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The post Episode 46: Season 2 Finale appeared first on On Conflict.

The post Episode 45: Cinnie Noble Riffcast appeared first on On Conflict.

In this episode, Cinnie discusses: 

• How executive coaching inspired her to create conflict management coaching (a.k.a. conflict coaching)
• Being a better version of yourself when it comes to being in conflict
• What triggers us and what happens to us when we’re triggered
• Why participating in conflict and communication training can only get us so far 
• The organizational impact of leaders who avoid or are afraid of conflict 
• Designing a conflict management coaching program for airport security in the United States post-911 regarding how to respond to public pushback about increased security measures and how to support each others as peers
• The importance of normalizing conflict in organizations and figuring out a way to prevent unnecessary conflict and a way to deal with necessary conflict in constructive ways
• The value of effective conflict management becoming a core competency
• That many leaders aren’t aware of the financial costs (and other costs) of avoiding conflict and inadequate conflict resolution systems 
• What a conflict-competent culture looks like in an organization 
• The Conflict Dynamics Profile (via Eckerd College): what does it take to be able to behave in conflict in constructive ways so that when faced with a conflict, people don’t go for making it a personal attack on people – they look at what’s the task, and what needs to be done here in order to have an organization and relationships that look more to task than attacking each other?
• How coaches can facilitate conflict as a better experience so people will stop avoiding it and focus on what they can gain and learn about themselves and contemplate where the other party is coming from 
• Normalizing conflict in organizations through leadership 
• The value of a conflict-competence organization 
• The issue of leaders treating other leaders with dignity and respect, but not treating non-leaders the same way
• The growth she’s seen in the world of conflict management coaching
• The importance of preparatory meetings and discussing what it’s like to be in conflict before going into a formal conflict process such as arbitration, mediation, or trial — as well as post-mediation coaching
• Why she won’t do “quicky” training in conflict management and has a minimum time requirement to allow for pre- and post- training
• How to manage the difficult situation when an employee complains about someone to a manager but isn’t willing to share that person’s name 
• The value of organizations being proactive about conflict so that people in conflict don’t wait until a conflict has blown up then write each other off
• Why it’s unwise to have a default response of putting together parties in conflict to talk it out; a face-to-face dialogue isn’t necessarily the best way to deal with a conflict
• Making conflict systems tailored to an organization 
• The link between resiliency and conflict
• Various ways that covid-19 has affected organization conflict and perhaps pushed some conflict under the surface
• How to introduce with a coaching client the idea that conflict is an opportunity for profound growth as a person 
• Exploring conflict management options in high- and low-context cultures, individualistic and collectivist cultures, organizations with diverse subcultures, and international organizations

A summary of Cinnie’s model, CINERGY: 

• C: Clarify the goal – to determine what the client wants to accomplish in coaching
• I: Inquire about the situation – to find out what lead the client to want or be referred to coaching
• N: Name the elements – to deconstruct the conflict and help the client analyze what happened for him or her and the other person (Cinnie uses a construct she created called the Not So Merry Go-Round of Conflict)
• E: Explore the situation – to consider what optional plans of action may suit the situation and conflict dynamic
• R: Reconstruct the situation – to make the plan a reality by visioning, practicing, etc. – depending on the outcome desired
• G: Ground the challenges – to consider what barriers preclude goal achievement
• Y: Yes, the Commitment – to commit to when, where, etc.

More About our Guest

Cinnie Noble, a former lawyer, is a Professional Certified Coach and a Certified Mediator with a Masters of Law in Dispute Resolution. In 1999, after extensive experiential research, Cinnie developed the CINERGY model of Conflict Management Coaching, and since then has provided this coaching process worldwide. She and her team also train mediators, coaches, lawyers and others in various parts of the world, in this unique model. Cinnie is the author of two coaching books: Conflict Mastery: Questions to Guide You and Conflict Management Coaching: The CINERGY Model. In 1991, Cinnie was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada for her pioneering work in the travel industry for people with disabilities.

