Navigating Conflict Resolution: An Insightful Journey with Michael Fryer

“Michael Fryer: Well, acknowledgement and recognition could look something like, listen, you've been working here for about three years now. What do you think we should do? Now, the leadership might well go on in a different direction, but the person who's been invited to share their opinions and it being done in an authentic way.”

Alex Cullimore: Hello, Cristina.

Cristina Amigoni: Hello. Monday, Monday recording.

Alex Cullimore: Monday recording. This is such a change of pace. A Monday recording and with a guest, is we're fresh. We're on it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah. It's a great way to start the week.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yeah, this time we had our guest, Michael Fryer, who has lived his life doing all kinds of – he couldn't describe it exactly, because it is such a both core part of the human experience and challenging to put your finger on. It's a lot of dealing with the tough conversations and dealing with conflict and helping find resolutions and self-understanding and bringing groups closer together, people closer together.

He does a fantastic job of describing how one does that. It does take a while to describe that, because it's more complex than just saying, I go in and mediate conflicts. There's so much that goes into what that really means and how that can be done successfully. But he does a great job of describing it. It's a fascinating conversation.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Very fascinating. I love how he loves stories, and so he brings in a ton of stories, a ton of analogies to really get to the core of what he's saying, and it definitely gets there pretty fast. He loves etymology, so he brings a lot of that learning. I mean, I learned so much in an hour. It's incredible. It's so fascinating. There's definitely, as we talked about it, there's a huge alignment in how he sees facilitation of helping people come together and create the space for them to come together and collaborate better from that moment on, or collaborate better in the future, and how we also approach facilitation and even consulting in the same fashion of not being the experts of answers, but being the experts, if that's a right word even, but being the ones that ask the great questions.

Knowing what questions to ask, so that the solutions are really created by the people in the room in any kind of situation. Is it a one-off conversation? Is it a 15-week training? Is it a workshop? Is it a consulting engagement? It's all the same approach.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. That's how you find those really good solutions that already have pre-made buy-in, because you've co-created it with people. It's really fun to get to do that work, but it does take that space and confidence. He does a good job at describing some of the pitfalls you can go into and why people don't necessarily step into that.

I hope you're also ready to hear many of those facts repeated over our work, because there's definitely 15-16 poll quotes I'm going to be using over and over and over again for the viewers. I'm ready.

Cristina Amigoni: The whole time he’s like, “Oh, and there's a quote, and there's a quote, and there's a quote, and there's a quote, and there's a quote.” We have a lot of quotes coming up from this conversation.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yeah. I think you will be just trying to keep those organized when we tell people. We'll find out.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Alex Cullimore: See how that goes.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah. Definitely enjoy. So much learning and just really, really fascinating. we look forward to many more conversations with Michael and to reading his book when it's going to come out.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Enjoy this conversation with Michael Fryer.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Enjoy.

[INTRODUCTION]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that’s with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore.

HOSTS: Let's dive in.

Authenticity means freedom.

Authenticity means going with your gut.

Authenticity is bringing a 100% of yourself. Not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.

Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.

It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.

Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.

It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today, Cristina and I are joined by our guest, Michael Fryer. Welcome to the podcast, Michael.

Michael Fryer: Thank you so much, Alex. Thanks so much, Cristina. It's a real pleasure to be here.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, we're excited to have you.

Alex Cullimore: To give people a little context, what's your background and what brought you here?

Michael Fryer: I have spent the last 27 years working with people experiencing conflict, disagreement, tension in a fascinating range of contexts. I've often felt that I have what could best be described as electrician envy. When someone asks, what do you do for a living, it would be so easy to say, “I'm an electrician.”

Trying to define what I've done over the years has been complex. I'd say, the best word to describe what I do is accompaniment. I see myself as someone who accompanies people who are seeking a better, healthier understanding of why disagreement, tension is present, and then try and help guide people to an understanding that maybe they've just not seen, or a way of thinking that's just not become clear, that accompaniment.

It's also, I think, the reason I like the word accompaniment is it's a more authentic description of power dynamic. This is not about me as an outside consultant, or educator coming in, telling someone what they should think, or what they should do. I ask questions, which help guide people into an understanding of their own reality. There's value, I think, of doing that from an outside perspective. That's basically my line. I've done it in various forms.

Until recently, I was working full-time as teaching at a graduate school, teaching classes such as mediation, negotiation, organizational conflict. I've worked in Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, various different complex situations, new dialogue, reconciliation work. Ultimately, it's about humans. It's about people who are struggling to understand where someone else is coming from, or where they're coming from.

Cristina Amigoni: It doesn't sound that the kids needed at all. We all get along so well all the time. No misunderstandings in communication with humans.

Alex Cullimore: Everybody totally understands all the time. That's a great word, accompaniment. That really is both active and is nice. People use the word partnering so much nowadays, and it does apply well. But because it's so overused, it can be very saturated. I like that accompaniment idea, where there is that sounding board and something that is necessary to pull off to have an extra perspective there so that you can have a greater understanding. What got you into that idea that it should be in accompaniment and something that should be together?

Michael Fryer: It's a great question. In many ways, it was a frustration with how it was expressed in other ways. From an education point of view, I always valued teachers who brought a respectful understanding of their place in the space. As an educator, as a workshop facilitator, what we do is we intentionally create a space. In that space, we invite conversations. Listening to an Irish podcast at, The Almanac of Ireland, a presenter called Manchán Magan, recently, he was having a conversation with an English storyteller called Martin Shaw. Martin Shaw said, because I love stories, and this was about stories.

