In this episode, Katie welcomes back Sandra Cain, Director of Curriculum and senior Faculty at CRR Global, to talk about alignment. Across this conversation, they discuss:
Sandra Cain coaches individuals, pairs, and teams around the world. Her background includes 15 years of experience at American Express with a variety of leadership and personal development roles. In addition to leading the CRR Global Core Curriculum, she is also Associate Director of the Certification Program and on faculty for The Coaches Training Institute. Her stand for this work is that since we’re already in relationships, we might as well be conscious and intentional about who we are, what we do, and how we live.
For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time
We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.
In this episode, Katie welcomes back Sandra Cain, Director of Curriculum and senior Faculty at CRR Global, to talk about alignment. Across this conversation, they discuss:
Sandra Cain coaches individuals, pairs, and teams around the world. Her background includes 15 years of experience at American Express with a variety of leadership and personal development roles. In addition to leading the CRR Global Core Curriculum, she is also Associate Director of the Certification Program and on faculty for The Coaches Training Institute. Her stand for this work is that since we’re already in relationships, we might as well be conscious and intentional about who we are, what we do, and how we live.
For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to build stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time
We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.
Key
KC – Katie Churchman
SC – Sandra Cain
[Intro 00:00 – 00:06]
KC – Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast. We believe relationship matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole. I’m your host, Katie Churchman, and in this episode, I welcome back Sandra Cain, Director of Curriculum and Senior Faculty Member at CRR Global, to talk about alignment. Across this conversation we discuss why alignment coaching is so foundational to the ORSC approach, the challenges surrounding alignment coaching, the importance of bilateral ventilation, shifting from positions to common interests, and humanizing the other person and seeing them as a person and not the problem itself. Sandra Cain coaches individuals, pairs and teams around the world. Her background includes 15 years of experience at American Express with a variety of leadership and personal development roles. In addition to leading the CRR Global core curriculum. She's also Associate Director of the certification program and on faculty for the coaches training institute. Her stand for this work is that since we're already in relationship, we might as well be conscious and intentional about who we are, what we do, and how we look. So, I bring you Sandra Cain, talking about alignment.
KC - Hi, Sandra, welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast always so excited to have you on the show. Welcome.
SC - Thanks, Katie. I love doing these. It's very fun for me.
KC - Today we're talking about a hot topic: alignment coaching.
SC – Dun, dun, dun!
KC – I know! We need that sound effect.
SC - This one does have a sound effect. People tend to be really overwhelmed by that. It's like, ‘oh, conflict, what do I do?’
KC - Yes. Let’s start there then. Why does alignment coaching often cause quite a lot of fear in some coaches.
SC - My experience with that is that we are not taught how to deal with conflict. I've yet to meet somebody that says, ‘oh, I had a great model of how my parents dealt with conflict’, or, ‘my family was really good at conflict’, or, ‘I took this class on conflict’. There's not a lot of resources. Maybe there's more now, but in my experience, there's not a lot of resources for how to deal with conflict, how to navigate it, what's really going on with us. So, of course, humans want to be comfortable, we are wired to be safe, and we want to be safe and comfortable. So, when conflict happens, it's not comfortable. I've been doing this work a long time and it's still not comfortable for me, I don't think it ever will be. But I trust my ability to navigate it better than I did 20 years ago, or 10 years ago, or frankly, even 5 years ago. I continue to grow and learn about myself through conflicts that I have in relationship.
KC - Thank you for sharing that.
SC - I just think we don't know. We're not taught.
KC – Yeah, and I think for many of us there’s that instinct to turn away from conflict and to create harmony, maybe look for that positivity as opposed to actually hold what's showing up in the system.
SC - Absolutely. I think we're pretty good at shifting and morphing ourselves to keep the peace. We have this role called peacekeeper, that inner role that people take. Which sometimes is needed and very healthy and there's a version of that that's not so healthy. That version’s staying on the surface and not getting into what's really going on between people, or, probably more interestingly, what's trying to emerge. When I thought about conflict like that it changed everything for me, because it was, for so much of my life, it was ‘I'm right, you're wrong’, or ‘I don't want to be wrong and I don't want you to be right’, and how do I defend and how do I get louder or smarter or more clever to win, somehow. And the reframe for me was in this model, it was what’s actually trying to emerge through conflict. That's so different. It's a very different lens to look at, when you're feeling kind of agitated or there's some kind of conflict, if you think what's trying to emerge here, if I can just think of that it's going to change the whole trajectory of the conversation.
KC - And it holds conflict as information. I think for many of us, we see conflict as bad and conflict can be unskillful, yes, but it can also be skillful. I think this tool helps us to hold conflict in a much more skillful way, that we can navigate effectively with a coach.