Cinnie’s Resources

• Website
• Blog
• Twitter: @CINERGYCoaching and @ConflictMastery
• LinkedIn
• Books:
  • Conflict Mastery: Questions to Guide You 
  • Conflict Management Coaching: The CINERGY Model 

Resources Mentioned in the Episode

• The Conflict Dynamics Profile, through Eckerd College in St. Petersburg 
• Controlling the Costs of Conflict: How to Design a System for Your Organization by Karl Slaikeu and Ralph Hasson
• Designing Conflict Management Systems: A Guide to Creating Productive and Healthy Organizations by Christina Sickles Merchant
• Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Costs of Conflict by  William Ury, Jeanne Brett, and Stephen Goldberg
• The Third Side by William UryCinnie mentioned a resource about resilience that a woman in Australia started and someone in BC has spoken with people from Ecker about it. That person is Catherine Carr

Quotes and Highlights

[3:42] “I’m not getting as many people in interpersonal disputes as I am leaders taking the opportunity to say, ‘I’ve got to figure out how to work better with conflict.’”

[10:20] “it’s all about tailor-making a process that facilitates a shift that somebody has in maximizing their potential to be a conflict masterful person.” 

[11:35] Gordon: “There’s something really fundamental that you said about the practice of conflict coaching. People can take all the training they want, but it has a generic quality to it in that it’s designed to apply to almost anyone who would come to a class on conflict. What you’re saying is that we’re all individuals and we all have these deeply, almost psychological ways that we respond to conflict, and we need a more tailor-made kind of conversation or interaction with someone to learn and become more familiar with those sides of ourselves and start to make changes that we might want to make.” 

[14:50] “If [an organizational leader doesn’t] have a core competency of effective conflict management to begin with, and you yourself are not conflict competent, then the message to everybody is that it’s not worth addressing until it’s too late.”

[20:18] “If I were to give advice to leaders, it would be starting at, do you have some systems in place? Whether it’s as dramatic as TSA [the airport security program she designed] — that was a big deal. That cost a lot of money and it was national. But if you look at, how do you make conflict and dealing with conflict accessible? It starts with the leader accepting that it’s going to be part of life, and showing that they are able to engage in conflict effectively. That starting point to me is if you haven’t got coaching, you need to get coaching. You need to even understand the concepts of that, the importance of it, to be able to then develop some sort of system and systematic way of looking at, how do we ensure people within our organization accept when  there’s an issue and ask, What do we do about it? That could be everything from offering individual coaching, offering group coaching, anything to do with mediation…”

[27:42] “The whole idea of a conflict-competent culture, to me, starts with the idea of what constitutes conflict competence generally in that organization.”

[29:02] “My dream has always been that every time [someone is named as] a leader, they automatically get conflict management coaching on the basis that they’re going to have challenges with conflict. It’s inevitable! So let’s make sure that you know how to do it. So here’s your coach. That’s one way of normalizing it.”

[40:00] “I think organizations need to know that there are lots of [conflict] services that are out there that are preventative, which is much more proactive than other ones…”

The post Episode 44: Cinnie Noble — Coaching Your Way to Collaboration appeared first on On Conflict.

The post Episode 43: Bill Eddy and Michael Lomax Riffcast appeared first on On Conflict.

In this episode, Bill Eddy and Michael Lomax discuss: 

• How Dr. Eric Berne’s book Games People Play can help us recognize and deal with high-conflict behaviour
• Four characteristics of high-conflict behaviour (preoccupation with blaming others, all-or-nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, and extreme behaviours)
• How high-conflict personalities (HCPs) can cause unnecessary doubt in mediators (and everyone else)
• The inspiration behind the High Conflict Institute opening in 2008
• Why the guests think high conflict behaviour and situations are increasing 
• The percentage of the adult population that the guests think have HCPs (it’s 10%)
• When someone’s default is to escalate conflict instead of resolve it 
• “Disruptive physician behaviour” – one of many options on the high-conflict personality palette 
• How people feel crazy when they’re around HCPs for awhile
• The difference it can make in people’s lives to be able to recognize high-conflict behaviour and adjust their responses
• High-conflict personalities in politics 
• How unrealistic movies can be when they portray HCPs drastically changing in a short period of time
• Mistaken beliefs of people who think they can change high conflict behaviour 
• How to effectively screen for HCPs during the hiring process 
• Steve Jobs as an example of how high-conflict people can help organizations thrive
• Managing the dilemma of a highly productive HCP in an organization 
• Enrolling employees with HCPs in coaching to see if they adjust their behaviour 
• How leaders can effectively communicate and work with HCPs in the workplace
• “The four forget-abouts” – what NOT to do with HCPs
• Why it’s generally not helpful to tell someone with a HCP that they have a HCP
• The CARS method for resolving high-conflict situations (connecting with them, analyzing options, responding to hostility or misinformation, and setting limits on misbehaviour)
• The unnecessary discarding of people with HCPs
• How working with HCPs requires genuine care and concern for them, and recognizing that they live in a world of distress and they actually want relief from that distress
• How mirror neurons can be of assistance (or work against us)
• Ways to ground yourself when preparing to engage with HCPs
• The importance of lowering our expectations of ourselves, such as being able to change a HCP
• Red flags that leaders should make a note of, and their responsibility to address it
• Their email method, BIFF: brief, informative, friendly, and firm
• The New Ways for Work coaching method
• You can’t control another person’s behavior, but you can control your responses to their behavior
• Two questions to ask yourself regarding whether you have a personality disorder: 1) what’s my part in this problem (people with personality disorders can’t ask themselves that question and that’s why they remain stuck), and 2) what can I do differently next time? If you can ask and answer those questions, then you don’t have a personality disorder and you can be a problem solver
• The similarity between HCPs/personality disorders and addiction in that some people may jump to a conclusion and label them as “bad people,” but it’s more a matter of raising awareness of what’s really going on under the surface and seeing it as a practical problem rather than a moral judgment or deficit
• How the competitive media encourages and normalizes extreme behaviour 