Martin Shaw, as a storyteller, said, when a story is shared, the typical but very limiting question to ask an audience or people hearing it afterwards is, what was that story about? The problem with that is it emphasizes, or encourages a single interpretation, or makes people think, okay, there's a right or a wrong answer here. What Martin Shaw said is the much, much better question, and I love this question. After a story, you say, where did you find yourself in that story? When you ask, where did you find yourself in that story, you invite however many people are in the room to share their own experience.

It's a much more respectful and invitation. Stories begets stories. One thing I've learned over the years is just, I have a genetic gift for stories. I think it's rooted in my Irish heritage and ancestry. But the stories in a learning space, when, and this is going, like your question about accompaniment and being alongside someone. When you invite, you recognize in the room there is an inherent wisdom. It's the complete opposite of the traditional, typical knowledge transfer that characterizes still, unfortunately, so much of an academic context.

I'm the expert, and it's typically someone who looks like me, and part their great wisdom, and students all participate, which will furiously write down all the answers. That's not how we learn as humans. It's just not how we learn.

Cristina Amigoni: We definitely relate to that. When we try to explain what the experience is like, or even what we do to associate, so people who may join us in the facilitation pieces, there's a big emphasis when we talk to them about how we don't go into lecture, we don't go in to tell people what to do. We create a space and provide information and questions and experiences that invite learning, and each learning is going to be different by the individual in the room.

We can't force anything down anybody's throat, and it's amazing. It's a big shift, because even people that have been in the learning and development world have a hard time understanding like, “Wait. Well, but I'm standing up and telling them.” I'm like, “No, no. You can't tell them how to resolve conflict. That's not how this works.”

Michael Fryer: You can ask good questions. That's the role of the facilitator. Cristina, I’d just ask you. What is the Italian word for easy?

Cristina Amigoni: Bachila.

Michael Fryer: Yeah. As in French –

Cristina Amigoni: Facilitate. Yeah.

Michael Fryer: Do it. The facilitator –

Cristina Amigoni: You facilitate.

Michael Fryer: - something easier. It's a difficult situation. We don't understand what's going on. Facilitator comes in and shapes and frames the conversation in a way that makes things easier to understand. That's all we do. It's very simple, but I think it can be done – I've seen a lot of bad examples of television and teaching, and they're rooted, they're all rooted in the professor, the facilitator, whoever's leading the space. It's rooted in their insistence that the group goes in the direction they wanted.

When something comes in from the group that's not fitting that path, then they just ignore it and they just plow on. It's not meeting what the group needs. That real genius, and I remember this, going back to the stories, one of the most powerful memories in terms of my professional life was back in the late 1990s, and I was working at a Peace and Reconciliation Center in Northern Ireland called the Corrymeela Community. It was where I learned my trade in many ways. It was founded in 1965. It intentionally created a space for people with different identities to explore who they were and who they were in relation to the others.

She's still a great friend and mentor, Mary Montague, who is one of the – I think she ran the family programs at Corrymeela. We were sitting down, there was a group arriving. It was a residential space. There were groups from the Catholic side, from the Protestant side, and they were coming together for the first time. Now, Mary had been working with them simultaneously for about six months, because they learned, Corrymeela learned in the 1970s, the basic idea of contact hypothesis, as in bringing two groups together who disagree on lots of things and giving them a shared focus will help them develop positive relationships.

It only works until the controversial topic comes up, and then you have a classic tribal split. What they would do is they would work on what was known as single identity work. They would work in parallel processes with both groups, building up confidence, building up trust in the process, and then eventually, with full transparency about what was going to be happening, bringing them together.

On this particular morning, Mary sat down the small team who were going to be working with the group together, and she said, “I've been working on this program for the last six months.” There was a shooting, some violence in the area where these groups are coming from last night. Because of that, this program, she held up the itinerary, she says, “This program is no longer relevant,” and she ripped it up. She threw it to one side, and she said, “The group who are arriving in two hours, we need to come up with a new program.”

I was amazed. The reason why I'm sharing this now 24 years later is that I'm still so grateful for that commitment to flexibility, to recognize the ground has shifted now. For us to plow on with this existing plan is irrelevant. The principle of that, I think, is so relevant in organizations. The pandemic was a great example of this. The ground shifted. What we do is no more relevant. How do we adapt? How do we adapt to that change, or a leadership change? It's like that constant change, so that commitment to flexibility, I think, is so valuable.

Alex Cullimore: That's a great example. It's a visual one just to tear up the entire program right there. We've had to do this one on the fly and, thankfully, less extreme circumstances. We've watched this happen on some of our trainings. There'll be some organizational shift right before we all show up in person. Well, this is going to be part of the room anyway. We can't try and ignore that and plow on through, or we bring this up, and we actually discuss it and let it be part of what is influencing everybody anyway.

Michael Fryer: It's because everybody's aware of it. How do you name what's in the room? That's, again, the flexibility. I've done numerous mandatory trainings over the years. Typically, around issues relating to compliance, to a new policy, or exploring issues around diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging. The first thing I will do in any mandatory training is welcome people and thank them and say, “Thank you for being here. I know you're all here, because you were told you had to come.” Everyone laughs, because they know it's true.

