241: How to Resolve Conflict the Right Way
Brought to you by Pet Sitters Associates
Summary:
How do you resolve conflict? All relationships have it, so it’s imperative to know how to handle it. Whether you deal with clients, your staff, a significant other, or a business partner, there are strategies for navigating a disagreement. We discuss the various types of conflict resolution and share what works for us.
Topics on this episode:
Types of conflict:
Understanding who is in charge
How we resolve conflict
Skills to learn
Ask a pet biz coach
Main takeaway: Regardless of who the conflict is with, approach it from the desire to see it resolved and to respect the other person.
Links:
Pet Sitters Associates: use ‘Confessional’ at checkout
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
conflict, conflict resolution, business, person, recognize, client, pet, business partner, megan, stay, staff, confessional, resolve, people, consumer, pet sitters, talk, episode, desires, compromise
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin, Collin Funkhouser, Natasha
Meghan 00:17
Hi, I'm Meghan
00:18
Collin and this is Pet Sitter confessional
Meghan 00:20
and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hi, welcome to our 200 and 41st Episode Hello. Today we're going to talk about conflict resolution. But we hope you are doing well. And in the thick of the holiday spirit and super busy. I know that we are
Collin 00:44
it's been a lot, but it's been good, the end is in sight. We want to thank our Patreon supporters for today's episode like Katherine Adriana, and Becky Your support helps us do these shows. And we're so thankful for it. If you have benefited from the show if you've learned something or if you even share the episode with somebody consider supporting the show by going to petsitter confessional comm forward slash support.
Meghan 01:08
Thank you also to pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode. We've had several requests to talk about how we handle conflict in our business since we
01:19
have conflict.
Meghan 01:20
Yeah. Sometimes, I mean, we're in business together, we're a husband and wife. And so there have been several people reach out saying, hey, how do you deal with this? What do you do? What are some of your tips. And so today we're going to talk about some of that, we also actually just had a really big disagreement within our business and had to figure out a solution and come to terms with it. And it wasn't super fun, but we did it.
Collin 01:50
So this is fresh on our mind. But we're also going to cover conflicts from several different perspectives. We're gonna talk about conflict resolution with your clients, or staff, business partners, maybe people who you reach out to for extra assistance, like a virtual assistant tax help coach, something along those lines, then yes, we'll break down conflict resolution with a spouse or significant other, because at some point during your relationship, there will be conflicts that arise and we need to be ready to address those.
Meghan 02:22
There are five different types of conflict resolution, according to the Thomas Killman model. And so most people tend to gravitate towards one of these. So here we go. The first one is avoiding someone who uses a strategy mostly tries to ignore or really sidestep the conflict, hoping that it will resolve on its own or dissipate on its own. But that doesn't usually happen. And this happens in cases where we may feel embarrassed, or the idea of working on the problem just really seems too big that we can't overcome it. So we just never talk about it, we sweep it under the rug, and we move on. The second one is accommodating when you try to take steps to satisfy the other party's concerns or demands at the expense of your own needs or desires. If you've ever said something like whatever you want, just to make the argument stop, you have been accommodating, compromising is the next one. And this involves finding an acceptable solution that will partly but not entirely satisfy the concerns of all parties involved. And this is usually what people think of when they think of conflict resolution, each party has to give something up. And a lot of cases it does work. But when running a business, remember that it's not really a good way to resolve something if a client is telling you how to run your business. Next, there
Collin Funkhouser 03:36
is competing, and this is when someone uses this kind of conflict resolution. They are trying to satisfy their own desires at the expense of the other people that are involved. Maybe you've encountered somebody who just has to win at all costs and can never accept not getting what they want. They are very competitive, and they're trying to resolve that conflict using that method. Next, there's collaborating, using this method involves finding a solution that entirely satisfies the concerns of all involved parties. It's probably the most healthy way. But it can take a long time and involve a lot of work by both parties. And that's not always the case that both people are going to be that invested in something to put in that time or the effort.
Meghan 04:20
So each person is different, you may be more of a collaborating spirit, but your other participating party may be competing.