More About our Guests

Bill Eddy is a lawyer, therapist, mediator, and the Chief Innovation Officer of the High Conflict Institute based in San Diego, California. Mr. Eddy provides training to professionals worldwide on the subject of managing high-conflict personalities and situations in over 30 states and ten countries.

Mr. Eddy is the author of several books, including:

• It’s All Your Fault at Work: Managing Narcissists and Other High-Conflict People
• Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths—And How We Can Stop!

He is on the part-time faculty at the Pepperdine University School of Law and is the co-developer of the New Ways for Work coaching method for potentially high conflict employees and managers. His website is: www.HighConflictInstitute.com.

Michael Lomax is a highly experienced mediator/conflict resolution trainer who has assisted many government, corporate, military and law enforcement agencies, as well as human resources and union organizations on how to manage high conflict behaviour. He also has significant experience leading the design and implementation of workplace conflict management programs for large organizations. Michael is an Associate Speaker/Trainer with the High Conflict Institute based in San Diego, CA, and regularly delivers trainings across Canada and the United States. Michael is a lawyer by profession and is a non-practicing member of the Law Society of BC.

Bill’s Resources

• Bill’s books: 
  • High Conflict People in Legal Disputes
  • It’s All Your Fault at Work 
  • Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths―and How We Can Stop!
  • Five Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life
  • Find more here at the High Conflict Institute’s online bookstore 
• Website: www.HighConflictInstitute.com 

Michael’s Resources

• Websites: 
  • www.HighConflictInstitute.com 
  • www.MichaelLomax.ca 

Shared Resources

• A Respectful Meeting Policy
• Building a Team Against the Problem
• Setting the Agenda
• The CARS Method for Resolving High-Conflict Situations
• When Storytelling Hurts Conflict Resolution 2019

Resources Mentioned in the Episode

• Dr. Eric Berne’s book Games People Play 
• The DSM / Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 
• Megan Hunter of the High Conflict Institute 
• “Disruptive physician” behaviour 
• Steve Jobs as a high-conflict personality
• The CARS method for resolving high-conflict situations 
• Mirror neurons
• Georgi DiStefano
• The New Ways for Work coaching method
• Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can
• First Lady Betty Ford and addiction 

The post Episode 42: Bill Eddy and Michael Lomax on High-Conflict Personalities appeared first on On Conflict.

The post Episode 41: Elton Simoes Riffcast appeared first on On Conflict.

In this episode, Elton discusses: 

• The kind of leadership required from political, organizational, and corporate leaders in this time of COVID-19
• Leaders being guided by values during a crisis
• The need for increased transparency in times of uncertainty
• Consequences of errors in crisis versus non-crisis
• Key principles for leadership during chaos
• Making creative, collaborative, and democratic rather than authoritarian choices
• Real versus perceived uncertainty
• How time crunches impact leadership decisions
• The importance of leaders being able to say “I don’t know”
• Taking advantage of diversity
• The skill of cultivating buy-in 
• How to have a good relationship with power 
• The wealth of energy and information released by conflict
• Transparent communication leading to more creative productivity 
• How the “feedback culture” in a separate career helped him make peace with conflict
• The importance of focusing on the problem, not the person 
• Similarities between organizational leadership and an orchestra
• Why leaders need to be secure about people disagreeing with them 
• Viewing conflict as transcending, not threatening 
• A scene from A Bug’s Life that teaches us rule # 1 about leadership: it’s not your fault, but it’s your problem
• How the higher one moves up in an organization, the more isolated they are, which decreases their access to important information
• Why there’s no such thing as a rational decision

More About our Guest

Elton Simoes practices arbitration, mediation, and Med-Arb in complex commercial disputes involving shareholders, intellectual property, technology, entertainment, and sports.