SC - Yeah, it's great language for it too, that you can become more skillful. I don't know that anybody is going to be great. There are probably some people that get really riled up and love a good battle or like to tussle with things and that's cool, no problem. But there's a point where, you know, what's really serving the relationship? Is someone being antagonistic for the for the joy of antagonism. Okay, well, you know, you pick your partner. But there is something trying to emerge or something trying to happen through conflict, and it's often some kind of alignment and that's a game changer.
KC - I wonder if we go there then - what do we mean by alignment?
SC - Alignment is a great choice of words because it doesn't mean that we agree. And we may never agree. Really, when you think about the levels of reality, where we have conflict is often in dreaming and consensus. In essence, there's a kind of a broader wholeness there, softer edges. But in dreaming, when I start to make things up from essence, well, this means that: ‘you were late for dinner so it must mean that you are having an affair’- it’s a pretty big leap. But if there are other little signals in my head that are going there it's really easy for me to make that leap. When the other person is like, ‘I stopped to get gas on the way home’, so that consensus reality of ‘I stopped to get gas’ clashes up against my dreaming of ‘you're having an affair’. This is an exaggerated example. But you can see how it becomes about levels and dreaming is… where we think most of life happens in consensus reality, heck, no. We are making stuff up all the time and dreaming lovely things and really crappy things. There's a lot that we make up and if somebody else is living in a different level, that's usually where we run into conflict.
KC - And you're right that when we're in that space we're knocking heads and we're not really listening to each other, so it's just getting stuck and going round around the same argument.
SC - Yeah, in fact, when I'm in that place I'm looking at the other person and I appear to be listening, but really what I'm doing in my head is creating my case, my rebuttal, or my, ‘well I can't wait till I get to speak again, because I'm gonna really come at you with this’. And I'm laughing at it now but in the moment it's serious, there's physiology to it. Our amygdala gets hijacked, our brain gets activated in certain ways that we just feel like we have to defend. And we have tunnel vision, our vision is narrowed, and when we're not in that place we have a much bigger lens, we can see things in a broader way, we can have compassion for people, ‘oh, of course, he stopped for gas’. People need gas for their cars! That's like the most normal thing in the world. And when we're agitated or even triggered, that shrinks our brain, our ability to see is modified, shall we say.
KC - And it often becomes about proving our point or winning the battle.
SC - Absolutely.
KC – We forget about the relationship at stake.
SC - Yeah, that's an interesting place, isn't it? It’s like, does the relationship really want winners and losers? I don't know. I know the humans do. I know I do, sometimes, when I’m really wound up. But I never want to be the loser in an argument. And to be fair, even if you've done this work a long time, you're still going to be unskillful. You're still going to have times and relationships and topics that are particularly agitating. The real spiritual warriorship of this is to notice that, to pay attention to it, to do as much as we can to be at more choice. Because I think about like neural pathways, and I'm not a brain scientist, but I think about how we have these well-worn pathways in our brain of when this happens, it needs this and then we just instantly go there. How do we expand our range there so that we can catch it sooner and we have more choice? So, we talk about the levels of reality and path, right? If you catch something in essence, the earliest you can catch it, the more choice you have in your dreaming, rather than just get stuck in the place of he did this it means that, or she did this it means that - I don't have a clue what it means. I really don't have a clue. But when I'm agitated, I think I know. And it's never good. It's never like ‘oh, he stopped to get me flowers, that’s why he’s late’, no.
KC - Yeah, you're right. It is that tunnel vision and you're making me think about an argument a long time ago; my husband, I were getting our first mortgage and we were arguing about which mortgage to get. I was very much in that ‘I'm gonna win this, I'm right’. I said at one point ‘what do you do about mortgages’, and he was like, ‘This is my job, Katie’, he works in mortgages market risk, and it was like, ‘oh, wait, yeah, you do’. But it was a great example of how I just couldn't see beyond what my point was in that moment, which was probably to win the battle.
SC - Yeah, we want that because there's a high that comes from being right.
KC – Yes.
SC - I don't know the brain chemistry of if but there's a high, there's a satisfaction of yes, I'm right. And who doesn't want that? Of course, we're designed for pleasure, we want to seek out what feels good, and avoid what doesn't feel good. So, it makes sense. If we could just help people do that a little bit cleaner, maybe a little bit more skillfully, that's pretty good. If you move the needle five degrees, that's pretty good. So, I would say aim for those micro adjustments that you can make when you're in those kinds of conflict situations. Even if, on a good day, if I'm arguing - poor Kevin, my husband is often my topic when I talk to you. We have a great relationship, we've been together a very long time, but every once in a while when we're arguing I'll say something like, ‘what's really going on here?’ I haven't said to him ‘what's trying to happen’, because it's very ORSCy language, but I might think it! ‘What's trying to emerge here?’ But there's just like 2% of me that can see that and then I get pulled back in. And that's actually a good day, when 2% of me can see that kind of meta view, that third entity view when I'm in the midst of a little bit of conflict. I've worked pretty hard to build that 2%, if I'm being honest, because it's very compelling to just stay in position one and just advocate for what I think is true.