Collin Funkhouser 04:27
And it's also situational as well. So to choose the best conflict resolution method for any situation, there are several things that you do need to consider. The first one is how important are your desires. This is where trying to understand is this something? Is this a hill that I need to die on? Or is this something that I'm just kind of interested in happening? That way you can come at it and understand where you're going to put in your effort. So if it is something that is just super important to you that you absolutely need to happen. You may choose to come at it with a competing strategy where you Nobody else can get their way. Because you have to have it your way. You also need to consider what will happen if your needs or the people who are in the group if their desires are not served. So the first one is all about getting what you want. The second one is kind of the inverse of the saying, Okay, if I don't get what I want, what's the impact of that, and if the other person doesn't get that, what could happen there, and this may be talking about pay or time off, or different strategies or protocols that you may put into place in your business, you also obviously need to consider what are the consequences of choosing to be more assertive. This is where some of the politics comes in. And if you need to be more assertive in this, does that mean you can be assertive next time, or how will the other person interpret you being assertive in the situation, if they don't receive you being assertive very well, the conflict resolution might not go anywhere, because you actually might end up hurting the person or offending them in some way. And then you need to consider whether a collaborative or cooperative solution actually exists for the problem that you're trying to overcome. We mentioned earlier how these tend to be the most healthy and beneficial for both parties. So always coming at it with an opportunistic mindset and optimistic mindset of trying to steer the discussions and resolution process towards one or the other of these, however, it's not going to be the best in each situation. And it might not even be able to happen at all, depending on what you want the outcomes to be.
Meghan 06:24
Well, and also who you were actually having the conflict with, is it a client is a spouse like we deal with or a business partner, which we also deal with, is it with your staff or somebody external to you, it's because not every one of these relationships is equal. It's sometimes you have a power differential, which means that something someone is ultimately going to make the decisions. So let's break down if you have a disagreement with a client, here, you are holding all the power in the relationship. And while you may feel held hostage by maybe a bad review, or money, you ultimately have the final say and decision power. You know, we do try to accommodate clients as best as we can. But at the end of the day, as we always say it's your business, and you run it the way you want to. If a client isn't happy about your prices, which is a pretty common conflict, you can try to resolve it by denying service and moving on. And that's more of the competing strategy. However, if they aren't happy with your service, you may decide to accommodate them and give them a refund, or if something was your fault, give them a refund. If you are having a disagreement with one of your staff, again, you hold the power in the relationship dichotomy. Obviously, you're going to have to recognize that your staff is valuable to your business. And without them you wouldn't have the business that you do. They are integral to your business, but you did hire them. And you set the expectations that they agreed to when you brought them on board. So let's say they're not happy with your onboarding policy or process and they think it needs to be changed. Well, you can assess their concerns, and then determine if changes actually do need to be made. If you recognize that, oh, this could be better. And you want to implement what they're saying that would be much more of a collaborative effort. You know, we tell our staff never stop asking questions or the why behind what we do, because we want their input. If something if they see something that could be better, that would make them more efficient in their business, obviously, we would want to bring that on board. But sometimes if you have a conflict with staff, you may determine that it's not a change you're willing to make or it's not in the budget right now. So we have to find an interim compromise somewhere there. You know, maybe it's about consistent hours or lack of predictability, or they don't feel heard or valued, you know, recognize their needs, and try to compromise on something. However, if it still doesn't get resolved, and they're still not happy, you can obviously fire them, you have the ultimate say,
Collin 08:57
when conflicts arise between you and your business partner, again, we're looking at who has the power and where does that rely in that relationship. And this totally depends on how you have your business set up with your business partner. Typically, it's a 5050 split, though, it does not have to be the width case, when you formed your business with that person, you each agreed to equal authority and power in the relationship. So you're going to have to do a lot of collaborating and compromising. You have to remember that each of you have your own reasons for being in the business and make sure that you know what the others is, and that you remember that each time they bring something to you. Maybe they want a passive income, but they're going to make very different decisions than someone who is out to change the pet care landscape in your area and blow it up. Those motivating factors are key to a successful collaboration. And this is really especially true if you're working with your spouse. Here. You each want what's best for the other person so you're willing to kind of do that extra work. That collaboration takes, you're also recognizing the strengths that the other person has. So you may be willing to defer to them on certain situations. I, I defer to and trust implicitly, Megan, when with anything and everything having to do with social media and marketing, if she says it, and that it's important, I need to get it done. And we need to move forward with that.
Meghan 10:21
Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. And I lean on you Collin for a lot of the tech and business and legal stuff, you spend a lot of time researching and reading those things that I just don't have time for, and frankly, feel like they're a little boring. So thank you. Well, they
Collin 10:36
are still boring.