Elton has lived, worked, and studied in Canada, the U.S., Latin America, and Europe, where he held senior leadership positions such as:

• Vice President at Disney TV International (U.S.)
• Board Director at HBO Latin America (U.S.)
• Managing Director Sports at Globosat (BR)
• CEO and Chair of the Board at Playboy Brazil (BR)
• International Business Development at Nethold B.V. (NL).

He currently serves as President and Chair of the Board of Directors at ADRBC and is Vice President, President‐Elect, at the ADR Institute of Canada (ADRIC).

He completed degrees in business and law concurrently from two universities in Brazil. He has a Masters in Dispute Resolution from the University of Victoria and is currently a PhD candidate at Royal Roads University in British Columbia.

Elton’s Resources

• ADR Institute of Canada profile
• LinkedIn profile

Resources Mentioned in the Episode

• A Bug’s Life (movie) (here is the clip that Elton refers to)

Riffcast

To hear Julia and Gordon’s riffcast about this interview, please click here.

The post Episode 40: Elton Simoes – Leadership and Power in Challenging Times appeared first on On Conflict.

The post Episode 39: Anne-Marie Daniel Riffcast appeared first on On Conflict.

• The deep patterns in nature that we can learn from
• The business model of the seashell
• How the expert on climate change is nature
• The value of healthy feedback loops in organizations
• How to reframe a challenging mediation using two extremes in nature
• Why leaders should tap into the expertise of those around them 
• How we all have a piece of the puzzle, even if it’s not completely clear to us yet
• How working in teams is where we derive the biggest amount of power

More About our Guest

Anne-Marie’s specialty is delivering experiential agendas and curriculums that cater to a variety of learning styles. She brings a creative approach to helping people solve problems through her experience as a theatre designer, educator, mediator, entrepreneur, and biomimic. As a partner and founder of Roy Group, Anne-Marie led the firm’s conflict resolution offering until the launch of innovation arm NatuR&D in 2018. She is passionate about building resilient organizations and communities. Anne-Marie holds a BFA in Theatre Design, a Graduate Certificate in Mediation, a Masters in Biomimicry, and is a Certified Biomimicry Professional.

In Anne-Marie’s words: At 16, I knew that the world was repeating destructive patterns despite lessons like the Holocaust, the civil rights movement, the destructive effects of residential schools, senseless wars, the cold war, Chernobyl and other pollution disasters. Acknowledging the problems is important, but then I need to focus on solutions or I get depressed. Mediation has taught me how to focus on interests and build understanding around values. Finding the practice of biomimicry has been a huge relief, because Nature has evolved elegant designs to protect itself and thrive. Nature’s innovations are adaptive, locally responsive, life friendly, resource efficient, high performing, and evolve to meet present and future needs. Nature has solved just about every problem there is. Nature is the expert in the room — serious Level 5 leadership.

Anne-Marie’s Resources

Roy Group profile

Resources Mentioned in the Episode

• Janine Benyus, author of the book Biomimicry
• The book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart
• The Natural Step organization 
• The book The Rights of Nature by David Boyd
• The company Interface (and their story of being more environmentally friendly through biomimicry)
• Life’s Principles

Quotes and Highlights

[5:08] Biomimicry is the practice of looking to nature for answers. Since nature has 3.8 plus billion years of design experience and has solved almost every problem there is, what can we learn from nature? And that shift allowed me to really find an expert in the room.

[5:46] Nature’s got all the ideas for solving all these problems we’re facing. As I went further to learn about that, I just can’t believe how true it is. So when it comes to conflict and leadership and the practice of biomimicry, not so much looking at a specific organism – how does this organism solve a problem when it comes to leadership-type social issues – but rather, what are the deep patterns in nature that we can learn from that are going help us reorganize our systems and make sure that our interactions air leading somewhere productive. 