KC - Absolutely.
SC - But it's another place to look and I kind of love this idea of looking through the levels of reality because conflict often happens at consensus reality. Do you know what I mean? It's about what kind of mortgage should we get? That's the hallmark of consensus reality… what kind of mortgage. Or where are we going to go for dinner tonight? Or whose job is it to clean up the dog poop? Just the day-to-day stuff. And its consensus reality and we can argue about that to no end because there's no new information in that fight. It's the same stuff you fall into over and over and if you can't resolve it in the consensus reality level, if you can look at the dreaming level, what's the oceans? What's the undercurrent to that? Even in essence, what's a metaphor? What does this feel like? What does this remind us of? That just jars that conversation a little bit, it's just a blip of new information and it's going to change the dynamic. Or, if somebody cracks a joke, if you're having an argument and they crack a joke in the right way that doesn't escalate things, that bring some lightness to it. That's another way of new information getting in or a level of reality shift. That's all we need, just that little bit of an adjustment to change the whole conversation, really.
KC – That’s such an interesting point, Sandra, because I do think that our relationships live at all of these levels, and yet, most of the time, we're focused on that consensus reality level. And yet, when we think about love, for example, that lives in essence and probably a bit of dreaming as well. And yet, when we get stuck on this… maybe there's an argument that’s one of our 69% arguments that's going to keep going round and round and round, if we can't connect to some of that essence and dreaming it's just going to keep going round and round around in the same way.
SC - It's funny you say that because I'm also thinking that clashes happen with levels too. Just this morning, I was sitting out on our porch having my breakfast, and I asked Kevin and said, ‘Hey, will you pick up some…’ I can't remember, something at the store, and he said, ‘Why do you need more of that?’ I said, ‘I don't know. I just feel a little bit more anxious in the mornings lately, for some reason’ and he's like, ‘Well, why don't you just….’ and listed out three things. And I was like, that's not the level of reality I want to be with you. I didn't say this because he doesn’t know ORSC but in my mind, I was like, what I said is, ‘I don't really want a solution from you right now.’ What I really wanted was him to come out and put his hand on my shoulder and say, ‘Oh, I'm sorry. That's hard.’ How is this not perpetually playing out with men and women everywhere, right? Men are good problem solvers. Women want the emotional… this is a generalization, of course. But it was just a funny moment of like, oh, I'm actually in essence and dreaming, I want an emotional connection, and he's in consensus reality to saying solve this. A perfectly reasonable thing to do, of course. But that's a little bit of conflict and it was just a levels thing. I could have also just met him in consensus reality and said, ‘You’re right, of course, that's all I need to do.’ But not in that moment. I couldn't do it. So, it's those micro moments where we're in different levels of reality that those little irritations we have, and if we can just pay attention and shift a little.
KC - It's fascinating, that meeting the other person at their level and almost allowing them to ventilate from that space. I think so often we're trying to fix, as you experienced this morning, and that's not what we need. I guess maybe we should talk to the fact that the ventilation part of this tool is so key, because if we skip the ventilation, we don't really manage to move towards alignment at all.
SC - Yeah. What's cool about ventilation is it gives people a contained space to do that. And it's not forever. When I was younger, I would think if I just really let him have it when we were fighting I could go on for days with my list of complaints. And there's really, probably three, and then I just recycle. So, when you when you give people that chance to ventilate, you also want to contain it in a certain way. It's like what's it like for you and what do you want? What do you feel? What do you want? Those are the really the questions from the coach space. So even for myself or yourself in relationships, like what do I feel? And what do I want? It's a good guide, rather than spinning out into ‘well, you never do this, and you always do that and now I’m anxious and I need my…’ It’s like okay, what do I need? What do I feel? What do I want? Those kinds of questions kind of contain it but also give you a clear pathway to have a different conversation. So, as I'm talking about this I'm aware that we're kind of talking about this concept in general, not with clients necessarily. We can switch to that in a bit, but I think it's helpful to look at our own lives when we're dealing with conflict and alignment because this is where we practice. I can be a great coach with teams and if I'm a rotten partner, what does that give me? I really think that our families and our relationships are the place we grow the most and where this work can be practiced. My husband has not gone through this training, I don't use this jargon, it's more for myself than anything. But we have to learn how to do this in our lives to get really, really good at this with clients.
