Dealing With Trigger Behaviors

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

What should you do if you notice conflict trigger behavior? The three steps are to act quickly, give feedback from the position of an observer, and tell people what you want from them.

So first, act quickly to deal with behaviors that could trigger conflict. Being vigilant for these kinds of behaviors and challenging them quickly, you send clear signals that they are not acceptable and that you are determined to prevent them. As a leader, you are a role model and are modeling the attitudes you want to promote. When team members see this, they are likely to follow your lead and exhibit the same attitudes and behaviors.

Acting quickly also saves time in the long run. After all, when people feel hurt or mistreated by colleagues, they tend to direct their energies and attention to thinking about revenge or protection, and away from the job itself. It could also nip the trigger behavior in the bud and prevent it from escalating into a full-blown problem that needs to be solved.

Second, give feedback from the position of an observer. This is a way to give feedback that negates confrontation. You position yourself beside the person and imagine you are both viewing their behavior from a distance. You and the other person then discuss the behavior of ‘that person over there.’ You can then focus on the behavior and how to correct it and not the person.

How might this work in practice? First, tell the other person that you want to talk about what happened, what they had intended, and to come up with ways to handle it better in future. This puts a frame around your discussion and shows them what to expect.

Position yourself beside the other person, and say you would like them to imagine you are both seeing and hearing them in some other part of the room. Ask them to recall the incident or event that led to this feedback. 

Suggest they see it through as if watching it on video, and ask them to refer to themselves in the scene as ‘him’ or ‘her’ over there. Ask them if what happened was what they intended. If they had a chance to be there again, what could he or she do differently to make it okay, or to avoid what happened?

Be sure to work through all the behavior and gain their agreement to make the changes. This way of talking avoids any sense of confrontation, because the conversation is about him or her ‘over there’. It’s a dissociated point of view. As you are positioned beside them, the subtle sense is more of an alliance than a confrontation.

The third guideline is to tell people what you want from them. What you do to create a result that you do want is always different from what is done to prevent what you do not want. Letting team members know clearly what you want them to do in the future is one of the most effective, yet often most neglected, tools for effective performance.

To tell them what you want from them, gain their agreement first by saying: “I have some thoughts about what I would like from you. Can I tell you what they are?” An effective way is then to say, “What would it be like if you did this from now on? And if you did that also, what do you think would happen then?”

This way of talking invites the person to imagine possible outcomes and either accept, reject, or modify the suggestion. Whatever they propose in response is their idea. So their commitment to it will be greater than if it feels entirely as if it came from you. Remember that “What if?” and “What would happen?” are powerful questions to ask when giving instructions or suggestions in any situation.

Consider this example. One of the designers on a marketing team was furious when a colleague commented negatively about her latest photoshoot. She accused the colleague of trying to undermine her work and make her look bad in front of her peers. The manager decided to meet with the designer the next day. There was an urgent project coming up and he wanted to make sure she was able to focus on her work.

He asked the designer to visualize the confrontation again, seeing herself in the image. “Just take a look at how she reacted,” he said to the designer. “Was that the best reaction?” The designer admitted that she over-reacted. She said she was feeling tired because of deadlines, and didn’t have patience to listen to other people’s feedback. However, she could see that her colleague’s feedback was valid, even though the colleague could have been more sensitive about how he gave the feedback.

The manager stressed that he needed the designer to be able to focus on her work, and also be receptive to feedback. He would work with the team to see if the schedule could be made more manageable. And he would speak to her colleague about the importance of giving feedback in an appropriate and sensitive way.