[6:27] You can practice biomimicry at the forum level where you create an improvement to a train or a wind farm, or some kind of shape, because of the way nature does shape so beautifully, elegantly, gorgeously. You can do biomimicry from a process point of view where you might redesign a process in an organization by looking at one of nature’s processes. Or you might redesign a glue or something like that based on one of nature’s recipes. And then you can practice biomimicry at the system level by looking at what are the deep patterns that we could be, should be, employing here in order to get where we want to go, in order to adapt to changing conditions, in order to be locally attuned. 

[7:50] Gord paraphrases the four different ways of looking at nature: shapes/geometry, processes/flows, chemistry/the way things are assembled, and patterns/systems. Anne-Marie comments “The chemistry is kind of part of the processes, but I’m kind of glad that you put it in its own category because it’s actually the hardest one. Nature does everything with 26 elements on the periodic table, where human endeavors use…I think there’s even up to 120 elements now or something. So these elegant combinations – if we can learn nature’s chemistry, we can solve a lot of problems. And there are people working on it, but we need to get busy pretty quick.”

[9:14] Gord highlights the different areas that Anne-Marie has explored in her lifetime, including conflict resolution, leadership, and biomimicry. He asks, “Is there a place you’d like to start in speaking about how those are linked and meaningful and practical for you?” Anne-Marie says: “One of the ways it’s practical right now is that all of our communities are developing climate action plans, and I’m helping develop the one for North Saanich. And so there is the biggest problem, we think, facing humanity. And it incorporates a lot of social questions. People not only changing their lifestyles but also, given that we’ve messed things up so much for people in low-lying areas, and, you know, how do we create welcoming communities and provide for all that? So there is the biggest question: Who’s the expert on climate change? Turns out nature. The only reason we’re here is because nature knows what to do with greenhouse gases and has created these carbon cycles. So there’s a ton of answers there, both in terms of mimicking nature, which is what biomimicry is – not using nature but mimicking nature – and then also just supporting nature in her best work. 

[11:17] Gord asks “So as you advance that vision, what kind of conflicts arise that you have to work with and what kind of leadership is needed to work effectively with those conflicts?” Anne-Marie says:

• “The person who really put bio mimicry on the map is Janine Benyus, in her book Biomimicry. As far as it relates to leadership, one of the things she says is that we need to quiet human cleverness. So from a leader point of view, are you able to park the ego to some extent and realize that there’s a greater answer? There’s actually some deep listening that needs to go on.”
• [12:21] “It’s lonely at the top because you feel like you’re stuck with all the decisions. And the nice thing is, nature’s always there, open, offering something to look at. One has to quiet the cleverness in order to actually see it. Can I perceive an answer here? Can I ask nature for solutions?”
• “If I’m a leader and I’m working locally, some of nature’s deep patterns might be cultivating cooperative relationships.”
• Making sure you have feedback loops in your organization so that people do know how they’re doing. That’s a very hard one for leaders, especially in a Canadian culture where we’re so polite. We’ll think about how much someone is driving us crazy for the longest time, but we have a very hard time getting it out in a way that’s helpful to them. When leaders have feedback on their own performance, it might hurt a little bit or be nerve-racking to begin with, but then it’s absolutely the thing that settles the soul, if it’s good feedback.
• Another one of nature’s design principles is that nature leverages cyclic processes. So the neat thing about nature is that nature designs for extremes. So you know how in mediation, if you’ve got a problem frame, then you feel like the interests are too far apart, you think, Oh, no, I can’t deal with that one. Let’s find something where the interests are closer together. In nature, nature has to design so that it can be submerged for half of the day at the beach and completely exposed in the hot, hot sun for the other part, or in complete darkness at one point and complete daylight the next, or windy and still, or wet and dry, cold and hot. So these extremes are important.
• [15:39] Thinking about the human experience and feedback, leveraging cyclic processes is the design principle. So when do people need to be getting feedback? How can I, as a leader, ritualize to make sure that there are cycles that people can find predictable. And then they start to get into the habit of Okay, there’s gonna be feedback here. So having not only a timing for feedback, but also a model for feedback that people can get used to, that’s simple, that doesn’t go on for an hour and a half.

[16:45] Gord asks Anne-Marie if she has an example of a model, and Anne-Marie describes one in Russia that consists of three questions: what went well, what was tricky, and what would I do differently? Whoever “did the thing,” e.g. whoever just ran the meeting, gets to answer first, then others ask that person if they’d like feedback, and the person has a choice to receive it. 