KC – I’m glad you mentioned that because this is a foundational part of the ORSC approach. And yes, that is the alignment tool with its steps, but it's also a way of showing up in our lives in the world. I think the more we practice that, the more then that the other alignment tools in their different ways of showing up become easier. Because we start to see the power of alignment.
SC - It's one of the key concepts in this model, that when teams and partners are aligned the work is easy. The conversation is easy. When we can agree on something maybe bigger than one level up, maybe we're arguing about housework, you know, who does what, and who does this or that - that's the consensus reality, but one level up or one hole on up, as Ken would say, one level up is what's really important to us, and that's very different than bickering about consensus reality stuff. It's fascinating.
KC - And it can be so life changing. I don't say that lightly because so many of us can spend a lot of time having those small little arguments that take away from the important things. We can spend a lifetime bickering but actually forget about the fact that I really want to enjoy my time with this person.
SC - Yeah. And people are gonna bug us, that's part of the Gottman 69% perpetual problems. You can't solve those problems, he says, but you can soften the edges around it, you can make them less difficult or painful. So that’s a new way to think about it, maybe some new information about how to how to even view your conflict. I think about Faith saying at some point, there's some humility that needs to come with this too, where sometimes you just say it doesn't matter that much to me, and you just give in. She said that like it was the most easy thing on the world and I'm like, ‘I don't even know what you mean. I don't give in on it.’ Okay, why am I taking a stand for every little thing? And some of that was age, the phase of life that I was in, but I was like, wow, that's really fascinating that there's just some things you don't have to fight about. You don't take a stand for. And it doesn't mean you're a pushover. It doesn't mean you're a wimp. It just means you're making a choice that it's not worth your energy. You can just say yes – wow, I still marvel at that.
KC - Well, I guess it speaks that idea of which hill are you going to die on? You can't actually do all of the hills, and so, I always think about how arguments often soften if we give it an hour or even a day or a week, and even that perspective shifts. The argument hasn't changed but our understanding of It has or the way we experience it has.
SC - What do you think happens for you? Let's talk about that. When there is a break. You've had a tussle with somebody and then you go to your quarters, you take some space, however long it is - what do you think happens in that time?
KC - I think I can connect more with that balcony view. I think when I'm arguing I'm very much in the ballroom and I can't really see the forest from the trees. And then as soon as I step back and have a breather, suddenly, I can connect with something bigger. And it could be something quite dramatic, like the fact that we're all going to die. And I know that sounds quite morbid, but I think sometimes that can be quite a useful thing for us to ponder on when we're arguing about something really stupid like the dishes, that actually we're all going to die, does this really matter? It really puts things into perspective! And I know Faith’s talked about that a lot, that how illness is the most amazing mirror for these silly little niggles in our life that take up probably too much time.
SC – Right, and is this really gonna matter to me in five minutes? Maybe. Is it gonna matter to me in five days? Probably not. Kind of walking those different roads of how about in five years, I won’t even remember in five years. Now, it's easy to say that when we're not in those moments - neither of us is hooked right now in this conversation so we're the experts. But when you're actually hooked how quickly can you access that part of you that says how important is this really? Will I remember this in five minutes, in five days? Some of it is brain science too. There’s a chemical overwhelm that inhibits our ability to listen in any kind of reasonable way. Those are my words, not a brain scientist’s! Like I'm so enmeshed in my opinion, my stance, that I really can't hear somebody else. I can look at you and nod like I'm listening but I'm not really able to take it in. I'm just building my case for my rebuttal. When we're not in that place I find it so ridiculous but when I'm in that place, it's super important. It's really serious. It's important, I need to be heard, I need you to hear me, I need to be right. - I need all of those things. It's a survival thing that we're wired that way. The other fascinating thing is time, it just lets go. Taking a break. We talked about the importance of people not going to realm, not checking out if you're in an intense process for too long. That's also true with partnerships, people in your lives that you're closest to, if it's getting too intense just a break can help.
KC - Well it's why I don't believe in that idea that we should never go to bed on an argument, I actually think sleep can be so helpful, particularly if you are both quite tired. At least for me, anyway, in my experience, I'm not the best arguer when I'm sleepy, or hungry. That's another one too. And so how can you create the conditions to allow for a more skillful moment of conflict to show up?
SC - Well, I'm guessing in those moments, you're not the best arguer and you're probably not the best listener?
KC – Yeah.
SC – Because that's what goes for me, pretty quickly. I'm actually pretty good at listening, but I'm just listening to myself.
KC - That's a really good point.
