Want to know how to handle difficult conversations, when you're not in a room together? Or how to communicate your return-to-the-office policies without triggering people job-hunting? Or how to prevent the conflict that's looming for two of the hottest - and most-ignored - topics that are facing offices? In today's Lockdown Leadership Conference interview with award-winning mediator, Marie Coombes, we're talking about:

Creating Change Without Conflict And Handling Difficult Conversations To

Deepen Connections

What We'll Cover In This Interview:

• What are difficult conversations?
• What's the current big topic that workplaces are avoiding, and how will that trigger problems?
• How can virtual leaders manage those who want to stay home-working vs those who want to come back full time?
• Strategies for communicating properly to avoid conflict
• Managing upwards – raising difficult topics with your manager
• What's the next big topic that we need to proactively handle, to avoid creating a two-tier workforce?

Show notes and additional resources: www.clarejosa.com/soulledleaders/20/

So good morning, everybody.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm thrilled to be able to talk with Marie Coombes today.

She's an award winning mediator trainer.

She's also a mental health first aid, a trainer.

And she specialises in helping people to have the conversations that we've

convinced ourselves a difficult in ways to prevent conflict, to facilitate deeper

connexion and to restore that sense of calm.

So welcome, Marie.

It's wonderful to have you join us.

Hello. .

Absolutely fantastic to be here.

You know, I love talking to you.

And Marie, one thing that I've never asked you that I'd love to start with today is

how on earth did you end up as a mediator trainer

by accident?

Pretty much before I opened up my company, I worked for Royal Mail for 17 years.

And I was in a really, really low key

position back in 2014 where they were setting up an in-house mediation session.

And I kind of like the idea of of mediation.

You know, it kind of fitted with my mentality and helping people

pull through sort of difficult situations, left it right until the very last minute

to apply applied along with 700 other people, 10 jobs.

And I got one of them. And I have never looked back.

It was the best decision I ever made. That's fantastic.

I had no idea about that, Marie.

And one of the things everybody listening and watching I love about Marie

is that Marie is very grounded and down to earth and practical.

So where the conversation, you know, the topic of difficult conversations can get

quite esoteric and quite left brained and quite model based.

When you work with Marie, you just feel safe.

Yeah.

You just know there's not going to be any drama and I just feel held.

Yeah.

I've never had to work with you as a mediator, which in some ways is fortunate.

But just just the conversations that we've had, you just feel safe to be able to open

up and be you, which is a real gift, Marie, that you share with the world.

Absolutely.

And it's at the heart of everything I do as well.

I am on a mission to make people feel safe.

Thank you. So, Marie, I'd like to start

with what is your definition of what are difficult conversations?

It's it's anything that invokes the for the Fight-flight-freeze or for response.

And it's those conversations we avoid that

we think that we're going to get in an argument with

anything that we have fear of, you know, fear of the consequences of speaking up.

Power struggles are a big thing as well.

Obviously, talking to your manager or

feeling that somebody else has has more power than you.

It doesn't even necessarily to be a manager subordinate relationship issues if

you perceive that they have more power than you.

So it's pretty much anything that invokes

those photographs and automatically triggers that response in your brain.

This is going to be difficult.

OK, so the kind of thing I'd expect people to be seeing that.

And you can tell me if you see this is is

something I talk a lot about with clients called the Flinch factor.

Where you think about the conversation is something tightens in your body

is that could be really useful. Early warning sign.

If you're thinking about that conversation, you kind of go, oh, in your

body is like, OK, this is where I need to go and listen to what Marie has to say.

Thank you.

Now, I know you said just when we were

chatting before we got on life interview, there's some research that you've been

reading about that absolutely blew my mind.

Yeah. So there was a study done by 18 months ago

now where they were investigating why why people avoid the conversation.

Out of that study, 80 percent of people

were avoiding difficult conversations, which didn't surprise me in the slightest.

What did surprise me was some of the other

figures, one in 10, delay that conversation for at least a year

and a further one in 10 delay it for at least two years,

which that is a terrifying statistic because those people that are delaying

those conversations are stuck in that forever.

So they are stuck in that situation.

Every time they see that person, every time they have to have an interaction with

that person, it immediately triggers one of those photographs again, because they

know that they're avoiding that conversation.

