Difficult Conversations: Time Distance Cover
In This Episode
Did you know that you can de-escalate a difficult conversation before it even happens? Learn about the Time Distance Cover technique in this episode.
Transcript
Vanessa Tanicien: Hello, and welcome to The LeaderLab, the podcast powered by LifeLabs Learning where we study what exceptional leaders do differently. Each week, my Labmates and I will distill our findings into powerful tipping point skills, the smallest changes that tip over to make the biggest impact in the shortest time. The result? You become a better leader, faster. I'm your host, Vanessa Tanicien, a leadership trainer at LifeLabs.
Vanessa Tanicien: Currently, we're exploring the art and science of managing difficult conversations. How do we turn these conflicts into points of connection? Sometimes we're surprised by conflict, but honestly, most of the time we know a conversation is coming. There are the typical warning signs of annoyance or tension and small altercations that continue to heighten, which is why we have Robleh Kirce back in the lab today, to talk about how to de-escalate conflict. To remind you a little bit at Robleh, he's our head of research at LifeLabs, as well as a facilitator who's had the chance to work with over 16,000 leaders and team members. He's learned a thing or two about managing conflict. A fun fact about Robleh, he recently did a helicopter tour around Miami with Robyn. If you've heard his previous podcast, it's good to know that they're still getting along.
Robleh Kirce: Hey Vanessa.
Vanessa Tanicien: Welcome back Robleh.
Robleh Kirce: Nice to be here and happy to get a chance to talk about conflict resolution and these difficult conversations. I just want to point out, often to your point, we see these things coming down the road. We really want to begin with the end of mind. As soon as you start noticing mounting tension, that's a good sign to start to prepare for the conversation. We don't like when there's tension, right? It feels terrible, especially with folks that we spend a lot of time around. If we're beginning with the end of mind, the end is probably going to be to deescalate the situation, right? Start to get us both feeling better, or at least comfortable working around each other. Also, if the opposite of what our bodies are trying to prepare us to do. Basically your body is literally preparing to do battle. You get the spikes in heart rate, you see the adrenaline running through the body, not so useful for trying to do some deescalation.
Vanessa Tanicien: I'm curious about what can we begin to do to deal with these responses? I know that you've been doing a little bit of research about how this shows up in the broader world. I'm curious to hear a little bit about that.
Robleh Kirce: Yeah, absolutely. The main point I want to make here is that we have to use a rational brain to curb some of these biological responses. This is where training comes in. Give a fair trigger warning, because this comes from my research around Black Lives Matter, and a lot of what seems to be unnecessary police violence. I came across a police training intervention model called time, distance, cover. The intended response is to take time and assess the situation, keep a distance that allows both parties to feel safe, and then identify cover. If things do escalate, they can return to a place of safety. Now, obviously we're seeing a lot of these videos coming out in the recent months and recent years. It doesn't seem that time, distance, cover is being applied in all of these situations and things seem to escalate unnecessarily quickly. Now, what I'd like to do is when we think about interpersonal conflict, reliably use time, distance, cover so we're setting ourselves up for more productive conversation.
Vanessa Tanicien: Now, most of us aren't walking into the situations that are going to escalate into physical harm, thankfully. They can easily get personal and cause emotional or interpersonal damage. We've all been a part of them. Robleh, you're going to walk us through these three strategies: time, distance, and cover on how to de-escalate any conflict, especially in the workplace.
Robleh Kirce: Yep.
Vanessa Tanicien: Let's get started.
Robleh Kirce: Yep. You got it. Let's use a case study here. We'll use an argument that comes from me. I'll do some self-disclosure here. Let's go back a few years. I was having a conversation with the manager and he pitched me and a few other folks on this voluntary project. As soon as I heard it, I loved it, I wanted to be a part of it, so did everyone else that got invited into it. The team came together. We came up with a proposal. We shared it with the manager. He literally took the paper, threw it onto the floor, said, "This is nothing like what I want." Now, all of us had a strong reaction. That conversation escalated. We didn't reach a resolution, and we took some time, came back, had another conversation, and that one went even worse. I'm going to spare you.
Vanessa Tanicien: That sounds all very dramatic growth.
Robleh Kirce: Yeah. It's very dramatic. I'm going to spare you all the details of it, but suffice to say, this conversation started at maybe 11, it went until around 12:30, and no part of it was fun. There were tears, that were yelling, there were people with threats. It went downhill very quickly. Let's use that as our case study. I'm going to ask you to apply time, distance, cover, just as you understand the words now, in that situation. Let's start with time. Now, if I could shape time in some way to have a positive impact on this conflict conversation, what might you suggest?
Vanessa Tanicien: Well, the first thing that came to mind when you mentioned 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM is for me, that's the death zone time. That's right before lunch. There's tons of research that shows that the dip in glucose availability in the body, has a dramatic impact on people's ability to pay attention, to learn, to remember. Maybe a conversation that was either a little bit earlier, or even possibly a little bit later, might have voted a little bit better.