Meghan 10:39
But since we are both spouses, and business partners, it is tough. Sometimes we have to recognize when one roll stops, and the other one starts, you know, do we get mad about business stuff? Yeah, all the time. We try our best to not let that impact the spouse side, though, you know, at the end of the day, we can give each other a hug and recognize that we wear different hats. But we can do a bad job at this. Sometimes. Sometimes we have to put aside a conflict to deal with other issues like the kids, they're always around, they're always coming up. Hey, Mom, Hey, Dad. And so a lot of times our conversations get interrupted. And so we have to think, hey, this needs to be tabled right now so that we can focus on the kids. And we'll come back to this at x time.
Collin 11:21
Well, and you mentioned time, and I think that's really important here just with anything, especially with conflict resolution is giving things time giving people time to figure things out time to set aside in time to dedicate to actually discussing things. Yeah, because
Meghan 11:36
everybody is different. I like to hash things out right here. And right now. And I don't like to wait, because I just see myself getting more and more angry, the more that I hold on to something and hold it in, where as you call it, you like to marinate on things and think about things inside your head before you're able to really talk it out. So it's important that when you're in a conflict with somebody, if at all possible to know how they deal with each other. I mean, obviously, we've been together for 11 something years X something like the X number of years X number of years, plus or minus 11 A long time. And so we are together every day, we know how each other operates. But it is different. When you know you have your staff and you've only been with them for a couple months or you have outside help like a coach or VA and you don't know them really at all
Collin Funkhouser 12:26
right? Well, and that gets even more tricky. Again, we're talking about this power balance, because technically you reached out to those people for help. So you do hold all of the cards, however, you did reach out to them for a reason. It maybe it's something mission critical to your business. So you reach out to a VA to help you with marketing, or maybe a coach to help you set a new goal or to go into do something different with your business. So you have to recognize that they are also bringing value to you. And ultimately that judgment call is is the value that they're bringing to me greater than the conflict that I'm going through. I'll give an example here that's not pet care related, but it did happen to us. So our son Noah was actually born in our car. And so the ambulance had to take Megan and him to the nearest labor and delivery. I drove behind. But they want to get them checked out. And the doctor was less than pleased. I'll say that we brought our doula into the room with us. And he started to get pretty angry that he felt like he couldn't do his job because the doula was giving advice or wanting to do some things or limit some other things. So I asked him into the hallway and explained that I recognize that he didn't call for us to show up at 330 in the morning, we were the ones who walked into his house, and that we actually needed him. So we were willing to work with him and abide by some of his rules. But I also asked him to respect our wishes and to have our doula to help Megan and Noah and that we really wanted to work together because my goal was for a healthy Megan and Noah now was his same goal to he ended up calming down and later apologized. Now I could have stood there and demanded he listen and obey and bla bla bla bla bla, but by recognizing that the other person has their own viewpoints, you actually get a lot further because at least now they start to feel understood that you're seeing things from their way well and
Meghan 14:20
respected as well. Exactly. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters Associates is here to help for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. If you work in the pet care industry, or want to make your passion for pets into a profession. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom and running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today at pets it llc.com You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off today. Check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets that LLC dot com. We've talked a lot about the different types of conflict, how to interact with somebody when you are in a conflict. But how do we get better at conflict resolution in general, unfortunately, it's not by dissecting each part that we just talked about, whether it's cooperativeness, or collaborative Vnus. You know, whatever we just talked about, it's about focusing on ourselves. First and foremost, that's the only person that you can control in a conflict is yourself and in life in general, but particularly in a conflict, you can't force somebody to feel a certain way, or to act a certain way in a conflict, we also can't get better at handling conflict by taking a Speech and Debate course. Thankfully, though, there are a set of simple skills we can develop if we want to be better at it. And the first is, listen, effectively, this is hard, especially in the heat of the moment, when you sometimes you just see read, and you can't think straight and you want the other person to go your way. And you know, you're right. But step back, and listen to what the other person is actually saying, don't, it's really hard, but try not to think your own thoughts while they are talking. Just simply listen, take notes, if you have to stop thinking of a response when they are talking. It's also helpful to identify specific points of disagreement. And again, write them out if you can, you know, we had we went to a marriage seminar one time and they said, Get what is the root of the issue in a conflict, you cannot throw out all these different scenarios and bring up past events, which you're not supposed to do, and spider web into this black hole, basically, where you don't even know at the end what you're fighting about. But if you get to the root of the issue, you know, why are you Why do you feel this way? Why are you angry? What is? What are you upset about? Then you can know specifically what you are disagreeing about?