SC - I'm pretty tuned in, but it's pretty clear my job is to be right. And do I want to be right, or do I want to be in partnership? Sometimes I just want to be right. Honestly, it's not the most skillful part of me, but it's pretty strong. It's important that I'm right about this topic, or that I feel validated, I feel heard. I mean, that's the truth. I don't know if I really need to be… okay, I kind of do want to be right still. But I think the way to get there is to feel validated, to feel heard, to feel understood. And that's hard to do when it gets hot. For me to do with anybody else, much less for them with me., because, again, the chemical thing kicks in and our primal part of us wants to just be safe and be right.
KC - So do you feel then if, say, we're in a conflict or we know we're going into a challenging conversation, but we haven't got an ORSC coach with us and the other person doesn't know this work or this tool. Do you think us just having this lens of alignment, looking for alignment, can help to change the relationship system in some way?
SC - Yeah, I do. I think there's simple things we can do. This conversation is good for me, actually, because I don't talk about this regularly so it's good for me to learn a little bit about what are my patterns. One of the things I'm getting from this already is to pay attention to, like I said, do I want to be right or do I want to be in partnership - that's a key one. But also, to pay attention to name the emotional experience, because we're all having an emotional experience when we're in conflict, but we don't name it. Just that bit of ‘this is starting to escalate, can we take a break’, or ‘I noticed I'm getting really hooked and I feel like I'm gonna say things that aren't going to be useful’. That's a pretty nice way to say it. That's on a pretty good day! But to just take five minutes. And the truth is, the other person or the other people might not want to do that, they may really want to be in a driving place. So, it's also are you open to somebody else when they say, ‘I need to take a break. Let's pick this up later’. I'm not great at that. I’ll want it to get resolved, I don't like to stop and then pick it up, it feels inefficient to me. I don’t know if you know this about me, but I have a very big part of me that wants things to be efficient all the time. Which is great when you're designing things, it's not so great with emotions and humans. It’s one of my places I have to pay attention to, where does that part of me take over and forget that there's actually people there? Those are some things for all of us to continue with what. What's the language that you can use? Maybe it's a gesture, maybe it's like… my sister and I, when we were kids and we would make up, we would just hold our pinkies and hook pinkies, we didn't have to talk. We didn’t have to refresh any of it, but we just grabbed pinkies and we knew that that meant we're good. There are ways you can use gestures or symbols to reconnect with people and I think that's key too.
KC- I love that. What you said as well around slowing down to the pace of the relationship, because I think our lives are very fast and then we rush through relationship like we're rushing through everything else, how we then miss things. But the signal piece is also really helpful because I think there's something around when we shift our state as well, that can be huge. And the body can be an amazing resource if we are hijacked emotionally. I notice, for example, if I shake, it sounds really silly but that can completely shift me into a different lens from which then I can see the stupidity of this argument.
SC - It's some kind of jolt to your body, a shift like that. It wakes you up. I think that's a great example, that you do a kind shake. That's very interesting. So, the physicality of that is really key and I wonder, as people listen to this, what they might notice for themselves. What do they notice they already do when they're in an argument and they're trying to shift it, or they want to shift themselves. Making jokes can be really helpful, depending on the relationship and the context, bringing in an old inside joke or something - changing the mood, that's one way to do it. But the physical thing is interesting and sometimes people do just take space. They just need to be apart for a while, a few minutes. It's good to say how long, so it's not forever, because that can be vulnerable as well. If somebody doesn't have that as their primary thing and their partner does, that can be kind of jarring: ‘I don't want to take a break, I want to drive to this and get it done’. So, it's good to be respectful of that and I feel like we're talking in the partnership realm here in this conversation, but also at work, how can you be more skillful about that? The stakes are different in the workplace, but conflict definitely lives there and alignment has its place. I think in both of those, both personal and professional spaces, part of what can really be helpful is we need to look at what do we agree on. It may be very, very simple things - we both agree this is important, great. Because as you start to see what you agree on when you're not agreeing, it's feels for me like I kind of come back into my body. It’s like ‘oh yeah, I actually really see you as a person again’, not just an obstacle or a problem that's in my way, which is silly to say now when I'm not in that agitated state. But that's what it is. It's like: ‘if you would just get on board with what I say everything would be fine’. You're the problem. How do you humanize other people again? That's one way to do it.
KC - You mentioned about speaking from that I space and I think often, particularly my arguments, I start with that ‘you're making me frustrated, you're doing this’. I remember early on when I was learning this tool and practicing it with a couple, I remember being so stunned by the fact they aligned around ‘I'm sad’, and that was the moment of alignment, that they were both sad and they could connect there. I think sometimes we hold that alignment needs to be ‘positive’, but actually they could align around this sadness together and they had that in common.