Absolutely. And that really is shocking.

I mean, yeah, it also kind of doesn't

surprise me because we do put those conversations off.

We convince ourselves how horrible it's

going to be and we turn it into a really big thing.

And I know that also with your background

as a mental health first aid, a trainer, you must see a direct link between people

putting off those conversations and mental health.

Absolutely. It's a cause and effect relationship.

If you already have a mental health condition remaining in that place, where

you're avoiding those conversations will make it worse.

And if you don't have a condition that increases our stress, responses and stress

over time can develop into a mental health condition.

So, you know, tackling early, regardless of the fact that.

It may give you some short term

difficulties in the long term is going to be a benefit to everybody.

Absolutely. And the increase in anxiety that we get

from being in that Fight-flight-freeze response with the Sympathetic nervous

system triggered the whole time can have a knock on impact.

So many other areas in our lives and

relationships that have nothing to do with the past.

And that that difficult conversation is with. So Marie,

we're looking at #makinghybridwork and

going back into the office potentially or potentially less.

What are the kind of topics that you're seeing coming up at the moment that people

are potentially avoiding having difficult conversations over?

So the big thing during covid has been

that conversation remotely, we were talking just before about the tone of

emails, that's probably been one of the biggest issues I've seen in a lot of the

conversations I've seen is everybody relying on email a lot more.

And we never know the tone that that email

should be coming across on because we're not sat there having the conversation.

So you receive an email.

If it's from somebody that you're avoiding

a difficult conversation with, you're already a lot higher in terms of your

reaction than you would be if you told me face to face.

And it's it's very much about reading those emails, reading that written

communication and not really understanding where it's coming from.

And that's triggering a lot of

a lot of difficulties between people at the moment.

The other kind of things, I mean,

communication in general has always been a big issue in mediation

because it's the first thing to go when people have an issue with each other,

whatever that issue might be, perception gaps, those gaps in perception

between what one person thinks and what somebody else thinks is a recurring theme.

I always talk about three truths that your

truth, the truth and the truth and conflict is never about the truth.

It's always about understanding each other's truths.

So that's another big issue.

The ones I'm starting to see come through now.

Menopause.

We have an ageing workforce.

There's a lot more women in that menopausal area in the workplace.

And if you're a man, you might be sat there thinking, oh, God, not you.

That doesn't affect me, but it does if you manage somebody who is going through that.

So that's going to be a bigger ticket

issue over the next sort of three or four years, along with

mental health being an increasing issue as well.

We've only just touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of mental health at the

moment and those people returning from furlough as well.

That's I'm starting to see that being an issue because there's resentment between

those of Hybrid working thinking that those sorts of home have been a home for

the last 18 months when actually they've sat at home, have wanted to be at work.

So there's resentment in the other direction as well.

So they're kind of the big things I'm seeing at the moment.

And there's other things

that I can see on the horizon which are really going to cause issues as well.

But we'll talk about that in a minute.

So one of the things that I'm definitely

seeing with my clients is what you've just said about fellow returners

is we need to be having conversations to rebuild those teams.

You can't just bring people who've been

furloughed back into the office or remote working and expect them to feel included.

Yeah, Imposter Syndrome rates, for

example, amongst furloughed workers are skyrocketing because they've been out of

the organisation for potentially a year or more.

They feel that everybody else has moved ahead.

What I know.

What if they realise I'm no longer good enough at my job?

Similarly, we've got the people who've

been on their knees potentially working 14 hours a day with the perception that the

people who've been furloughed have been sat at home on holiday, whereas actually,

as you say, they might have been stuck in a tiny flat with no God.

We're going stir crazy wanting to be back in the office.

So when we're looking at things like this, how to communicate, how to rebuild teams,

to avoid conflict, to prevent resentment, what is your advice on that?

Communicate properly, to be able to avoid

that conflict and to be able to rebuild those teams.

So for me, it's twofold.

One is the psychological side and one is the communication side.

So in terms of the psychology, it's about

understanding that we all have a desire to be psychologically safe

and the kind of tenants and psychological safety security, having a stable job,

having a stable situation, having controls autonomy is a big thing as well.

Being able to control your environment,

being able to control what happens to you and fairness.