Then say, “You've all got lots of other things that you could be doing right now.” Everyone nods, because it's true in any workshop. I'm always conscious of that. Everyone else could be doing something else. Then say, “So, this is what we're going to do. This is our aim. We're grateful for your physical presence. We want to make sure that this time is of value.” We're just naming the reality. It's authentic. People appreciate it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, it's amazing how much effort is put an energy on not naming what's there. When it's in everybody's mind right there. It's like, just say it.

Michael Fryer: Yeah. But that's why I think it takes great courage to do that. It's why I think it's people just get – they just get on with it, because it's easier to do. In Colombia, one of the colloquial words for conflict is an enerado, so tangled up. It's often referred to as like a fishing net that's been tangled up. I really resonated when I first heard the description and have used it in workshops to describe conflict.

Then one day, I don't have any experience with large fishing nets, but, and I think everybody has the experience of reaching their hand into their backpack, or their pocket and pulling out headphones, which somehow have been knotted into a complex bundle. You just look at it. That's enerado. That's conflict. When we bring into a space an image, or a story that helps people understand what their experiencing, and then tie it with the authenticity, because the authentic, the realistic approach that I have to that type of headphone situation is to just look at it and go, “It'll do fine. I've got a pocket. I'll put my phone in my pocket and I'll just stretch it out.” It doesn't look very good, but it works.

That's often the case in conflict. We look at it, we go, “It's fine. It's not too bad.” The time-consuming process of trying to untangle it is there's costs to it. The fascinating thing about actually physically untangling headphones, so it's back to normal, the fascinating thing is that they retain the memory of their previous entanglement. They want to go back into the kinks. That's very much like an organization with experiencing this. You can go through a training, you can go through a new process, but it's just there, the memories it built.

I think that's going back to the accompaniment. I think the real value and what I will try and do when I'm working with a client, or a group is to move beyond the one-off type of engagement. I think there's so much more value in a regular, shorter type of conversation where you're just, okay, how are things going? Okay, where are the emerging recurring tensions, complexities? You guide people in that? Because just the one-off thing. Whilst they value, there are significant limitations to that type of approach.

Cristina Amigoni: That's such a great analogy. Now I'm stuck thinking of the headphones. It's true. You either just keep the conflict and put it close to you, so it can still reach your ears, or you give up and you're like, “Okay, I don't need to listen to music.” Or if you really get to the point of frustrating and you're like, “No, I actually want to use these,” the first, usually, tendency is to take to the two sides and pull them apart, which does the opposite, because now the knots get even more tangled and more stubborn.

If we think about actually resolving the conflict of the headphone strings, we actually have to bring them together and then weave them into each other and into the loops of each other to actually resolve it.

Michael Fryer: One of the things that I've been focusing on recently is basically, leading retreats, companies, organizations who are working remotely and who don't have the opportunity to have those types of regular conversations. Because we meet on Zoom and then afterwards, we'll stop and you often miss some of those things. There's value in just taking a step back. The real invitation for a meaningful retreat is to ensure that it's a series of conversations that aren't just replicating something that would happen in a workplace.

That's sadly what a lot of retreats are. It's just the same conversation that you'd have outlook. I think the invitation opportunity is to take a step back and to think, “Okay. Where are we at? How are we engaged? We have our mission, we have our vision, we have our goals. Let's have a look at that.” I think, that's where I go about creating space is really important.

I live in a small mountain town called Julian, which is about an hour northeast of San Diego. It used to be a gold mining town. Now, it's famous for its apples and apple pies. It's where people from Los Angeles come for seasons. I've been partnering with an incredible organization space called the Ilan-Lael Foundation. It's basically the home of a San Diego artist called James Hubbell, who's still alive in his 90s and who's now living down in San Diego.

If people just Google Ilan-Lael. I-L-A-N-L-A-E-L, or Jim Hubbell architecture, it's incredible architecture. Just like Frank Lloyd Wright meets The Hobbit. The space and space matters. It feels different. We don't always have an opportunity, as I did a couple of weeks ago, to work with a company who were seeking that type of space. We don't always have that gift. I think as facilitators, as people working with groups, even if it's in their own office, we can make the space feel different. I think we do that by taking an approach that's different to the one that they're expecting.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I really like both, the metaphor of the headphones, and that as well, as the idea of just using the space that's available to you. That question that you asked at the beginning of when people tell a story, what is the question that is, where do you find yourself in that story? When people are going to be coming from wherever they are, you can either try and meet them there, or you can pretend like they're not there, and they're still going to have to cover that distance to get to whatever conversation might be happening.

A physical space one. We're trying to set up an adventure, something where there's a column in the middle of the room you didn't know was there. You could either try to ignore it, or you could do something about this.

Michael Fryer: Or a classic would be, lunch arrives early. You're just sitting in there, and then these delicious smells, a waff to go, everyone's hungry. You have to adapt. You just recognize it. Say, okay, here's lunch, it's hungry. Then you either break early, or you had – I remember one example when I was working at the University in Bradford, my hometown in England, the Peace Studies department, and I was responsible for putting on workshop for elementary school kids around conflict resolution, that kind of thing. We were in a large hall, a hall where they do commencement. It was a big, big space. There were lots of different departments.

I was there exploring emotions and self-awareness and anger, stuff, those kind of things. Anyways, I was making it as interesting as possible. Sadly, I was across the room from the robotics workshop, the engineering department, or something, they had these really cool robots. All of the kids in my workshop were just looking across. I just thought, I'm going to lose it. I have no chance here. I am going to lose this battle right away. I just said, “Okay, there's some fascinating robots. I know everybody's been distracted. Let's go and take a few minutes and go and have a look.”

