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Hello, I’m Elaine Kung. Blessings from San Diego, California! I'd like to continue with our series on SHINE Your Talk! How do we shine through our smart communication? We are looking at now the third sticky situation at work. How do we communicate and be assertive: My work is not recognized. Others take my credit. I'm sure you have experienced that. I do, too, that people tend to get my idea and kind of steal my idea, and then claim the credit it’s their idea. When we are in this sticky situation, what do we do? Remember, we're gonna ask the 6 REASON questions to ask ourselves, why would they do? I'm thinking, perhaps they want to be recognized. And yet it’s for work that they didn't do. So they be a little bit greedy and selfish. So they need some affirmation, they need encouragement. So how can I express empathy? And what is their need? They need recognition.
So how can I address their need? How can I help them to see that with some ideas, we can partner together, and they can add value and contribution and be very calm to say, “I noticed that you were talking to my boss about the idea that I shared with you. I think it's good for us to discuss as a team. And that's important to give credit where credit is due. If you're interested in this idea, let's work on it together. And you have your value add and contribution, and you’ll get the recognition.” So you want to kind of think through their need of recognition and explain how they can be part of it and be calm about it.
And even when you talk through this, it's necessary to discuss with the boss and the co-worker together, or privately, depending on the situation. And you want to pray through this and God will show you how to best address this sticky situation. And then set the boundary, right? Like I just explained, you don't just avoid a conflict and just avoid a situation and not talk about it, right? So be clear with your idea, you share with them that they’re stealing your idea. And you offer a solution that they can be part of it and notice what the strength is and how they can contribute to this idea and make this idea a success as a team. And that way you would nurture trust. That way you convey a personal brand of reaching out, building teamwork, while setting a boundary, speaking in a calm way.
Notice their need and how we can build a trusted relationship. So that is an example of how you can address that conflict. While we face conflict, as an example that I just did when they want to steal the idea, or perhaps when you have a different way of doing a project, I suggest that conflicts are not always bad. In fact, many times conflicts could be healthy conflicts, and they could be positive and could be healthy and give us these 3R Blessings. Conflicts help us to really test our real Christian faith and put into action. If everything is hunky dory, everything is smooth, everything is so easy then your faith isn't really tested. It's full conflict that we can even pray harder and see how God can give us the wisdom to address this conflict in a positive and healthy way.
And our second R is relationship. It’s through this conflict that we have a conversation like how I just did with my coworker who stole my idea. How I can build relationship and have a positive influence and build teamwork and show how I am assertive.
All that is opportunity to exercise your Christian faith and to build positive relationship. Instead of, because of the conflict you avoid and nothing happens, right? And then you get frustrated or getting upset and have low EQ and complain. That's bad. Conflict resolution is ideal, right? You want to be positive. And then the third R is the Result. When you are able to listen to each other's perspective, at the end, it may not be my way or their way. It's actually our way, together. It’s not just for my best, it’s not only just for their best, it’s our shared vision, our collective best that we have results that 1 + 1 greater than three. How about that? When we have conflict, we can listen to each other's perspective. Think from their point of view, why they think this way and similar, ask those how REASON 6 reason questions, and then enjoy these 3R Blessings.
So when we have conflict, we think about both your own need, have the self-confidence, your own need. But if you're only thinking for your own need, there is selfish and self-centered, self-confidence, then you're aggressive, not good. And if you're only thinking about other people's need. You're being too passive. We want to be assertive. We want to hear on both sides of the heat, and we're gonna learn more in detail, about assertive in the future. When I think about that conflict, think about both’s needs. Let me introduce you a tool, very well-known and well adapted in the industry, developed by Thomas Kilmann. It's called the TKI instrument 5 Conflict Resolution Strategy. You have the bottom x-axis, on the left is when you're not cooperative, on the right you're more cooperative. That you're willing to satisfy other people's needs and concerns.
And then on the y-axis vertical, the bottom is less assertive, and the top is more assertive. That you're more now satisfying your own needs and your own concern.
If you look at this matrix, start with the lower left that you are not cooperative, and you're not assertive. So you end up avoiding. So take this orange as an example. There's an orange that you and I both want. And we both want to avoid this conflict. At the end, we just part ways and not talk about it. We avoid it. And then no one gets anything because we avoided it.
On the other hand, if I'm cooperated and not assertive, I'm just go with your flow, whatever you say, then you end up winning and getting the orange. And I ended up just accommodating and losing. So it's a win-lose, not necessarily the best. And depending in a situation in this case, you now take the orange and I have nothing.
So let's go higher up. Let's be a little bit more assertive. In the middle also medium cooperative. So we may end up compromising. Ok, we'll just take half and half, cut the orange into half. So that may be a compromise, maybe partial win and partial lose, depending on the situation.