That's a huge thing in terms of psychological safety of people do not feel

they are being treated fairly or if they feel that others around them are not being

treated fairly as well, that can have a major impact on all psychological safety.

And what that does is it triggers the a

response in terms of the communication side of things.

Never, ever have a conversation.

And the information

always sort of say, you know what, we're

not going anywhere with this conversation and that's going to take five minutes.

I'll go grab a cup of tea and then we'll come back and start again.

Never, ever feel like you have to force a

conversation like having the proper communication, great trust and rapport.

It builds that connexion.

Having a proper, empathic conversation builds connexion.

So it's very much about finding the right time to have a conversation as well.

Don't try and have a conversation five minutes away from a meeting.

Find the right time to have that conversation where you can be in a safe

environment, where you can be in a productive environment, and also

confidentiality is a huge thing about communication.

If you're talking about difficult things,

you need to know that you are in a confidential environment as well.

It's also about listening to people, not listening to respond.

How many times have we been stuck in a conflict situation?

And we've been sitting there thinking, oh, God, how am I going to respond to this?

Instead of actually listening to what's happening, listening to what's being said,

so it's about an active listening, actively engaging in the conversation,

and the final thing for me is about self-awareness.

So it is very much about understanding yourself.

And one thing that I talk about a lot, both is mental health, first aid and also

as a human being is our frame of reference.

We all come from a frame of reference.

We all come from a set of beliefs, values,

upbringing, childhood, all those kind of things that make us who we are.

And being aware of our reaction are triggers to things can have a big part of

having a productive conversation with somebody as well.

That's really, really important stuff if you see the frame, that frame of

reference, that self-awareness is understanding potentially what we are

projecting onto the conversation, taking that out so we can really listen to hear

and it's being able to listen, to hear without getting defensive, isn't it?

Because it's not really about us.

If somebody got pain inside, it probably isn't us.

Yeah.

So taking it personally, I can imagine, would actually increase the conflict.

And it's having that maturity and

self-awareness, as you describe it, to be able to to say this isn't about me,

I'm getting me out of the way and I'm open to that being a solution to this.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

The first thing I do when I'm a mediator is I put my mediator persona on.

And part of that is this isn't about me.

This is about the two people in the room.

This is very much about helping them rebuild.

Their communication is never about you.

It is always about somebody talking from a

position of what they need, their underlying needs.

And part of that is psychological safety. Absolutely.

And if we look at, you know, most of us have heard of Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs,

there's a reason why safety and security is at the bottom of that pyramid because

it is the foundation for all of our other experiences in life.

We've got a great one here in the comments.

Judith Glaser's work on conversational

intelligence is a great read and complements what Marie's just mentioned.

Listening to Connect.

And I know you and I both talked about

Marshall Rosenberg Non-Violent Communication.

It's what you were just saying here is

it's about that the conflict comes because we don't understand each other's needs.

And I'm guessing a lot of the times that

I've seen in my client what we don't actually know what our needs are, so we're

not articulating them in a way that allows other people to meet them.

And the job of you as a mediator or if you're training people in an organisation

to be able to facilitate those conversations, is to help people really

see those unmet needs that have been creating the perception of conflict.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

One of the one of the key things I do is I speak individually with people and we

work through from the story, which is usually 20 minutes of what I like

to call verbal diarrhoea, which is where everything just comes out.

And as a mediator, I'm trained to spot the unmet needs.

And then we talk through those to the point where the story that somebody comes

in with is very, very different from what they are taking out of that meeting, into

the joint meeting of a mediation, very, very different.

You say this is such an important thing to be doing.

And obviously I know most of us aren't qualified to be doing it the way you do.

But if somebody is in a management position and they don't have the benefit

of maritime first, then I guess for them they could still

there would be huge benefit in them talking to both parties individually

rather than just bringing them like two fighting dogs into the arena.

And as you say, is that that vomit of I need my story to be heard.

Nobody's listen to me unconditionally on this before I need to get it out, because

until somebody has been heard, they're not going to let go of the story.

Then, as you say, being able to understand

what are the needs that meant the story was created and is being fed.