We walked over. We had a look at it, and then we came back. I said, “We've been talking about emotions. We've been talking about how we get frustrated with someone. Anyone got a brother or sister? Anyone ever deliberately wound up your brother or sister?” Everyone's hand goes up. Okay, so basically, what about your teachers? Can you tell if your teacher is getting frustrated? Yes. What do they do? They gave a big list of it. Then what's it like for you? It's like a big red button that says, do not press. What do you press? What do you do? We press it.

Then it's even redder and it's neon lights flashing. What do you do? Press it. Press it. Who's controlling the teacher's behavior? Is it you, or is it them? It's us. Then, it would flip it as far as a brother or sister winding them up. It's basically, we're like robots with someone else controlling us. You see the little light bulbs coming on. That's the invitation of this is just to engage with people where they're at and don't pretend to be that a reality is not there. Again, people of whatever age value facilitators who just meet them at that kind of space. People don't like being told what to do.

Cristina Amigoni: They really don't. It's amazing. It doesn't even have to just be an official facilitation. I think, if we find a way to meet people where they're at in any conversation, anytime we interact with them, then it completely changes the outcome.

Michael Fryer: It's not easy. That's one of the things. I have a nine-year-old and a three-year-old, both girls. One of the things that I've – we’ve been married for 12 years. One of the things when I think back to the types of workshops and ideas that I would explore 20 years or so ago and a heavy emphasis on self-awareness. I was so naive. I now have a group so much deeper understanding of how challenging it is to stay calm when someone's behavior is pushing you.

I still fundamentally believe an ongoing commitment to self-awareness is the foundation of effective conflict resolution, healthy relationships. I would often, but it's just – it's not easy. It's about paying attention. I would often give people homework that most of the time they don't check up on, that it's asking them to write two lists. The first list is to write a list of what irritates them, behaviors, frustrations. If they can't think about what irritates them, I'll invite them, first of all, to think about who irritates them. Then in a non-mafia way, take them out the picture and just focus on the actual behaviors.

Then the second list is, how does your body inform you you're getting frustrated? I'll feel tightness in my chest. I’m feeling frustrated and paying attention to that. Then I would often invite people to ask someone who they feel close to, who they trust, who they feel comfortable being vulnerable with, to write a list of how the friend knows that they are getting frustrated. I will bet every penny I ever earn in my life, that the other person's list is going to be longer than that list.

There's a wonderful Irish writer called John O'Donoghue. I remember hearing him share the sentence. He said, “I have never seen my own face,” which is such a weird sentence. It's true. I've seen reflections of it. I've seen photos of it. I've seen videos of it. I've never seen my face in the way that people who I am directly interact with see it. We're just not aware of those ways of doing things. That's really the practice and the kindness to ourselves, the grace. I am my own harshest critic and everybody hearing this conversation is their own harshest critic.

Trying to find the hospitality towards clumsiness. I think that also manifests in terms of interactions within a team, where someone's especially trying to learn a new way of interacting. We all have different communication styles. That's where we often clash. Respect does not mean the same thing to everybody. When you talk about reaching, like identify core needs, you could have something, like, listen, I told them exactly what I thought of them, and I told it to their face. How is that not respect? Because that someone's core values are around direct communication about being honest.

Whereas somebody else, that's anathema to them. This is the most hurtful thing anyone could ever have done. I think the value in encouraging and inviting people to reflect on their own needs, whilst also being compassionate enough and empathetic enough to try and understand where someone else has come from often leads to, “Oh, I hadn't thought about it like that. I didn't know that that was important to you.” That's the door that opens. That's the invitation where you can go, “Okay, let's explore that in more detail.”

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, it's such great exploration, especially the self-awareness, because a lot of the halfway done self-awareness is like, “Well, this is how I react and that's it.” Well, no. That's not it. That's a good step. How do you show up? What does that do to others? How do you show up to others? I have actually just recently had gained, thanks for being accompanied through the journey of that. I've realized how I look at conflict from a one-on-one perspective, and how I tend to want to resolve anything that could potentially become conflict. As soon as things become a little bit off, I just want to talk about them and resolve them, so they don't tangle even more. My own self-awareness was because I want to do it as fast as possible. I don't leave space for others to not be ready for that.

Michael Fryer: That's great insights. We see in our interactions, our interpersonal relationships, naturally, they manifest in a professional context. I think they can be slightly different. I think we can make a strategic decision to get in touch with a particular aspect of our communication style. I've always found value in – are you familiar with Mitchell Hammer, the intercultural public styles inventory? There's lots of different communication, conflict style frames out there. I found his particularly helpful. It's just very simple.

It's basically, where the direct communicators are indirect communicators, emotionally restrained, or emotionally expressive. We have a preference. It's not being put in a particular box, but we have a default. The thing that we do when we are – it's the least amount of energy. I find it having learned how to drive on the left-hand side of the road. Thankfully, everyone will be happy to hear that I drive on the right-hand side of the road here in the US. If I'm really tired and I come off the highway on an off ramp and I want to turn left, I have to consciously tell myself, “Go across and then turn left.” Because my brain wants to do a tight turn.

