you
I want to share something with you today
that I believe will make you much more
effective at resolving conflict and
building collaboration but I want to
start by telling you a little story
about some groups of chickens because
believe it or not chickens have a lot to
teach us about collaboration this takes
place at Purdue University where Bill
Muir is a professor of genetics and a
genuinely nice guy and Bill was looking
into the differences between groups of
collaborative chickens these were just
chickens that got along well with each
other I call them the green zone
chickens and there were no star
performers in their group they were just
nice to each other and in the chicken
world a star performer is the hen that
lays the most eggs but the problem with
the star performers is that they tend to
be much more aggressive animals and so
we oftentimes see among the chickens
something that we occasionally see in
human organizations and that is that the
star performers become the stars not by
being so good themselves but by
suppressing the egg production of the
other chickens so they look better and
they do this by pecking on them now I
call these more aggressive star
performers the redzone chickens and they
do a lot of damage so the farmers have
tried different strategies to deal with
that one is to house the birds in
individual cages about this big not a
great solution because it's very
expensive takes millions of cages
another thing they tried is something
that's called trimming their beaks now
this is a bit of a deceptive term
because it gives you the impression that
there's a chicken manicurist out there
sort of filing down the sharp point
but really it's an employee with a tool
that looks a little bit like a pair of
pliers and they go up and rip a big
chunk of the chicken's beak right off
its head also very expensive not to
mention horribly unpleasant for all the
chickens and the employee that's
assigned to do that so bill was trying
to see if it's possible to breed
collaborative instincts into chickens
and if so what would be the impact of
that on their egg production so we had
all the green zone chicken groups over
there in the red zone chicken groups
over there and he took the best of each
generations egg producers to produce the
next generation he did this for one year
about five generations and at the end of
that one year period the results were
pretty dramatic
there this is a picture of the Green
Zone chickens they were healthy and
productive now the next picture is what
was left of the red zone chickens and I
say it's what was left of them because
more than half of the red zone chickens
had been murdered by their colleagues
pecked to death now they say that a
picture is worth a thousand words
but if this doesn't tell the whole story
let's look at the egg production of the
Green Zone chickens in that one year
period of time it went up two hundred
and sixty percent so what we can learn
from these chickens is that red zone
environments that are more hostile that
are more adversarial highly conflicted
internally competitive versus externally
competitive they produce more red zone
behavior it feeds on itself and can
spread like a virus in an organization
and green zone environments that are
more supportive and cooperative and more
highly-skilled collaboration they
produce more eggs or whatever your
organization's equivalent is to more
eggs
now I'd like you to think back on that
picture of those red zone chickens again
for just a minute get that in your mind
as a judge for almost 25 years my
jurisdiction was collective bargaining
disputes labor-management conflicts and
in that role I believe that I have
mediated more school district labor
strikes than any other person in the
United States in just about every single
strike that I have ever mediated by the
time we get to the end of that process
every single person involved in that
process on both sides of the table knows
exactly what those chickens feel like
because that is the existence that they
are trapped in now these are not mean
people these are good people doing their
imperfect best to improve the world the
best way they know how
I mean they've all dedicated their lives
to public education
they didn't lack an interest in
collaboration what they lacked was
skills and this lack of skills was
costing the state of California a
tremendous amount of money in the cost
of conflict so a small group of us got
together we did a lot of research and we
set out to teach
the more adversarial redzone groups to
be more collaborative we were wildly
successful trust went up conflicts went
down we reduce the amount of measurable
conflict in almost a hundred different
organizations by almost 70 percent over
several years it saved the state of
California a huge amount of money it
also transformed the working lives of
thousands of employees who had been
trapped in that red zone chiken
existence which in turn I believe
improved the quality of education for
thousands of school kids who finally had
positive role models who could teach
them how to resolve their differences
without destroying their community or
going to war with each other and what we
learned from this experience is not just
limited to public education it is
applicable in any setting that requires
collaboration whether that's a family
trying to figure out where to go on
vacation together or the corporate world
where it has become blindingly obvious
lately that you cannot compete
externally if you can't first
collaborate internally or even in
politics where the defensive nesara spa
biblia defense budget at the pentagon so
what I'd like to do is share with you
today what I believe is the biggest
learning from that experience and that's
this there is nothing that will help you
become more effective at resolving
conflict and building collaboration more
than better managing your own defensive
nassif I've years of working with other
people's conflict I almost never had to
deal with pure legal issues people were
almost always before me because somebody
would start feeling vulnerable and then
they would get defensive and when we get
defensive our thinking becomes rigid our
IQ drops about 20 points and we simply
become stupid and not only are we
terrible problem solvers ourselves but
then we invite everybody else in the
room to get defensive and then what you
end up with is a whole room filled
with redzone people who cannot solve a
problem the technical term for that by
the way is litigation it's as simple as
this if you reduce your defensive Nisour
ability to solve problems now if we know
that's true why don't we just stain on
defensive and keep a more collaborative
green zone mindset all the time so I'd
like you to try something with me that
may give you some insight into that
question I would like you to use all
your creativity and empathy to let
yourself become one with this piece of
paper know what it feels like to be this
piece of paper
nice and cool to the touch and crisp