And then that's the point at which you mediate from and when you've heard the

story without engaging in the drama of it, then the person feels they've been heard

and they can let go of some of the emotional attachment if I guess then

the mediation or the discussion is much more likely to be successful, Marie.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

But the joint meeting always starts with something called uninterrupted speaking

time, which is an opportunity to speak and be heard, because, as I say, we're always

listening to respond rather than listening to hear.

So people are effectively in the nicest possible way forced to listen.

Yeah, that is a real golden moment in a

mediation because you do you see that realisation?

Oh, my God, I didn't realise. I don't know.

Yeah, I often. Absolutely.

And if you're leading that discussion,

whether it's somebody like you, Maria, or whether it's a line manager or somebody in

an H.R. team, what's really important, I guess, is to

make sure that when somebody has that realisation, it doesn't then cause them to

shut down with the guilt and the shame of I can't believe I did that.

Therefore, I'm an awful person.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, it's happened.

We're going to deal with it.

You move on. Absolutely.

Absolutely. So one of the big challenges I'm hearing

from my audience and from my clients is having those conversations.

Output's Yeah.

Is being able to raise difficult conversations with your line manager, your

direct your managing partner or even the CEO.

And I was working with a client just

yesterday where her difficult conversation to say no to meetings.

Yeah, she's just been promoted into a global role.

She now has seven hours a day of back to

back meetings, wakes up first thing in the morning.

The first thing she thinks is what work will I get done tonight?

Yeah.

Yeah, this kind of thing is becoming increasingly common.

Leading to mental health issues and burnout, productivity issues, performance

issues, team problems, absenteeism, what would your advice be for those of us

who need to raise that difficult topic with our line manager, where there might

not be somebody there to facilitate to have that courage to be able to have that

conversation and not be the statistic that's put it off for two years and then

leaves the company because they didn't want to raise the conversation.

Yeah, absolutely.

So my first thing would be tackle it early.

Something will only get bigger if it's not talked about.

So regardless of whether it's upwards,

downwards, left or right, tackle it early, don't allow it to fester, because that's

when a difficult conversation becomes an impossible conversation.

And all of a sudden, it's two years later,

there's something within the complex

splits, vehicle conflict styles and sometimes understanding what your style of

dealing with conflict is can support how you have that conversation.

So I will say conflict probably not like this conflict is inevitable.

It's whether it's constructive or destructive.

That is the key point here.

OK, the reason why we talk about constructive and destructive conflict is

because we all come from that frame of reference.

So it's about how we react, not

necessarily what the actual issue is, that's quite

often the difference between constructive and destructive conflict.

So having an understanding of that or the person's conflict style, whether they are

a shark, which is kind of like the fight response, whether they're a teddy bear,

which is the fawning response or whether they're a collaborator, that can help you

prepare for that conversation and prepare your style to match their style.

OK, because what you're doing then is you're appealing to that underlying needs.

It is about understanding their needs and goals as well.

So what is their life like?

What is their work life like?

Is what you're going to talk to them about

going to make things more difficult or more easy, understanding how that's going

to impact on their needs and goals and then

understanding then how they may react to it.

And it is about respect and empathy as well.

Brene Brown talks about empathy, building connexion.

And it's also one of those where an

empathic conversation is never one that starts with at least.

So it's all about having the right level

of empathy and having respect for each other's time as well.

I mentioned earlier on about picking the right time to have a conversation.

It's exactly the same.

Managing opposite is managing down to a certain extent.

It's picking the right time and then being

mindful of each other's time because we're all busy.

Every single one of us is busy.

But what we can do by having the

conversation early is we can save a bigger amount of time later on.

So it's that short term pain for long term gain.

This is brilliant.

And I love that whole thing about the two types of conflict and how actually it's

about how we experience and process it rather than the actual topic.

I'd love to hear from those of you who are alive with this chat.

What are your thoughts on that, on those

two types of conflict and the role that we play in it?

And Marie, building on something that you

said earlier about that kind of 20 minutes of vomit, but

getting it out there that people need to have that verbal diarrhoea.

What would you I mean, I'm thinking and I could be wrong.

I'm not media trainer, but I'm wondering

if you need to have that difficult conversation with your boss, whether it's

worth finding somebody who's a trusted friend that you could have that verbal

diarrhoea with before you go into the meeting with the boss.