In communication, we can make the effort. It's what we do when we're the least amount of energy to do. One of the things that I've valued from Mitchell Hammer's research and work is, for example, I am an indirect communicating, emotionally restrained. My wife, Vanessa, she's a direct communicating and she's emotionally expressed. We have completely different needs in our communication steps. It could be cases like, 10.30 at night, if there's a conflict that is impacting our personal relationship, there's an immediacy to the particular communication style, as you just expressed, Cristina. It's like, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it now.

Her natural, her preferred way of doing at that point is I'm going to be – let's talk about it right now. As an internally processing, indirect communicating, emotionally restrained communicating, the last thing I want to do at 10.30 at night is to talk about the conflict that I am personally involved with. I would rather be in a tent in Siberia, 500 miles away from the closest Internet access. I do not want to talk about it at that point in time.

What we've learned is, and this is echoed in teams and healthy teams, is an understanding of our own needs and a willingness to then communicate and share. In that situation, if Vanessa raises that, says, “Listen, we're talking about that,” then tapping into my own needs whilst recognizing her needs, say, “Listen, I'm exhausted right now. Can we talk about it in the morning?” Now, I'll be honest, I don't want to talk about it in the morning. I just wanted to go away, because although I love working with people on issues around tension and conflict, personally, I don't like it. I just avoid it, which is not healthy. But then, I will commit to that and then we'll have the conversation.

Now, I think the fascinating thing in a team context is a generic meeting, ideas generation, let's explore what's going on. They are dominated by direct communicators, by people who feel very comfortable sharing ideas and exploring ideas, externally processing communicators. You'll see the classic type of thing where someone who's internally processing, indirect communicator, is really uncomfortable with what's being discussed, but doesn't feel comfortable sharing.

Then three weeks later, they'll maybe find the courage to say, “Listen, I was really – I don't think this is a good idea. I was hesitant about it at the time. I'm really not sure that this is the way we should be approaching this.” The person who was leading the meeting, who's the direct communicator is, “Well, what? But we had a conversation about this. I literally remember giving at least five seconds for any objections to this proposal. Nobody said any.” Really healthy organizations recognize that there's a huge diversity in terms of how we communicate.

This goes back to what we were talking about earlier, about intentionally creating the space. You recognize those diverse needs and you incorporate into meetings opportunities for people who don't feel comfortable vocalizing their thoughts, or who needs space to think about it. It might well be that the direct communicators might say, “Listen, we have a deadline. We need to make a decision by a 5.00.” But recognizing that people maybe need space to say, “Okay. I'm going to give everyone 30 minutes just to take a break.” Then when we come back.

Now you could use technology to get ideas shared, etc., by saying we need to make a decision. I understand that you need space. We need to make a decision at 5.00. That's still honoring the role of leadership. We need to make a decision. It's recognizing that other people have needs, too. It's that balance, I think. That's where leadership shapes culture. Culture being, this is how things are done around here. This is what's acceptable. This is what's expected and leadership shapes.

When leadership have the courage to be vulnerable, when someone in leadership is willing to say, “Actually, let's take a step back,” or recognizing those needs, that's where, I think, you really have healthy cultures.

Alex Cullimore: I have a bad idea. That's much more meeting people where they're at coming to the individual, finding the space for the difference. With still respect to things like deadlines and decisions that need to be made. I think that's where people sometimes get hung up. They're like, “Oh. But we do have to push through for a decision now.” Yes, and if you don't find space for that, you're going to come up with a half-based decision, or you're going to come up with one that ends up creating other conflicts.

I'm really hung up on the next step of that. It feels like a phrase that you used a couple minutes ago that I've just got stuck in my head, the idea of hospitality for clumsiness. Even with the best intentions, even if you understand enough of the response styles, and you give space for response styles in your organization, it's going to be the times where there's a mismatch, or the deadline’s a little tight, or whatever, and some of that hospitality for ourselves and others in there being those bumps. That's what I think a culture can really ignite, when it's not only there's space, but also, we're going to understand that we're going to bump occasionally. How do we deal with that? How do we deal with it when we do inevitably accidentally step on toes and move forward?

Michael Fryer: One of the ways I think we can encourage an awareness of is in the broader peace conflict with the idea of conflict sensitive planning. Whereas, the idea of being intentional about being, okay, here's our plan. This is the strategy. Let's predict the fault lines. There's a phrase which I've been exploring a lot lately, and I think it – I don't think I've stolen it. I may well have done. Whereas, the idea of avoidable naivety. People will say, well, I didn't know. My response often is, well, you should have done.

If you'd done your homework, and if you'd understood and brought empathy to someone else's position, you could have predicted that that would be the resistance that you would meet. I think we can learn a lot from weather forecasters. There are patterns within conflicts, which recur. You can look at it. You can take a step back and say, okay, there are three things I could guarantee will be a dynamic over the years of doing these three things of guarantee, I will always encounter.

One, there will always be conflict when people are informed about something that they believe they should have been consulted on. Always. An example would be an accounts manager developing a contract with a client, coming up with like, “This is what we can offer. Yes, we can do, and this is the timeline.” Then telling the team, the creative people that are having to come up with and say, “Oh, yeah. You're going to be able to – you're going to do this. You're doing it within three weeks.” They’re like, “What? You promised this? We've signed the cut. I think, maybe we should have been asked already?” It's a classic.

