“Sim Simma. Who got the keys to Beamer?” -Beanie Man, Who Am I?
The beat from this dance hall classic made it one that I loved listening to in the late 90s, despite the fact that I barely understood a word Beanie Man was saying. When singing along, I’d do my best to make the noises that sounded like the Jamaican patois he was rapping and I’d get so excited when the chorus hit, so that I could sing the part I thought I knew: “Sim Simmer…who got the keys to my beamer.”1
This is Part 2 in a series on conflict resolution. Last week, I explored the benefits of the seemingly simple but often neglected art of “walking in the shoes of others.”2
This week we’ll look at “The Simmer” conflicts.3 I define “The Simmer” as unspoken and/or unaddressed conflict that colors interactions with a colleague and can inhibit achieving optimal solutions, especially with those we engage with frequently.
In response to last week’s reflection, one subscriber shared: “I’ve come to appreciate ‘the must’ of resolving conflict. In the past, I thought it was caring to ‘overlook’ lingering conflict but that approach turned out negative in most cases.”4
This insight highlights a couple things: 1) we often miscalculate the cost of unresolved conflict (even some of the most effective leaders do this) and 2) we let unresolved conflict fester because it can be scary to confront disagreement directly and because it risks having people not like us. In other words, it threatens one of our most basic needs - the need for relatedness.
For example, two senior sales executives in the same company (but different business units) can’t agree on who will take the lead with a large customer prospect. Even though they are selling different services, both sales executive believe that they have the greatest odds of maximizing the contract size with the customer by leading with their business units’ offering (it’s unlikely that both are right). Since their sales cycles are more than one year long, this conflict goes unresolved for months and creates tension when these two executives are interacting on other unrelated topics.
In most cases, these types of unresolved conflicts come down to the fact that we all want to be right. We often resort to the mindset of “I believe X and you believe Y and I am not ok with you believing Y. Therefore, I need to change your Y to be closer to my X.”5
As leaders we are often confronted with “The Simmer” conflicts in at least three ways. First, we have our own “simmering” conflicts. Second, there could be a simmering conflict between two people on our team. And third, our boss or peer could have a simmering conflict with another boss or peer.
These unresolved conflicts show up in work life very frequently. One thing I would not advocate for is going out and trying to address every unresolved conflict in your orbit. That would drive you crazy!
Instead I find Julia Minson’s model to be useful to determine which unresolved conflicts are worth trying to address. Her criteria are 1) importance: how much does this conflict affect outcomes you are trying to drive? 2) interdependence: how much do the actions of the person you are in conflict with impact your ability to deliver the outcomes you are accountable for? and 3) evidence skew: what do the facts and data tell you and why is that not clear to others? (i.e., situations where facts alone aren’t enough to get to agreement).
Once you’ve determined that an unresolved conflict fulfills these criteria, here are some tools that can help you have the courage and the confidence to address “The Simmer” conflicts:
See the “full” costs of lingering unresolved conflict including missed opportunities and future risk. The biggest obstacle to addressing unresolved conflicts is often that no one is willing to take the first step out of fear, anger, embarrassment (or some combo of these three). To gather the motivation to take action, consider asking yourself a couple questions to see the “full” costs of unresolved conflict are: If I fast forward one year from now and I have not addressed this conflict, how will that affect me? What potential opportunities might I miss?
Create space to feel your feelings all the way through. If you are like me, you hold onto unresolved conflicts and their associated feelings. This can be a major obstacle to addressing “Simmer” conflicts. When taken really far, it can cause “Simmer” conflicts to “boil” when the heat is turned up via stress. Once things boil, it becomes very difficult to recover in a work setting. Alternatively, holding onto emotions can cause us to check out and not fully engage. To combat either of these scenarios, consider the tactics from the Conscious Leadership Group on how to “feel your feelings all the way through.” The hardest step for me is to “welcome the feelings.” That said, the benefit of feeling your feelings all the way through is that you increase the likelihood that you can engage the person you have unresolved conflict with in a thoughtful and present way.
Practice conversational receptiveness. Overinvest in making sure others feel heard and understood. It is not enough to listen. People need to know that you understand their point of view and that you do have some common ground. Julia Minson, who I mentioned earlier, came up with a clever acronym - HEAR - which gives you specific steps you can take to demonstrate your openness to resolving the conflict:
H = Hedging your claim;
E = Emphasizing agreement;
A = Acknowledgment and
R = Reframing to the positive.6
Enlist a less emotionally attached person. Get the perspective of a third party who can understand the context but doesn’t have a horse in the race. They will likely help you to look at things from a different angle. In some cases you may even need this person to help mediate the unresolved conflict if using conversational receptiveness is not enough to get to agreement.7
Using these tools won’t all of sudden make a relationship harmonious, but they can help you work through unresolved conflict that is getting in the way of you and your team’s performance.
Some questions I reflected on this week:
What is one “Simmer” conflict that I want to begin to address this week?
What are the costs now and in the future of not addressing this conflict?
Which “tools” can help build my confidence to address this “Simmer” conflict this week?
In retrospect, it’s probably good that I didn’t understand what Beanie Man was saying because well…I’ll just let you do some creative googling and figure out on your own for those interested.
I call it a “seemingly simple but often neglected art,” because even after writing a whole reflection on the topic, I had a moment last week where I really would have benefited from following my own advice (haha). To top it off, I was even told that maybe I should go back and read my own reflection. Here’s to being humbled and learning :)
Whenever I say that word - Simmer - I can’t help but think of Beanie Man’s lyrics. Admittedly this week’s hook was more fun than relevant, but at least I got a Beanie Man reference into one of these.
I love it when readers send me notes like this. It’s nice to get encouraging comments, and it is even more motivating to hear specific reactions to my reflections…so keep them coming and share them widely.
Credit goes to Julia Minson for this line in her podcast interview on the Hidden Brain.
Minson’s 8-minute video is really practical. If you want to save six minutes (though I recommend watching the whole thing) her explanation of the HEAR tactic starts at 5:51.
If you are a boss who is dealing with unresolved conflict between two of your direct reports (or afraid to deal with conflict between two of your direct reports), consider instituting the following “clean escalate” process from master coach Matt Mochary. This may not solve the underlying tension but will allow you to address the business issue and sometimes that is the best we can do.