[19:04] Gord asks “From a leadership perspective, what kind of things work in shifting a culture to more feedback? Because more feedback is going to potentially create more conflict.” Anne-Marie says: [20:08] “Nature has balancing and reinforcing feedback loops. So you can have too much feedback, like too much snow or too much water, and then it does create devastation in a system. So keeping the balance of that feedback and making sure it’s happening in a way that the system can handle is absolutely something that a leader should pay attention to. And feedback that is both balancing, like, This could have been a bit better, and reinforcing, to say Keep doing what you’re doing.”

[23:41] Gord asks Anne-Marie if she can talk about some lessons she’s learned along the way or seen others learn, especially situations involving reevaluation and changing directions. Anne-Marie says, [24:19] Change is really incremental. Rather than creating the perfect strategy and then launching it, this incremental piece is better. When working with leaders, what’s the easiest next thing they see as possible, and working with that rather than creating these massive strategies with millions of moving parts. The other nice thing in nature’s design principle is being locally attuned and responsive, which is what you want to be as a leader. The last principle in that section is about using readily available materials and energy. When you think about communication, that’s kind of the free energy of the organization. It is an energy flow, and so managing that energy flow in a way that feels comfortable, predictable, takes the anxiety out of it. I think leaders can also appeal to the expertise of those around them and really tap into this free energy of communication. 

[27:18] Julia asks Anne-Marie to share more about her work in climate change and what might be required from individuals and leaders. Anne-Marie says:

• “My favorite bumper sticker is When the people will lead, the leaders will follow.”
• “What is required of leaders? Well, first of all, a serious grokking of the problem. You know, there are studies that show that if you live underneath the dam that’s about to break, you think less about it than the person who lives 20 kilometers away. We’re underneath a dam now that’s about to break. When we were 20 kilometers away, we weren’t thinking that much about it. Now it’s hard to wrap the mind around it.”
• “I think if I hadn’t run into biomimicry, I would be hugely depressed by now.”
• “A lot of anxiety is possible in staring this problem in the face. But I think again, if you look back to interests, interests are what is going to solve this problem. What are nature’s interests? If you were gonna throw a piece of garbage out your window, what would it be made of that nature would thank you for? So I think we need to start thinking in terms of nature’s interests. Nature’s interests and our interests are a lot the same. We want clean air and clean water. We want to cool climate. We want healthy food. We want less recycling and garbage. So I think starting to align our own interest with what nature’s interests are is super important.”
• “I think we really need to get curious as leaders, and I went through a period where, I can’t understand nature, how can I perceive what’s going on? But even the effort of relaxing the mind and being open delivers a lot of results that way.”
• “We can’t help the fact that we’re creative beings.”
• Cradle to cradle is a philosophy that we want to create things in cycles. Natural Step, biomimicry, and cradle to cradle all hit the scene in the same six year span. They talked about how the cherry tree throws down way more than it needs. There’s a sense of huge abundance and beauty and generosity. So that is who we are as nature, and that if there’s a slow leak of a drip, it can cause much more problems. So to be less bad makes the problem harder to detect. So we really need to find out what is the shift all the way to good. What is the good I can do here?
• Back to business, Am I replicating a strategy that works? Like all our decisions that we’re making everyday in business are so urgent and time sensitive. But am I actually making this incrementally better? Am I replicating a strategy that’s gonna work, like you see so many patterns across nature? Or is this actually going in the wrong direction? So what’s required from people in the face of climate change, I think, is to start to think about what nature’s interests are and how that allies with their own, and then, How can I support nature in her best work of supporting me? And how can I do that in a creative way? 

[33:32] Julia says “I’m just wondering from your own experiences with engaging with community […] what you might say to that person who is sitting in their own home or their own car, listening to this podcast. It’s one thing to say to start thinking about nature and being open to it, because, in fact, you’re gifting them the opportunity to be. Simply to be. And I’m curious about relating with others, what your thinking is about how somebody can shift their thinking to relate with other people around this issue.” Anne-Marie says:

• It’s amazing how the mediation training has been helpful because I do see looking for interests in the same way as identifying what the function of a design is. 
• I think it’s still about looking at What is that other function that seems so extreme from mine? What is that other interest that I need to put alongside in order to accurately solve this problem? What are these extremes? 
• My husband and I – he’s from Saskatchewan, where the lines are very clear on the crops. And I’m all about the habitat, you know? Permaculture. And so the two functions, when it comes to the arguments about our yard (which we’ve had for many years but have now suddenly cracked) is, how do we create manicured habitat? So I think it is about putting those extreme interests alongside each other. Just like economy and environment. I think we have to really ask that question 10 times more deeply than we have. That question being, how do we create a system that creates good economic livelihood for everybody while supporting natural systems in the process?