In a social community dynamic, you see it all the time where communities are just told, this is what's going to happen to you. It's a recognizer. You didn’t know it's going to happen. A second one would be in any team where there's tension or conflict within a team, I would be pretty certain that there are some core needs that are not being met. Those would typically be appreciation, acknowledgement, and recognition. When people just don't feel appreciated, they'll just quit, or just feel really frustrated.

The frustrating thing about it is that these often would only take 10 seconds to meet. Thank you so much for everything you did to make that event a possibility. We couldn't have done it without. That's appreciation. Or acknowledgement and recognition could look something like, “Listen, you've been working here for about three years now. What do you think we should do?” Now, the leadership might well go on in a different direction, but the person who's been invited to share their opinions, and it being done in an authentic way, will feel, okay, my opinions count here. I think a third dynamic, which will always be present, is behind any resistance, there will be a deeply rooted need that's not being met. We typically, an ineffective and unhelpful interpretation of resistance is that this is just someone who's a troublemaker.

A great example of what this can look like was my friend Mark Barrell, who was working in Northern California. I think he was with a county, like local government. There was somebody who was incredibly resistant. An older employee, who's incredibly resistant to some new tech software. This person just had a reputation for being a bit of a curmudgeon, a bit of a – just troublemaker. The person you know is always going to moan and complain. Because all of their actions were being interpreted through that lens, their hesitation and resistance to this new initiative was just dismissed as well. He's just a miserable old, whatever.

What Mark did through listening and inviting stories, and then recognize there's something deeper going on here, recognize that this particular employee was never comfortable with software and technology. He was worried that he wasn't going to be able to learn quick enough. By really listening, he was able to identify a capacity need. Okay, how can we support you in adapting? Is there a way in which we can – It's immediately going, there's a deeply seated, deep-rooted need here, that is probably for a variety of reasons, embarrassment, lack of confidence not being expressed right now. Our job is to understand what is it, and then to accompany people as they help build that capacity to the point where they say, “I'm able to do this, and I'm confident to be able to do it.”

Cristina Amigoni: Those are definitely crucial. What I find frustrating and interesting is when we explain these types of concepts, especially thinking about a large-scale change in an organization, which is just a prime ground for conflict, because it's change. The immediate reaction and response is like, “Well, we can't possibly meet every single individual where they are. We don't have time for that.” Well, the time is going to be taken in other ways, anyway.

Michael Fryer: It's the short-term solution. Over the years become increasingly frustrated with one-off trainings. Like the conflict resolution training. I've been brought in, whether it's as an individual consultant, or working as a facilitator for an organization, being brought in to deliver a professional development conflict resolution.

Often, it's someone in HR looking through the, okay, we need professional development. Okay. Oh, we've not had conflict resolution for a while. Okay, what should we do? Bring someone like me in, and we'll give everyone a nice lunch. But because you've only got a certain amount of time, the emphasis tends to be on communication skills. Let's teach people how to listen. You'll do various listening exercises. All of it's valuable. Value is when it's part of a much broader intervention and engagement.

When you just focus on teaching people to listen better, without dealing with some of the structural issues that are causing the conflicts in the first place. What you end up with is more eloquent pissed off people. It could be so much more. How do we do that? That's why I will always seek, when I'm working with people to think, okay, if we're doing a three-hour training, or a day, or whatever it is, let's build in follow-up conversations. Let's build in, because you'll see often mediation training, when you have 25 employees going through a mediation program, they don't all need to be there. I guarantee you. There's maybe two or three who are going to be in a position.

You can do something else with the whole group. Have a conversation. Let's talk about how we come to decisions, those kind of things, but then focus on the three people who are in a position to actively be that third-party in a conflict and then build up their skills. Most of the time, they already have so many of the skills. What you're trying to do with something like mediation training, I think, the more effective emphasis, teaching people how to think like a mediator, rather than the technical skills. They already have the technical skills. It's a lens. It's a way of understanding. I think that's where you can as facilitators, what we do is we encourage people to look. How do you look at that?

Okay, how can you look at that in a different way? You know the little sunglasses, or glasses where you can put a little magnetic lens on the front? I think that's what we're doing in training. Let's look at it from a gender perspective. That could be, okay, you're planning to have this meeting at 4.00 in the afternoon. Okay, typically it's moms who are looking after kids. If you're having it there, when they're coming out of school, then you're automatically excluding certain people. That's just looking it through a different lens. That's what, I think, with the variety of different identities and diverse experiences. Our invitation is to try to see it through a different lens, because we don't exist in each other's realities.

It's what I found over the years with my – I'm white. The white, British, middle-aged, middle-class male. If someone was to say to me, and I was to invite them to share their story and experience of what it's like to live in a particular place, or work in a particular context, and they were to say – and then in response, I would say, “Oh, I know exactly how you feel.” There would be an instinctive distrust, and they would be right to. I would strongly encourage everyone to be cautious around anyone who ever says, “I know exactly how you feel.”

The fact that our experiences is very different doesn't stop me being fully present as a human and listening to what they have to say. That's about trust. I had an example working with a facilitated mediation, very, very complex organization, complex governance structure, and I was meeting in advance of the actual sessions, I was meeting with the participants. At the end of the 15-minute conversation with one of them, this woman looked at me and she said, “Why should I trust you?” I remember thinking, that's a really good question.

I just paused, and I said, “You've only met me for 15 minutes. There is no reason why you should trust me at this point in time. I need to earn your trust.” She smiled, and she said, “Go down the side.”

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, the beginning of trust build.