Collin 16:56
Well, and clarity is obviously very big and important for this. So Express, express your own needs, extremely clearly here, not really your feelings here. But what do you need the outcome to be? What do you need to have happen to feel supportive with this, the better that we control our tongue and how we say things and how we speak about things, that we know that we've done our part, at least to help resolve the conflict. And while the conflict here, while it may feel like a bad thing, we do need to be viewing it as an opportunity for growth. So again, the fact that conflict is happening is not bad. Conflict itself is not the enemy. It's how we handle it. It's how we interpret it. It's how we grow or not grow from it. And then Megan, you mentioned earlier about focusing on specific things. Really, that's the really key here with any conflict is staying focused on specific issues. Without generalizing or escalating the situation. This is very hard to do, again, when we're trying to speak clearly the other person may not. And so they may say you always do XYZ, well, our initial gut reaction is to say, well, not always. And then you find yourself talking, discussing and arguing about the always or not always, instead of trying to get to what they were trying to communicate. So one really effective method to cut through a lot of this is, once the person has stated something, you repeat back to them, in your own words,
Collin Funkhouser 18:30
basically, like, what I hear you saying is that every time that I forget to check in with a client, it makes you feel disrespected, because I'm not abiding by our protocols. Or however that would be that way. You can try and simplify the language. And you'll find that very quickly. Each of each party starts catching on going, okay, that's how this person talks, or that's how that person talks or when they use this language, or where they start talking about in generalized terms, that may because they struggle to figure out or understand exactly specific issues, and maybe just kind of grasping at straws
Meghan 19:05
to round out this episode, we're going to talk about some things that have helped us we've mentioned a few of them throughout the episode. But one of them is agreeing to rules of arguing what we will and will not allow. So words like always, and never, we don't say those because it's not true. You will always argue over the words always. And never when somebody says them,
Collin 19:27
this is a fact it will completely derail the entire conversation, no matter how hard you try and keep it on
Meghan 19:33
a method that has worked for us for years. And I don't know which one of us came up with it. But it's how far apart we are in a decision. We use the numbers one to 10. And one is usually the bad scenario. And 10 is usually the best chance scenario. And so we say on the count of three, say a number and we say one and we know we think about it for a minute. We get our numbers in our heads and then we say 123 And then the number but More importantly than just the number, each person then has to say why they are as high as they are and as low as they are. And that way we can find commonalities. And we can really work on the differences and understand each other more as to why we are making that number decision that we are.
Collin Funkhouser 20:19
So recently, we had a discussion about whether we're going to raise prices or not. And this was something that Megan was really passionate about, and I was kind of hemming and hawing on it. So we went through this process. And on the count of three, we each set a number, and Megan was actually a lot higher than I was she was really ready to basically that day, change our prices. So then she had to say, Well, I'm I'm an eight, because I really feel like it's time for us to do this. I'm not any higher. Because yeah, I'm a little nervous about losing some clients. But I know in the end, it will work out, I was much lower, because I was really nervous about upsetting some clients moving into the new year. But I knew that there was a little bit that we needed to raise prices on. So we both recognized again, that commonality, we both recognized that we needed to raise prices, I just wasn't as confident about it. So then we could start working from there and gave it a little bit of time. And we ended up being right on the money and we raised prices.
Meghan 21:12
And we have also worked on telling the other person how much time we need to think and make a decision. So my example earlier of, I'm the type of person who really wants to talk it out right now because I need that for my mental health. And Collins as well backup, I need some time to think so we, when we're in a conflict, we say okay, you know, we've tried to find a compromise on the time, if it's, you know, 30 minutes, or if it needs to wait a little bit longer, if it's a more important decision, we can say, you know, we need to sleep on it and talk about it again tomorrow, it really helps us prevent from going on and on and on and just rehashing the same thing and not really getting anywhere, just spinning our wheels well in
Collin 21:52
for you too. It helps you not be angry that we're not making a decision at that point. And that at least is being worked on because we're communicating or talking about it. So again, it's respecting the other person recognize that they have needs, they have desires to see something resolved, or they really want to have something at least decided whether one way or the other. So that's not lingering anymore.