SC - I bet that was hugely pivotal for them. That they were both sad. Because they probably both felt very sad and isolated and lonely in that, and it's fascinating to just say, ‘wow, if I know you feel sad, and I feel sad, we have something in common’, or ‘we're both really angry’, or ‘we’re both really frustrated’, or anything they have in common. ‘We both care passionately about this’. Or for teams, ‘we all agree this is important. We all agreed this is irrelevant. This is needed’. How we do it? Different question. But just to say, what do you all agree on or know for yourself? What do we agree on when you’re part of it? That question pivots the whole conversation.
KC - Yeah. And you sense it in the emotional field, it's almost like someone changed the thermometer dial and suddenly there's a different energy that allows for different awareness to emerge from that relationship system.
SC – I probably say this in courses but we go from seeing a person as an obstacle to seeing them as a person again. They're either an obstacle or they're a problem and if only you would just get out of the way, everything would be fine. If you would just step aside then things will go exactly how I want them to go. So, we lose our ability to see them as a person, which sounds dramatic when I say it now but that's what happens. It's like you're just in my way. I want, I want, I want, you're in my way. So, that little bit of, oh, that's why we named the emotional field. That's part of it, to start to humanize again, for our clients to see that you both want this. We name things in common. You both are angry, you're both passionate. You're both excited about this. That just gently redirects from the you are the problem (and I'm pointing my finger). You're the problem to oh, you're actually a person. We can start to look at this together. You can tell me that in beginning of an argument and I would say ‘no, not true’. It takes a little bit of that de-escalation, that ventilation as we say this model, to really start to see ‘oh, it's Katie. Oh, yeah, that's right. Actually, Katie’s pretty cool.’ And when we're fighting, I might not think you're very cool. But if I can start to see that again it’s like, ‘oh, yeah, yeah.’
KC – I guess many of us, particularly when we come to this work, we want to fix things. And what's the challenge or the potential damage of jumping straight to this stage of finding things in common, as opposed to allowing for that that ventilation to emerge?
SC - Well, it's good question. I think alignment is what we're looking for all the time, as ORSC coaches, whether we're working with two people or teams, we're looking for what they have in common. And teams are not going to say, ‘we need an ORSC coach because we're not aligned’, they're not going to use our jargon. But that's really a lot of why people hire coaches with two or more people, because there's some sort of conflict, whether it's maybe a one or two on a 10 scale, or maybe a nine or 10, there's some version of misalignment or they wouldn't hire a coach. So, we are in the business of alignment, and we have, I don't know how many tools that really are some version of alignment, some more obvious than others. But we really want to help create that sense of us, for clients, for couples, for teams.
KC - In terms of then going from positions to things in common, common interests, what helps to facilitate that shift? Because it feels huge. I think when you come to this tool for the first time, you wonder how am I ever going to get them to find something in common? And I notice a lot of new coaches working really hard to find the thing on behalf of that system.
SC - You know what I see? I see newer coaches listening for the detail of what people say that they have in common, like the solution, you both want this kind of solution. And I think an easier way to even look there is from the emotional state, what do they have in common? Because you're not gonna be able to solve the technical problem that they bring to you. If they say ‘we need to create a plan for 2025’, that's not really your job. Your job is to help them become a partnership or a team around that. So, the things you might notice are more emotional. You both are passionate. You both feel really frustrated, or wow, you all seem like you're feeling kind of forgotten in the organization. Like, wow, nobody says that to people. So, what I would say to people doing this work - lower the bar for what they have in common because I know when I was a new coach, I was listening through that consensus, reality technical, what do they agree on about the plan or the structure? It was like, oh, gosh, I can't keep track of all that. You don't have to. Just listen for the emotional state. You all are agitated; you are all warming up to each other. You're all talking about how much you care. Any of those starts to humanize people again: ‘oh, yeah, we do have that’. I've done that with clients and with teams, and they kind of look around the room like, ‘oh, yeah, we do all feel passionate’. It's that little bit of something we have in common that they can see each other as people again. Now the gold star is if you can do that in your own relationships, while you're in conflict. I'll say, that's a special day when that happens. One on one, personal relationships are a different level of conflict than work conflict. But again, look for what do we have in common? What do we agree on? It doesn't have to be big, just little things. Gently start to come down. If my hands are above my head, we're way up here, we gently just start to kind of come back into our bodies. It's like, ‘oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, we do agree on that’. That's the secret sauce.
KC - I'm curious then, would you say that you feel alignment’s more accessible when we look for it at the emotional level or in the essence and dreaming levels?