Michael Fryer: Yeah, by not assuming that it’s going to just – it needs to be earned. There's something about, it's a credibility thing. It's about not pretending to be someone you’re not. By being true to yourself and not pretending, it might mean that that trust takes a lot longer to build. I guarantee, once you've got it, you're going to have it forever, unless you do something which breaks it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, okay. Then you're going to lose it for a very long time, or forever sometimes.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I think that feels like the same as what you're talking about in the beginning of creating that space and addressing, basically, the elephant to the room, making sure people identify what has happened up to this point. There's some of that authenticity of the room and trust in the room is based on being able to call that out, or being able to call on that 15-minute conversation.

Yeah, obviously, there's going to be no trust here yet. You've just met me. This is what we'll see. We'll see where this goes. Rather than being like, “Well, here's my credentials. Here's the three things that I've done. Here's what I really enjoy about, or trying to justify it.

Michael Fryer: It's a power thing as well. It's recognizing, I think you can do it. There's a lovely phrase that I got when I was working in Northern Ireland, about taking on the role of the naive outsider and being intentional about it. Not trying to pretend, “Oh, I know everything.” It's like say, “I'm new around here. Tell me, what's it like to work here? What's it like to live in your reality?” Then inviting people to fill in the gaps.

The other thing about it that I think is really valuable is that it's this humility. I think this is one of the challenges with any analysis is we can go in as an outsider and say, “Okay, this is what you need to do.” I think a more effective and humble and respectful approach is to say, “This is how – we've listened to what's going on. We've tried to understand your context. Here are some ideas that we think will be effective in bringing about the change that you want to see in your organization. Tell me what are the challenges you're going to face making that happen?”

Basically, inviting people to critique your proposal. Because people will then say, “Well, you didn't mention this and you haven't thought about this.” Again, it's the respectful way. One of the things I'm working on at the moment is a book called How to Complain Effectively. It's rooted in countless observations of people complaining really, really badly. Essentially, complaining, you're trying to bring about change. Now, Alex, sometimes you just want to have a good moan. Sometimes, I just want to complain. I don't want anything to change, because I know it's not going to change, so I just want to moan. When we do want to bring about change within an organization, within a community, then I think at the heart of it is paying attention to what's frustrating you in the first place, which is, again, the self-awareness.

Paying attention is to recognize that, okay, I'm not getting – I don't feel I'm being respected. It's helping you understand, intentionally focusing on our frustrations can be incredibly valuable. What we then are invited to do is to try and understand what are we trying to put in its place. That's about visioning. That's this vision. This is the different. It's the difference between – are you familiar with the concept of back-casting? That's a way of a strategic planning. Forecasting is the current dynamics extended will lead to this. Back-casting is the idea of, this is what we want to create. In five years’ time, or one year from now, if we were coming in and we were observing as an organization really healthy dynamics, what would we see? Observable behaviors. Then it's working backwards.

Okay. If that's what we want in one year from now, what do we need to put in place in 10 months, eight months? It's a much more intentional engagement with that. I think to really transform and bring about that type of vision, the other part of complaining effectively is really deeply understanding where someone else is coming from. The resistance that your change is likely to encounter.

Then, again, avoidable naivety. Do your homework. Understand where they're coming from. Understand the challenges they're likely to meet, and then try and be one step ahead of them. The idea of in 20-plus years of doing this type of work, I've never met anyone who's changed their mind, because they were told that they were wrong, or that they can't certainly. I have seen people on regular occasions change their mind, because someone's asked a question which helps shine a light on the contradiction of limitations of their argument.

It elicits a, “Oh, yeah. I hadn't thought about it like that before.” But that's empathy. That's a real deep respect. I've write the Latin words, I love etymology. It's so fascinating. Trust comes from the old Norse of a strong jouster. With respect, it's the Latin, it's to do again, and spectacles, spectator. It's a respect is to look and to look again.

Sincere is all about Cinsera without wax. It's about the Roman Empire, where marble was the great commodity. You'd have unscrupulous marble merchants hiding floors, cracks in the marble by putting wax in, so you wouldn't be able to see it. Then when you try to build, or sculpt with it, it would crack. People started to look for marble that was Cinsera without wax. Respect to, real pay attention, to look and to look again, is built in empathy and understanding. Whilst also honoring your own vision for what you want to see is changed. It's both.

Cristina Amigoni: To look back to the beginning, when you had electrician envy, part of the electrician envy is besides the easy way to just say like, “This is what I do. I'm an electrician.” Part of it, it's also, I can understand that envy, because as an electrician, when you're hired to do a job, typically is to turn on electricity, or make it happen. You can measure the success. You can see the success before you leave, because the lights are on, the fridge is on. It actually works. Then you can walk away. In the work you do, which is very similar to the work we do, we don't get to see when it works, or how it works, or if it works.

Michael Fryer: I gave a talk, a TED-style talk a few years ago called building piece you may never see. I use the analogy of a cathedral. York, minsters, big cathedral, and just a few miles from where I grew up. It took 252 years to build. The people who came up with the idea, the architects, the people who initially paid for it and the vast majority of people who built it never saw it completed. For the last 800 years, people have just maintained something that someone else built. I think there’s a great beauty to that.

What we do, and it's going back to this concept of intentionality, we intentionally create the space in which something might happen, whilst acknowledging that we might never know what it is. Because we know that, our invitation is to focus on what that space looks like. We know, in terms of measuring, we know, okay, we can't measure. We don't know exactly. We might get someone who's a regularly happen where someone who – and it's always greatly appreciated, where someone comes up and says, “Thank you so much. That was great. Really valued it.”