Robleh Kirce: Yeah. Plus one, I would agree with that. Glucose levels on rational thinking, there's definitely some deterioration effects there. Either if I wasn't going to change the time, probably could have grabbed a Snickers. Are we getting any money from Snickers?
Vanessa Tanicien: No endorsement deal. Well, I'll have to cut that in post.
Robleh Kirce: Okay. Thanks. That's one thing we could do with time. I also want to add just our attention. It's hard for us to stay focused for long periods of time. If I was thinking about time in preparing for conflict, first thing, make sure it's after a meal, right? Keep Glucose levels high. Second, keep the conversation relatively brief. Most research seems to be centering around 18 to 20 minutes worth of attention if it's an engaged conversation. Let's plan for the conversation to be wrapped up in about 20 minutes. Let's move on to distance. When it comes to interpersonal conflict, what I'm really wanting to do is shift our mindset. We're not so close to the problem at hand, and it becomes an us versus them situation.
Vanessa Tanicien: Got it. You're talking about distance from a personal perspective kind of way.
Robleh Kirce: You got it.
Vanessa Tanicien: Actually putting, okay, this reminds me of Carol Dweck's work on mindset in general. I bet you were going to reference that. What should we know?
Robleh Kirce: That's exactly where we're going. Often when we're going into conflict conversations, we approach them as if we want to win, right? We want to demonstrate how good we are or at least demonstrate that we're not bad, right? This very closely aligns with Carol Dweck's performance orientation. Instead, what we want is this learning orientation. In other words, a mindset of curiosity to see what can we learn about the other person. If I'm trying to learn and bringing that mindset, it provides some distance from it turning into a me versus them, right? Something that we talk quite a bit about in our negotiation workshop. Going to our third one here. Our third one is around cover, right? If you're thinking about cover in the police context, we're trying to find some place of safety. How would you extend that into an interpersonal conflict?
Vanessa Tanicien: Safety between me and my conversation partner, probably has something to do about what we both care about. Being able to showcase that we're on common ground does a lot of service to me and the other person. Am I warm? Am I cold?
Robleh Kirce: I'll say you're almost burning hot Vanessa.
Vanessa Tanicien: Okay.
Robleh Kirce: There's this turn that we talk about again, a lot in our negotiations workshop, positions versus interest, right? A position is what somebody says that they want. The interest is why they really want the thing that they want. We reach resolution when we start sharing interests and finding interests that are mutual for both parties. If you're in the middle of a conflict resolution conversation and things start to escalate, they say something nasty to you, or maybe even find yourself saying something nasty to them, the next sentence out of my mouth, better be something about our shared interest. Why are we both engaged in the conversation? In case with the manager here, we both want to see this project done. He pitched it to me. I loved it. I want to see it done as well. Also, we probably have some interest in being treated fairly, treated with respect, probably both of us feel that way. I want to return back to those anytime I see it escalating.
Vanessa Tanicien: Gotcha. Time, distance, cover for our purposes, for the world of work. Now as a leader, which we all are, anybody listening, how would we actually begin to use this at our day to day, our nine to five or eleven to seven or whatever hours we're working?
Robleh Kirce: Yeah. Well, most of the managers, leaders, and the employees that I work with, experience some conflict in the workplace. We also experience outside of the workplace. When you notice that tension starting to arise, first I want you to dedicate and commit yourself to actually having the conversation to solve the issue. As you're planning out that conversation, keep in mind, time, distance, cover, right? Time, how can we make sure that this is maybe around a meal time or maybe even during a meal time? How can we keep it to less than 20 minutes? As far as distance, how can we bring a mindset of curiosity? What do you want to know about the other person? Bring as many questions as you bring arguments into this conflict resolution. Then finally cover. What is it that both of you want coming out of this conversation? Make sure you've got that in mind so if things start to escalate, you can return back to it.
Vanessa Tanicien: Gotcha. That brings us to our LeaderLab listener experiment of the week. Robleh, how are people going to be using time, distance, and cover in their laboratory of life?
Robleh Kirce: Hey, go solve some conflict. Put some time on the calendar, probably 15 to 20 minutes, use time, distance, cover. As soon as you notice tension, and don't kid yourself, you probably already notice there's some tension that exists between you and someone, put 50 minutes on a calendar, use time, distance, cover in advance and notice how much easier the conversation is to have.
Vanessa Tanicien: Well thank you, Robleh. I will be using time, distance, and cover right after this to talk to you. Well, that brings us to the end of another episode of The LeaderLab. Make sure to subscribe so that way you don't miss an episode. Share this with at least one other person, so we can all make tough conversations just a little bit easier. Feel free to follow us on Twitter at LifeLabs Learn or on LinkedIn at LifeLabs Learning. To bring training to your team, head on over to lifelabslearning.com and I'll see you in the lab next week. Bye!