SC - I think it's easier as a coach to go there and I actually think it's our job to go there. Because it's not our job to… here's where it can get tricky, especially for a new coach. A lot of people who are working with teams are coming from some sort of team experience and they're probably really good at problem solving and solutioning, like I was, I came in with a team background, but I was a Six Sigma Black Belt, we were looking at how to do things efficiently, but it wasn't about people, it wasn't about relationship. And if you don't focus on relationship first, the rest of the work is so much harder. And that doesn't mean we're all going to sit around and play guitar and hold hands, it's not that kind, it's just those little bits of who are they and revealing that back to them. When if you're not in a coach role, to kind of hold that lens, maybe with your family. I have a pretty big extended family and we get along pretty well, most of the time, but sometimes we have issues, and my work is to look for what do we agree on? Oh, we all want what's best for my mom or we all want their kids to have opportunities as they grow up. Just those little bitty things help to kind of smooth out those tensions that can arise.
KC. You’re right. That's a great example about family. I have some conflict with my sister-in-law and when I come back to we both love my brother, it helps me. It helps me to soften and not be so defensive. I think that's probably one of the toxins I come in with the most and it doesn't necessarily change the situation, but it changes how I respond to it. And that can be huge.
SC - That's all we can do. We can change how we respond to it and that has a ripple effect. So, you show up differently, she's going to respond differently - maybe not perfectly, but when one person changes their energy around it and they're looking, and even says ‘we both love my brother’. When you said that I felt my hand go to my heart, I was like ‘awh’ and I’m not even there. I don't even know him. But I can feel the impact of you looking there. Even if you don't say it, by the way, I bet it changes something.
KC – Yeah, it’s huge. I think you're so right about how this humanizes us, because I do think, before I go to that place there is this person, this obstacle. It’s sort of amazing how brutal we can be when we're in conflict. And a lot of these humans are the people that matter most in our lives, but we don't see them as humans in those moments.
SC - We put these giant blinders on like horses have! We cannot see beyond and we just want to get what we want. We want to be right. And we want to get our solution. We want to get our way. There's some great reason we do that but it's quite limiting, and as somebody who's working with humans, we want to take our blinders, at least push them off to the side a little bit and see, what's the bigger view here? What do we have in common? Sometimes it's lovely, like we both love him, or it might be we both really care about this problem. Both want what's best for whatever. We're both passionate. We're both agitated. Any of those can just start to humanize the other person again because we really do lose that. It's quite fascinating. They just become a problem. And once we’re here, that's about the only way I know to recover. Take a break is a good thing to do, too. If it gets really hot, let's just take a break from this conversation. But what can you do to humanize it?
KC - I feel as if we need more of this in our broader social systems, because so often we put people in boxes because of their political beliefs, or maybe their religion or something, and suddenly they're the other and we do a lot of othering I feel right now with our divided ways of approaching topics. And if you humanize that person and just think for a moment about what you have in common, the fact that they have fears and hopes just like you do, it suddenly allows for a different access point. It's not that it means you agree with their political views, but it opens a doorway, I think, in a different way.
SC - It really does. There’s this funny reference you’re reminding me of. So, Sting had an album out, I think in the 90s, it was a long time ago. He had a song called Russians, and this was a time when there was a lot of chaos with Russia, between the US and probably UK where he was at the time. And one of the lines is something like if ‘the Russians love their children too’. And that was forever ago, and it wasn't a big hit or anything but that stuck with me, and I think that was one of those early seeds for me to maybe be doing the work that I do. But you know, if we can see something in common with our ‘enemies’, whether they're in our household, at our workplace, or a nation that we're in a fight with, what's the humanity there? It's not the politicians that should be our focus. It's the humanity. It's the people underneath it. What do we have in common? It’s a game changer at the world level, to someone in your family, to your neighbor? If we put people in a box, it's hard to get them out.
KC - Yeah. Well, I remember over here when Margaret Thatcher died, there was a lot of Tweets around, people said things like say ‘ding dong, the witch is dead’ and then someone else said something around, ‘you know that someone's mother, that someone’s daughter’, and I just remember thinking, wow, yes, there are so many disagreements but that just humanized it. I think it's just useful because it doesn't mean we agree, it doesn't mean we're gonna be their friend. It just allows us to connect to that shared humanity once more.
SC - It doesn't mean they're right and it doesn't mean you're right or wrong. It just means can we connect at that essence place of commonality where there is a sense of oneness in the bigger version of essence. That changes things. Even with people you live with. Can you start to see that? Can you start to see, oh, we're both passionate about this topic, or we're both crabby. We're both kind of rude to each other right now, or we're both happy or excited. I know from this conversation, I'm gonna take that into my relationships and be much more aware of that in the next few days, for sure. How do I keep that present because it’s magic.