Then on the upper left, it's competing. When you are very hard headed, not cooperative, and you’re just very assertive, you only care about your own and then you take over the orange and you win, and they lose. They may not like this. You may feel happy you got the orange, but it may not be good.
And finally, the best solution is when we are both cooperative and assertive, the upper right is when we collaborate. Collaboration means that I ask your need. “What is it that you need for the orange? You need the skin for baking a cake? Got it. Well, I need the orange juice.” That way, you can have the whole orange skin and I can have the whole orange juice. That's win-win and it’s collaboration. And that takes asking questions, understanding each other's need.
Let's look into more detail for each one of these avoiding low cooperative, no assertive. The action is to hide and hope it goes away. So it's avoiding. So just don't deal with it. Sidestepping, postponing withdrawing. You’re passive, not helping them reach their goals, and you are not assertive in pursuing your own needs. So everyone lose. It’s lose-lose. It may be suitable when the issue is trivial, it’s not that important, right? It's okay. Let's just avoid it. And then maybe it's very costly, the result of negotiating may cost too much or it’s not my responsibility. Or I have no chance of winning, I’ll just avoid it. So that may be okay to avoid. If the atmosphere is emotionally charged, everyone is getting very upset, very tensed. You may want to create some space, so we may want to avoid for a definitive period of time. You can come back to it later. So that may be okay for some form of time. So the caution here is sometimes the issues will resolve themselves, so they may be okay, but hope it's not a strategy. So you still have to think through what is the right way. In general, avoiding is not a good long-term strategy, but could be ok for short term.
Then accommodating. You're now more cooperative, on the right, and still low assertive. So you're accommodating. Let them have their way. So then you may end up just surrendering your needs to please others. So this is a selfless generosity, you're giving in and yielding your own point of view. You neglect your own concern and only satisfy others’ needs and others’ concerns. So the result is you lose, they win. It’s sometimes a suitable approach when the other party is the expert or is their boss, and they have a better solution then it's okay to accommodate, and that you’d want to preserve future relationship with each other. And the caution is, if you cooperate to a high degree, then you may be now running at your own expense, and work against your own goals and needs. So these are the caution.
And then the third case, when you go in the middle - cooperative and middle assertive. This is about finding the middle ground. Then both get something, but not everything. So neither party gets everything that they needed. So this could be a quick, expedient, mutually acceptable, and split the difference type of a solution. The result is partial, a mix of win-lose, so not getting everything. So it could be suitable when we need a temporary and a quick solution in a limited time, because you're very tight on time. Both sides have equally important goals and needs to meet. Then that's okay to use that approach. And the caution is, the trap is to fall into compromising as an easy way out when collaborating can produce better win-win results. So that is the collaboration we'll discuss later on. So we hope you always think about win-win collaboration, and that takes more time but it’s worth to spend the time to do that.
And then the 4th case is upper left - low cooperative and high, assertive. You think about me, myself, and I. Your goal is to aim to win and stand up for what's right. And you have to defend your position. And then you end up trying to beat the other side. So you care a lot about your own concern, your own needs, at other people's expense. So that's your win. And then they lose. So it may be good for you. When would you use this situation about this approach? It's when it’s emergency and time is short. And you think that you're right, and you need a quick and decisive action, and it may be an unpleasant decision. And maybe you are the one in authority and that people are aware of and still support your approach. So that may be okay to go ahead, especially if you're the boss or you’re the expert. Some caution, you act in a very assertive way to achieve your goal and your needs, you didn't seek to cooperate with the other party. This may hurt the relationship in the long run.
Finally, the best case is collaborating - high cooperation, high assertiveness. You care about their needs and you care about your own. That’s the definition of assertiveness. So you want to find mutual benefit. So it's win-win as much as possible, mutual respect and willing to listen to each other.
And when you have disagreement, you want to explore to understand why they're thinking this way and go through the 6 REASON question we've talked about before. Then come up with some creative solution that could be 1 + 1 greater than three, and then partner and pair up with the other party to achieve both of your goals like that orange. To understand they want the skin, you want the juice. So that will be win-win, and then break free from the win-lose paradigm. So it's not always just win-lose or lose-win. In fact, we could go for win-win 1 + 1 greater than three. So this is suitable and actually very desirable. In most cases, if you can achieve that, especially for very complex scenario that you need to find a novel solution, sometimes when you need to reframe a challenge and create a thicker space and more room for everyone's idea, this would take more time, but it would be worth it. So the caution is this require a high degree of trust, to listen to each other and takes time to build consensus and takes effort and open-mindedness to listen to each other to get on board. So that we can synthesize all the ideas. See you next time!