[39:45] Julia asks if Anne-Marie can comment on any practices she’s seen that are supportive of the joint interests between people and nature. Anne-Marie shares the inspiring story of a business called Interface that used biomimicry to drastically change its impact on the environment for the better. 

42:08: Julia says “if you had some principles, Anne-Marie, that you could share with listeners around – if they perceive themselves as leaders, what would you want your core takeaway messages to be to them?” Anne-Marie says:

• One of the things that I realized is how important it is to understand that you have a piece of the puzzle, even if it’s not completely clear to you yet. That working in teams is where you derive the biggest amount of power. 
• When you look at nature and cooperative relationships, and also the speed at which these problems need to be solved, I think we need to get much better at knowing, trusting, that we have a piece of the puzzle, but then also looking around for who has the other pieces that we need. How can I surround myself with the people who are going to really give me the feedback and help me think through the things that I need to think through?
• I did a short stint at the Premier’s office and the Head of the Secretariat would bring a question and throw it down on the table and then just listen for twenty minutes as everyone pitched in on what they thought about it. It was always clear that she had the decision making power of what she was going to take forward, but she knew she wasn’t alone, and was very grateful to appeal to the expertise around her.
• “I always feel so much more powerful when I think of all my friends and who I can ask to better understand something.”
• I would just encourage people to check out biomimicry, to check out life’s principles in particular, which is a collection of nature’s deep design principles created by biomimicry 3.8 that are hugely helpful to thinking about leadership. 

[46:38] Gord asks Anne-Marie to summarize how biomimicry informs how we should respond to conflict, and how a leader wanting to help others in conflict can make use of biomimicry. Anne-Marie says:

• “For me, the relationship to conflict is around interests. How do my business interests align with nature’s interests?” 
• Gord: “You mean that alignment will be there if I can look for it?”
• “It will be there or it won’t be there.” 
• Gord: And if it’s not there, then it suggests something else.
• “Yeah. How is my business related to creating community? And how does my business support nature? How does nature support my business?”
  
  
• [47:33 ]“As a business model, take the seashell. It creates itself in ambient conditions with the materials that are right there. There’s a low energy process happening. And so in business, we could learn a lot by What’s the easiest way to do things here? What’s the path of least resistance? Which, we’re gonna have to check ourselves at some point, because sometimes the easiest thing is just to do the wrong thing.” But we’re really thinking about What’s the easiest way to do the right thing? What’s the easiest way to align here? What’s the easiest way to leverage the energy and materials around me? 
• And there’s a lot of conflict in this. There’s a lot of people who are, I think, first of all, really not clear about what the scope is of what needs to be done, and then quite unsure about whether they’re up for it. So advancing those conversations is necessarily going to be fraught with challenge and conflict. People’s sense of whether they belong or not.
• When you advance an issue like this – I don’t know if you guys have founded as mediators, but – you’re often the unpopular one until they get used to the fact that you’re just listening, and then they forget you’re even there, and think you’ve done it all yourself. But you’re necessarily putting your finger right on the nerve, and that’s tough work. So maybe having a sense of, I’m advancing this conversation because in the bigger picture, aligning these natural and human built systems is really going to serve me in my business, in my day to day life. It’s not just abstract – it’s a big idea, but it’s not abstract. And so how I put my finger on that nerve in a way that doesn’t just shock people. But hopefully there’s a rich will around that with feedback loops and some good cooperative relationships. I think it’s gonna use up all of our skills, and that’s where everyone’s got a piece of the puzzle. We can’t go in there screaming at each other. We know that doesn’t work. We’ve got to go in there creating the space for these conversations and framing the problem again and again and again and again. 
• What I’m so grateful for is that learning about conflict resolution and mediation allowed me to see a solution space and to protect myself from being so hurt by these endless arguments. That was the first thing. And then finding bio mimicry has allowed me to understand a higher, more elegant level of expertise. So I think that’s it, that I would hope people would leave with a greater sense of a solution space to support them in the work they’re doing. That these answers are there, but that we do just need to set ego aside and quiet the cleverness in order to listen for them.

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