Transcript—Managing Conflict with Colleagues
Debra Zabloudil: Hello everyone. This is Deborah Zabloudil with The Learning Studio. I am here today to introduce another of our microlearning video series. And this is on leading through conflict and having difficult conversations specifically, when you have conflict with colleagues. I'm here today, joined by Dr. Kim Barrett with the University of California at San Diego. Thank you so much for being here, Dr. Barrett, welcome to the episode.
Kim Barrett: Thank you.
Debra Zabloudil: We're talking about something that's a little bit tricky tonight, and that is really how do you navigate conflict when it's with essentially a peer? So, we've had conversations with others about, when you have conflicts with those who report to you, or it's a team that you lead, but this is a new territory for a lot of folks where you may have influence or not, but you don't necessarily have authority. So can you tell us how you might approach a situation like this? Have you ever been in a situation like this and what are some of the key points that you might want to tell folks to consider?
Kim Barrett: Sure. So actually I think from the perspective of having spent my career largely in academia, this is a scenario that comes up all the time. And even if it's not your peer, even if it's somebody in your research group, the hierarchy in academia is so flat that you feel like you're working with your peers. So you have to navigate many of these situations in the same way. I've definitely been in this situation. I spent 10 years as a graduate dean and the life of the graduate dean is to have a lot of responsibility, some measure of influence and no authority whatsoever. You have to basically accomplish everything that you do through relationships and gentle influence, but without having direct line management for any of the faculty that you work with. I've definitely been in the situation of conflicts with faculty members without authority.
Definitely. It's really important to do your homework, have your facts straight, stay calm, stay collected. And recognize that wherever that person is coming from that has a conflict with you, you probably have at least partially overlapping super objectives that you, have the best interests either of. In my case, it was usually a student issue or the institution or the research program or whatever it might be. So identifying those areas where you have mutual objectives is really helpful in getting through some of those difficult conversations and sort of dragging the conversation back to those issues. If you need to, to remind that the person that you're speaking with, that essentially, we both want the same thing. We just have different opinions about how to get there.
Debra Zabloudil: That's great advice. If we can find ways to just keep pulling it up until we agree on something, chances are we can agree on something. Right?
Kim Barrett: Exactly. Exactly. And it definitely, you know. I had a lot of times when faculty wanted to do something specific, whether it would be an approach to how they were training their students or an approach to how they wanted to design a particular graduate program that weren't aligned well with the, basically the rules of the institution, the policies of the institution. And there was a little bit of my job of being the policeman and enforcing the policies. Nevertheless, I think by always focusing on common objectives, you could work with a faculty member to find other pathways to get where they wanted to go. Most of the time.
Debra Zabloudil: Right. Not always, but most of the time, well, I think you bring up a good point and, and really there's different levels and different types of agreements. So, someone might be listening saying, “Well, yeah, I can, I can do that. And I can find commonality.” And then there's values disagreements, or there might be disagreements over ethics or those kinds of things. How do you navigate that in your own mind? How do you navigate the differences in the types of conflicts you're having and how do you know when it's going to be something that will be fairly easy to resolve in those things that might be much more difficult, and how would you handle even an ethics violation? I mean, how would you go about that?
Kim Barrett: Yeah, there are definitely some things that really aren't disagreements, they are just outright wrong and you have to maintain a really strong moral compass. You might need to bring in a subject matter expert if it truly is an ethical issue. I did spend quite a bit of time as chair of the Publications Committee for the APS. And during that period was before the Society decided to hire an ethics manager. And so basically myself and at the time the director of Publications, we were the ethics manager. We were the ones really, making initial assessment of violations, trying to ferret out if it was just an honest mistake or something that was really an actual ethical violation, violation of our policies. There are some things that are simply wrong, and at those times I think that's really, when you are, your sort of moral fiber has to come to the fore.
And I think that's really the essence of being an ethical scientist is that you have to speak up when you see things that are wrong, even if it's at cost yourself. Now, most institutions do have pretty strong policies around things that are ethically wrong, whether it be research misconduct or mistreatment of students, or whatever. It's much more difficult when you are in a relatively vulnerable or powerless position. And certainly I dealt with situations over the course of my career, where students have observed something that is wrong. And in those cases often they would not want to say anything or they'd want to remain anonymous, or they'd want to step away from a situation. If you find yourself in a situation where you do have a very significant power differential, that's the time to call in allies.
And just about every institution has people whose job it is to help navigate these situations and to protect you. A lot of the time, people don't know where to go, but talking to a head of department or chair or many universities have an ombudsman person getting somebody in your corner, if you are in a vulnerable position. But if you are a mid-career or a senior faculty member, I think it's really up to all of us to speak up and to call people to task so that the vulnerable people don't have to do that.
Debra Zabloudil: That makes a lot of sense. And what if it's not something as onerous or as severe as an ethics violation, maybe it's a personality difference or these two people just don't see eye to eye on things cannot get along, don't support each other. How do you navigate that? That's a little bit murkier, isn't it?
Kim Barrett: Definitely it's murkier. And I know for myself, I've had situations where I was trying to intercede on behalf of a student and with the best will in the world, I just could not get the faculty member to see my side of the story, and spent hours meeting with a faculty member. And there are always going to be situations where you have to pick your battles, agree to disagree and find other ways around roadblocks. So there's always multiple ways to get things done. And I think if you do find yourself in a position of a disagreement with a peer or a colleague that you have to, at the end of the day, agree to disagree, and then find some other way to accomplish your objective. In the particular situation I was thinking about, I was able to help the student involved, to accomplish what he needed to accomplish without in the end, getting the concurrence of this faculty member.