KC - It is. I'm wondering, because it seems this tool both provides a mental and emotional shift, but also a geographic one. I know when we're doing the tool, we quite literally are looking at the problem out of front. But it seems as if we're not looking at the other person as the problem anymore, we're a team and we're side by side. Maybe literally but maybe more metaphorically. Do you sense that happening, both when we're doing the tool and also when we're practicing this competency?
SC - I sometimes say it's like we're looking at someone through a funhouse mirror. We see a distorted version of who they are when we're in conflict. We're engaged with that. So, the idea of what do we have in common at the most base level. Sometimes you have to dig, when you’re really agitated, you have to look hard because you really don't want to have anything in common with them. But the base place of humanity, you can always find something there. But once we do that then then we can see them as a person again and not an obstacle, and we can have a different conversation. We're talking about it from a few different lenses, both in our lives as a coach or working with clients, but to name the simplest things, pay attention to the simplest things, 98% of you might be really agitated, but if 2% of you can see ‘we both love my brother, we both love him’, it's going to pivot the whole trajectory of conversation.
KC – It’s huge. I don't think I realized quite how much this tool could benefit humanity and also the planet at large, because suddenly we're sitting side by side. I know that sounds like a bit of a cheesy image but sitting side by side as opposed to blaming the other. And there's so much divisiveness and war going on, I feel we need more of this. More alignment. Not necessarily agreement, but alignment in our lives.
SC – Alignment is key. And it's not about agreement. When you were saying that I was just imagining, even with the people that you live with, if you're having an argument, what if you just moved in and went side by side? Because you know, we’re often facing each other when we’re having to disagree on something. What if you just stood shoulder to shoulder? You don't have to do the whole, alignment work steps and everything, but just go stand next to somebody and see how that changes things. I would really encourage people to look for those little tweaks you can bring in. Find something that you agree on, name that. Shoulder to shoulder rather than opposite positions. You don't have to train your partner in ORSC and you don't have to train your kids in what this is, but there's little things that each of us can do day to day that will change the trajectory of those conversations.
KC - That's such a great tip, that physical positioning. I know that going on a walk, being side by side on a walk creates a much more productive kind of conversation than, as you say, if we're directly in front of each other, it's great to have eye contact sometimes but it can also put that person in the position of the problem and then they become the problem.
SC - And it can trigger me wanting to really defend myself. I mean, everybody wants to defend themselves and be heard, be listened to, be respected and honored that way. There are just little pivots that you can do that'll make a big difference in that.
KC - Thank you so much, Sandra, there are so many light bulbs for me going off. I'm definitely going to look more for the alignment in my life, in the small and the big ways. I think we could do this both professionally and personally a lot more. So, thank you.
SC – It’s super fun to talk about. It's the kind of thing we don't get taught, how to deal with conflict. We just get modeled. We just pick up whatever our family systems did, and the adults in our lives did. It's the kind of thing we can actually choose to do differently.
KC - Conflict 2.0. I think that's what we all need.
SC - At least 2.0! There's probably a few more but yeah, we'll start with 2.0.
KC - Thank you, Sandra, take care.
[Music outro begins 47:39]
KC - A huge thanks to Sandra for that fascinating discussion - lots of light bulbs going off for me right now. Here are my key takeaways. We're not taught how to deal with conflict. Alignment work can help us to navigate conflict. We may still feel uncomfortable when conflict arises and we can trust that we have the tools to navigate it in a more skillful way. As opposed to ‘I'm right, you're wrong’, we can reframe conflict as what's trying to emerge? Suddenly, it's not about who's doing what to whom, but rather what's trying to happen. If we can hold that in mind when we're experiencing conflict it can change the whole trajectory of the conversation. When we're stuck in a position around a topic, it can be hard to really listen to the other person. Our tunnel vision limits our access to information and centers around proving our point or being right. We may be listening, but only to ourselves and our position or opinion. How do you humanize the other person so that you can see them as a person and not the problem itself? When we are in conflict, it can be very easy to view the other person as an obstacle in the way of getting what we want. When we humanize them, it softens the emotional field and gives us access to more information. We open a doorway, a 2% truth that enables us to empathize and lean in in a new way. For over 20 years, CRR Global has accompanied leaders, teams, and practitioners on their journey to stronger relationships by focusing on the relationship itself, not only the individuals occupying it. This leads to a community of changemakers around the world. Supported by a global network of Faculty and Partners, we connect, inspire, and equip change agents to shift systems, one relationship at a time. CRR Global’s unshakeable belief is that relationship matters, from humanity to nature to the larger whole. For more information please visit CRRGlobal.com.
[Music outro 49:50 – end]