There might be someone for whom the real value they gained from this learning space, collaborative learning space, came months later. We might not know that, but we know on our emphasis and invitation and opportunity for us from a facilitator point of view, that's not just us as formal as anyone here who's trying to shape a space is to focus, okay, we know that we need to create a space that is collaborative, that is an invitation for people that is respectful of diverse styles. That's where we're trying to focus. We focus on the space and we trust that something will emit.

That's why I like an ongoing, rather than just a one-off conversation, because you can track it over time. It's sustained, authentic change is a process. It's not just a one-off. The one-off things, the workshops where success is measured in attendance lists and photo opportunities. I don't think there is a huge amount of really sustainable change present within those dynamics.

Cristina Amigoni: With new opportunities.

Michael Fryer: They look great.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Look at how everybody’s smiling.

Michael Fryer: Yeah. Then it's also, with an evaluation where someone with – an evaluation that's given five minutes before the end of the workshop. It's like, five, five, out of five, how do you – five, five, five, five, great. It's then immortalized in a report. It's funded. Now, it's purely motivated by the stated end time is 12.00 and it's 11.57. One thing I've learned in the US is that you can start slightly late, the workshop, but under no circumstances, whatsoever, you ever go past the stated end time. It is culturally insensitive, inappropriate and disrespectful.

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed. We were just giving actually a very short workshop, which is not typically what we do. We knew we were going to run late. We realized, we could cut stuff off and we did cut some stuff off and we're going to need an extra five, six minutes to actually wrap things up. Before the stated time, we actually asked for permission. We gave them the option. Like, listen, there's a couple of more minutes and it's up to you. We can end at 9.30, or we can end at 9.35. It's up to you. But it's true. You can start late, but you can never – we usually try to end early, actually on purpose because of that.

Michael Fryer: I think the challenge in terms of creating that space is to be honest about what's possible within a particular space. I've learned to be honest in what I share as a consultant, or in a workshop with a client, this is what's possible. No, I can't do it. Someone else might say that they can cover all of that. Fair enough.

Cristina Amigoni: They'll lecture you for an hour and a half. They’ll cover the information.

Michael Fryer: Cover all those, would be setting objectives and we can do it in this amount of time. It’s like, I personally don't think that's possible. This is what we can do.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, that takes a lot of courage and authenticity.

Alex Cullimore: I think we have to play this whole conversation for everybody we help try and train as facilitators, too, because this is all really eloquent ways of describing what we've tried to help people understand on like, “Hey, what is it about facilitation that is creating a space? What is it about flexing enough with the room, helping guide some of the conversation without guiding a full agenda? How do you do these things and how do you have the confidence to do those things?” I really appreciate your perspective on this, Michael, because it's just – it's helped clarify a lot for me, and this is what we've been trying to help people understand for a couple months now.

Cristina Amigoni: Or longer. Last couple of questions, because I'm sure we could talk for months and weeks on end. What does authenticity mean to you?

Michael Fryer: It is about the quality of presence. It's about being fully present as best we can. That's paying attention to where are my thoughts right now? My distractions in terms of listening, it's thinking about, okay, am I listening, or am I actually just waiting for a pause, and then I'm going to jump in? It's about sitting in this comfort. I think that's one of the challenges with the text-based communication. When someone texts I'm sorry, it's basically getting them off the hook.

Whereas, being authentic and listening and sitting in the discomfort of this feels really uncomfortable, but I'm here and I'm fully here, and it's not easy. It's really, really not easy. The authenticity is about the quality of presence.

Cristina Amigoni: I love that. The vision. Where can people find you? There's going to be a book coming out and many other things.

Michael Fryer: I'm going to have said it, 100% has to. I'm holding myself. It's in process.

Cristina Amigoni: Nothing likes it putting it out into ether.

Michael Fryer: The two places I'll show. One is in terms of my consulting and coaching work is catlysten.net. That’s C-A-T-L-Y-S-T-E-N.net. I came on that name, because everything starts with listening. Listening is the catalyst for all change. Catlysten.net is where you can find me in terms of consulting and coaching. Then my own personal website, which is a collection of various things I've – various talks I've given, articles I've written, etc., is simply my name, it’s michaelfryer.com. That's M-I-C-H-A-E-L-F-R-Y-E-R.com.

Cristina Amigoni: We'll have all these in the show notes.

Michael Fryer: Thank you.

Cristina Amigoni: Well, thank you, Michael. Now we can tell your brother that you've been on the podcast.

Michael Fryer: Exactly. Very happy. Well, thank you so much, Cristina. Thank you so much, Alex. I love the conversations that you've had with people. I love the focal point, the invitation to really pay attention to these dynamics about values. It's a real honor, at least to be part of it. Thank you so much.

Alex Cullimore: Thanks for coming on.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, great conversation. Tons of learning. Thank you. Great first Monday morning thing. Thank you, everybody, for listening.

[END OF EPISODE]

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo Podcast.

Alex Cullimore: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Laura, and our score creator, Rachel Sherwood.

Cristina Amigoni: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Alex Cullimore: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas, or questions. You can reach us at podcast@wearesiamo.com, or on our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. WeAreSiamo is spelled W-E-A-R-E-S-I-A-M-O.

Cristina Amigoni: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others and always uncover the human.

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