Meghan 22:13
Well, and at the end of the day, we love each other. We're spouses, we're business partners, and we want to appreciate each other and the hard work that goes into what we do every day. It's about mutual respect. And that's what this whole discussion is, is conflict resolution. When you go into a conflict, you want to see it through you, maybe you want your way, but you want what's best for the other person as well. And as it turns out, there's a lot to cover with conflicts, hey, we probably missed some things. But overall, this is the strategy that we use. These are the different types. And it's hard. It's hard to be in business with someone else. It's hard to, you know, manage staff. It's because everybody's different. And everybody has their unique personalities and the way that they do things and how they see the world. So it is hard and no one really enjoys conflict, but it happens all the time and at every stage of business. So we would love to know how you handle conflict in your business and your personal life. What has worked for you. If you have any hacks for resolving conflict, you can let us know on Facebook and Instagram at petsitter. confessional or send us an email or voicemail at 636-364-8260.
Collin 23:29
This week's Ask pat this coach segment with Natasha opionion. She answers the question, how do I balance being content versus trying to grow my business?
Natasha 23:38
I love being content. I think it's such a great, it's a great word. I think people misunderstand growth and content content doesn't mean lazy or you don't want to propel forward, it just means you're in a happy place of where you are. And that's going to look and mean different things to different people. For me, though, I'm not going to not allow like hiring somebody on my team to prevent growth because maybe I'll be content, you know, as a billionaire, I don't know, you know, so I'm just not going to allow some of the procedure elements to hold me back from growth. So if I'm like, hey, I can roll up boxes, you know, with me, I'm all about staying ahead of the curve. So now we're going into news and media. We're working with different industries right now on making sure that everybody knows what's dog friendly. You know, we've rolled out our online store heavily now. So those are all things I had no idea that I was going to do when I first started as a dog walker. But as we've evolved, as you know, the economy has shown us different signs of where we should be. I'm like, You know what I have to do myself, my business and my kids behind me a service by staying relevant and staying in the know. So I can continue to grow within to bring new things out.
Collin 24:49
advice would you have for somebody who's not quite sure exactly what steps to take to make sure that for the next 10 years, they're still relevant?
Natasha 24:57
Mm hmm. The easiest way to stay relevant is to be smarter. then your consumer, anytime your consumers smarter than you, that's where you're gonna find a problem. So if your consumers on tick tock, for instance, and you guys, if you know me, you know, I was like, Oh, God, not another one, I do not want to go over there. But if your consumer is there, and that's where your consumer is getting information, and you're not there, you're behind the curve, you're not going to be relevant, because guess what, everybody else? All the walkers are pet sitters that are there where your consumer is grabbing information, and they're going to be the person that's grabbing your client. So where you felt like, oh, Google's amazing, my ads are doing great. Well, guess what? What happens the day, that that's no longer the thing. That's what happened. Okay, the Yellow Pages was no longer the thing, how do I find my people word of mouth is no longer the thing, we're all second size. So we're not talking to each other as much, right? There's so many things that can happen, that if you're not where your consumer is, that's the fastest way, you know, to see yourself go under stay where your consumer is stay where they consume content, where they buy, how they shop, read, you know, read different Business Insider is that they always stay on top of it. So if you want to have your finger on the pulse all the time, stay on top of Business Insider, they will help you. But it's easiest thing to stay smarter than your client.
Collin 26:15
I think that gets back to what makes going above and beyond and surprising your client and making them happy is this is this big, smarter than them. Not only does that allow you to stay ahead of the curve, and always stay relevant, but it also means that your current clients get a lot of benefits to and you continue to serve them that.
Natasha 26:35
Absolutely, I mean, it's just so like we buy based on our generation. So now the baby boomers are running neck and neck with the millennials right now. But in a couple years no longer gonna be a thing. And then the Gen Z's coming up and you know, they're they're not even going to work at this point. You have to stay at the curve, the curve on what's going to happen, what they're going to need. Yeah, because we're in this for the long haul, right? We're not over here busting our tails and burning ourselves out to not have legacy. So we have to make sure we are staying ahead of our consumer and what's coming next.
Collin 27:18
Natasha offers coaching services to pet business owners, and if you'd like to work with her, you can go to start scale sale.com And if you're ready, use the code PSC 20 for 15% off her services.
Meghan 27:29
If you have enjoyed this episode or any of the past 240 episodes, we would greatly appreciate a review on Apple podcast or I think Spotify just came out with a rating as well. So we would love any feedback you guys have on Apple or Spotify, and we appreciate you listening today. We also want to thank our sponsor, pet sitters associates and if you guys ever have any topic ideas or suggestions for the show, we would love to hear them. We'll talk to you next time.