And there are always multiple ways to get things done. It’s hard not to beat yourself up though, about those types of situations. You know, when you, you feel very strongly that you are in the right, it can be dissatisfying to have to say, well, we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this.
Debra Zabloudil: Right. And then, I think some people have this feeling that they shouldn't confide in others about a disagreement that they're having with someone else, so that they have to keep a level of confidentiality. And it sounds like in many cases, having an ally would help, right? Someone to advocate for you. So what would you say to those folks that feel a little bit reluctant to bring someone else into the mix? Do you think there's times where that makes more sense than others? Or do you think that's always a good practice or how would you navigate that?
Kim Barrett: It's very dependent on the specific issue that is in play. There are situations where you really can't share with other people, or at least in certain stages of what's going on, but you always, we all need allies and confidants and mentors and colleagues and peer mentors. I've certainly benefited throughout my career just with the opportunity to bounce things off of people. And so I would say that the most important thing is not to suffer in silence, you can always have a hypothetical conversation around a situation. When I was the Publications chair, we used to do a session at EB about publishing that had a component of ethical, best practices in that presentation as part of it. And at the end of the session, people wouldn't necessarily stand up during the session and ask a question.
But at the end of the session, there would always be a line of students and postdocs, and almost the first words out of their mouth would be, “Well, I have a friend who …” and it didn't take a lot of imagination to think that their friend was really themselves and they were dealing with a situation. And of course, some people were quite willing to be frank about the situation, ‘cause they didn't know me from Adam, but you know, talking about the hypotheticals, and how to handle it. But this is a tough business and it is a business of great satisfaction as well, having the opportunity to conduct research is a great joy. It's been a wonderful career for me, but there will always be times when you need help and sort of just finding those trusted advisors, whether they be your peers or a mentor that you've had for a long time, or even going back to mentors at earlier stages of your career, making sure that you have a network.
Definitely the biggest frustration for me when I served as a dean, was the students who didn't reach out and who didn't take advantage of the opportunities. And that's not to sort of blame them as victims or whatever, but it was pretty heartbreaking that people would let themselves get into really difficult situations to the point that they would contemplate giving up altogether on graduate school or whatever their aspirations were when there were people who actively wanted to help them. So there are always people that help.
Debra Zabloudil: That's such good advice, because I think so many young professionals, and even those that have been around for a long time, feel that they do need to go it alone. And there really is always someone to turn to in a professional, challenge or in a bad situation, and knowing that is half the battle. And, and so what do you think about preparing yourself for conflicts? In other words, is it important for an individual to sort of, do a little bit of introspection on, what do I believe and what line won't I cross, when I walk into this room, what is negotiable and what is non-negotiable for me? Can you talk to that for just a moment?
Kim Barrett: Yeah. I mean, if you are truly in a situation where you're negotiating, as opposed to just having a disagreement, it's really important to do your homework. It's also important to sort of get a sense of, really observe yourself, step outside yourself in low stake situations and see what pushes your buttons. See what are the types of situations that are apt to make you emotional or to sort of push you into a sort of defensive corner, more rapidly than you would want to be put there and then find ways to short circuit those. I mean, if you, if you actually sort of, really try to get to know yourself before you get put into these situations, you're much more likely to be able to respond calmly and keeping emotion out of these situations is often can be that one of the hardest things to do, but it's also the most important.
And definitely over the years, I've worked very hard myself to stay calm and to stay levelheaded. And that's true, whether you are having a disagreement with somebody one-on-one, or if you get called to mediate these disagreements. You can sort of feel the emotions rising, and if you learn to recognize that in yourself, that's the first step to being able to control it.
Debra Zabloudil: So what if someone does go into a situation of conflict and they come out feeling like they did not handle it well at all? What would you suggest that they do, as a next step? When they know they walked away and they didn't handle themselves the way they wished they had?
Kim Barrett: Well, nothing is ever over ‘til it's over. So there's not no reason. In fact, that's a really good strategy. If you feel yourself getting upset saying, “I'd like to take a break at this point. Can we make an appointment to come back to this tomorrow? I really want the opportunity to think about it.” So, if at all possible, don't let yourself get to the point where you're going to walk away and feel like I really handled this badly. But even if you do come out of the situation and say, look, you're thinking to yourself, “There's other things I could have said, there's things I could have done differently. There's ways I could have approached it.” Step away, take a deep breath, calm down and then ask for another meeting and explain, you'd like to have another opportunity. Now you've a chance to think it through.
Debra Zabloudil: I think that's great advice. Emotional intelligence training tells us, take the pause, right? When we feel ourselves getting emotional, take the pause. And that might be five minutes. It might be overnight. It might, it's whatever it takes, but come back to it. But don't let yourself get into a bad spot. Right?
Kim Barrett: Yes, I think people really want to try and rush to a resolution.
Debra Zabloudil: Good point.
Kim Barrett: And it's not, I mean, there are obviously sometimes when a situation has to be resolved right then and there, but those are very few and far between. So taking the time that you need to approach it and it might need several meetings to really come to some kind of resolution or compromise.
Debra Zabloudil: That's a really good point. We sort of want to check things off our list. Right. And we don't want things lingering, but sometimes we need to take the time, and it takes the time it takes.
Kim Barrett: Yeah.
Debra Zabloudil: So I think that's very good advice, Dr. Kim Barrett, thank you so much for being with us today. And speaking on this really tough issue, which is having conflict with colleagues really appreciate your wisdom, your advice, and we look forward to seeing you again soon.
Kim Barrett: All right. Thank you very much.
Debra Zabloudil: Thank you so much.
Kim Barrett: Happy to have had the opportunity.
Debra Zabloudil: Thank you.