edges and a few sharp corners and a few
wrinkles like some of us have so in just
a minute I'm going to ask you all to
take a deep breath we'll do this all
together and as you exhale I would like
you to focus all your attention on this
piece of paper and just see if it's
possible for you to breathe yourself
right into this piece of paper and
become one with it
okay is everybody ready all right go
okay everybody have that now now anybody
want to collaborate with me right now or
build a relationship with me right now
or more likely anybody have any really
strong negative red zone feelings
towards me right now so I apologize for
this but I wanted to do this because I
wanted you to see how easily and quickly
you can move from the green zone where
pretty much everybody was in this room
just a minute ago into the red zone and
when it happens it can happen just that
fast and when it happens we don't have
defenses they have us they own us they
become our operating system and they
determine how we see the rest of the
world out there and the problem is it's
almost all unconscious stuff so we don't
even recognize that we're getting
defensive until it's too late so here's
our premise about defensive
when we get defensive we are not
defending ourselves from another person
we are defending ourselves from fears
inside of us that we don't want to feel
three big fears that come up all the
time
fears about our own significance our
competence and our likability let me
give you an example pretend I have some
big fears about my own competency for
doing this TED talk today and say it's
going really badly you know maybe I'm
jet-lagged and forgetting things and no
one's paying attention that can cause me
a lot of discomfort because believe me I
do not like feeling incompetent at all
right so one way that I could avoid a
lot of that discomfort is I might start
blaming you I mean after all you are not
the smartest group I have ever worked
with you know and really does anybody
here think it's possible to teach the
whole audience to be non-defensive in
the puny little 18 minutes that I've got
for this I mean give me a break yeah now
it might seem like I'm defending myself
against a bad audience or a bad
situation but what I'm really doing is
I'm behaving in a way that lets me not
be in touch with those fears our
defensive nacelle pus hide our fears
from ourselves but unfortunately that is
an awful lot like putting whipped cream
on dog poop
and I know that's a really ugly metaphor
but I'll bet you'll remember that one if
you're getting defensive it's because
there's some fear there but since most
of us are not sufficiently in tune with
that fear to do anything about it until
it's too late what can be more helpful
for most of us is to start paying
attention to the outward behavior that
we do our outward signs of defensiveness
are usually much easier to spot at a
much earlier point in the process so if
we know what our signs of defensive 'no
SAR they can become our own personalized
early warning system for example I
noticed that when I get defensive
my breathing becomes faster I tend to
talk much louder and I usually feel very
misunderstood so if I'm getting some
feedback from my friends and I notice
that I'm breathing faster
knocking louder and feel feeling very
put upon the alarm bells can go off
ding-ding-ding hey Jim pay attention
you're doing that thing then I can take
some action so it is worth your while to
figure out what your specific signs of
defensiveness are and then create your
own early warning system now we've come
up with a list of about 50 different
signs of defensive 'no staff you of the
more common ones so take a look at this
and see whether any of these look
familiar to you if you don't see your
favorites up there or even more
importantly if you happen to be sitting
out in the audience right now thinking
to yourself well I don't really get
defensive let me let me suggest to you
that you are probably in complete denial
or overly medicated because the
offensiveness this is a human condition
so if you're one of those few people on
earth that thinks they don't get
defensive when you go home tonight I
would suggest you ask your spouse or
your kids
I found family members to be remarkably
willing to help out on this task usually
very accurate - so your job is to figure
out what your specific signs of
defensive nesara and then create your
own early warning system then when it
tips you off that you're getting
defensive here's a few things that you
can do that can help number one
acknowledge to yourself that you're
getting defensive now that may not seem
like it's a big deal but if you don't
notice it you won't take any other
action number two do whatever you can do
to slow down your physiology maybe take
a walk around the building get some
fresh air or if you're trapped in a
meeting just take a few deep breaths
number three pay attention to your
self-talk if you're engaging in negative
self-talk consciously try to turn it
into something a little more positive
and a little less toxic for you number
four create an action step that is
directly related to whatever your sign
of defensiveness is so for example if
your sign is flooding with information
to prove a point maybe your action step
would be just to be quiet for 10 or 15
seconds just zip it up if it's high
charge of energy in the body
maybe it's take a few deep breaths or
visualize some relaxing scene if it's a
sudden drop in IQ
do something that's going to buy you a
little time to let your your thinking
process catch up with the rest of your
body
you know maybe hang out in the restroom
for a few minutes one woman her sign was
always wanting the last word and so she
got this image of herself standing the
conference room door throwing in the
last word and slamming the door and it
was a way of not only reminding her what
she was doing but also lightening up her
mood a little bit
so you create your action step then
number five is this is a recovery model
this is not a model of perfection so if
you get defensive like we all will you
notice it you take some action and then
start over and let it go
so to recap when you leave here today
the two most helpful next steps for you
will be number one figure out what your
signs of defensiveness are and create
your own early warning system and then
number two figure out an action step and
practice it you want to practice it so
it becomes automatic because the worst
time to be figuring out how to deal with
your defensive this is when you're
defensive now if you can do both of
these things I guarantee you you will
significantly increase your chances of
ending up like a green zone person
rather than one of those red zone
chickens in the words of one of our
wisest greatest modern-day philosophers
it's not easy being green but let me
tell you it's a whole lot easier and a
lot more effective than being red and it
could just make a big difference in your
lives thank you very much
you