outgrown or didn’t really like or had put in place because someone told us to (or perhaps were a mistake to begin with). But we didn’t cut deeper than that. After all — the other stuff still LOOKED good and we didn’t want to have the REAL ugly stuff exposed.

Perhaps it is in all our best interests that we weren’t “allowed” to stop there. Over the last year, many of us have had to look deeply at the foundations on which we built our lives — the beliefs and assumptions and habits. We had to push ourselves to challenge our old ways, and perhaps to accept that even if it looked good the foundation of our lives didn’t support what we REALLY wanted to build.

Of course, it was hard, painful work. Much of what we discovered was ugly and dead and sometimes rotten. And as we cut, it looked pretty naked, and we weren’t sure anything would ever grow back…

There is a point in every pruning exercise in my garden when I scare myself. I have to call my gardener, who comes by and reassures me that I haven’t killed the plant and it will grow back and what grows back will be healthier and more beautiful.

So I say the same to you. Have the courage to cut back to the healthy roots, and the faith to believe that what grows will be even more beautiful. And know you will survive the stage in-between.

People who have studied conflict have identified several styles. Although “dominate” is a legitimate style used to manage conflict, there are downsides to using that style exclusively — mostly damage to trust, initiative and team effectiveness. The theory suggests that “collaboration” is frequently the best style to use as it enables the participants to combine the best of all ideas and agree upon a solution all can support.

Then why don’t people collaborate more? In my observation, we have all been on the “wrong” end of a power dynamic too many times — with parents, in school, working for bosses who believed in “my way or the highway”. So when we feel “challenged” it awakens in us a need to “win” — to be right, to feel powerful, to demonstrate our intelligence. And somehow this need dominates any “higher purpose” of doing what’s right for the business, the group, the family.

Next time you find yourself in a conflict and feel the “I want to win” urge come up, ask yourself “what really is the most important outcome here?” See if you can override the need to dominate and move more into a role of facilitating the best overall solution. And remember some wise words

“In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth and have begun striving for ourselves”
Buddha