So when you go into the meeting with the boss, you've got the emotions out of it.

What would your thoughts be on that?

I personally would would probably recommend that.

I mean, I'm a big one for having mentors.

I'm a big one for having somebody is there as a coaching relationship.

So definitely that if I had to have a

difficult conversation, I would always and I've still got a mentor now.

I would always go to my mentor first and say, look, this is what I'm dealing with.

I'm not quite sure how to deal with it.

This is this is everything that is going on.

And then we would have that conversation so I can distil down.

To be fair, I naturally distil now and

naturally go for my unmet need first because I recognise it straight away.

But obviously if you if you're not trained in that skill, you will probably need

somebody to help you having that conversation, taking time to plan the

conversation and that will be part of that plan.

And that's brilliant.

And what you're saying about, you know, you've got the stage where you can now

just say, oh, is this need that's creating that particular story?

You know, I talk about Mind-story drama how so much the pain we experience is

actually the what you feel that we're doing in our heads.

And most of us don't even realise we're doing that and that it becomes our truth.

Yeah, it is that drama story.

But what if he does this or she says that

suddenly we forget that was just an imagination?

Yeah, I remember a situation once where I

had a dream that my husband had behaved very unreasonable.

And I woke up that morning and I was really cross with him for about two hours.

And I couldn't shift the whole thing

because the mind-story drama in the dream had been so real.

I'd created the neural pathways that my

brain forgot because there was such emotion with it.

My brain forgot it had never actually happened.

Yeah, so I really think, yeah, having this coach, this mentor figure,

somebody you trust who isn't going to sit there and wind you up because we get

physiologically addicted at a cellular level to the adrenaline and the court is

all those stress hormones created by the mind-story drama.

So do not have your pre-chat with somebody

who's just going to help you to ease your way back up.

It needs to be somebody who can do the unconditional listening.

But I guess we don't.

It's the individual also need to be open

to letting go of the mind-story drama if we actually want to to ease that conflict.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Because we cannot have those difficult

conversations if we are personally stuck in that drama.

It's like I said earlier, I'll never have

a conversation, a difficult conversation in the height of emotion.

Just take five minutes out to just go and

censor yourself and then come back and start again.

Absolutely. And definitely I love your advice, but

don't have it five minutes before you walk into a big meeting.

You have people that do, though.

I'm just saying that with it. Yeah.

And also, I think it's fair to to brief

the person that actually I do want to talk to you about this topic, and I've been

finding it quite difficult because the last thing you want is them thinking that

you're just doing a catch up date and then suddenly to be splattered

with a set of needs that they've got no idea even existed.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

It's about making time, making time.

And and us being the adults in that situation is owning our reaction

to the situation and being genuinely open to that being an amicable solution rather

than somebody needing to win and somebody else needing to lose.

And that can be quite hard if the person's behaviour has been quite unacceptable.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I mean, one of the things I always

encourage in those mediation style conversations, whether I do it one on one

or whether I do it in a group setting, is speak from the I.

Use I statements, I feel like this.

I take ownership because that's one of the

things we don't do in conflict, we immediately go to that blame place.

We immediately try to blame somebody else.

And it's not a it's not an issue in the sense of, you know, we all do it.

It's just the way we naturally sort of gravitate to.

But it's about taking ownership of all them for what's going on.

Absolutely.

So we got some great comments here, it's

like, yep, I recommend clients to practise, not to have a script, but to

deal with the emotion before having the conversation for real.

Absolutely.

Might even practise it a few times.

I write down the topics I want to talk to, talk through and keep those topics.

And it's so important for us to

to be able to be in that space where we say we move away from the blame.

Yeah, that famous Eleanor Roosevelt quote,

If nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent, it's a real rotten

tomatoes moment for the word inferior, for whatever the emotion is we're feeling.

Unfortunately, it's actually true.

And if we're in a conflict situation, the

other person might not even realise they're in a conflict situation.

They might be blissfully unaware of the

story and the pain that's going on inside for us.

And we need to make sure we don't speak from the pain.

We speak from that grounded sense of I'm taking responsibility for how I feel in

this, but I do need you to understand my needs.

Yeah, definitely. And it's funny you should say that,

because the amount of mediations I've done where one person has this 20 minutes of

everything and the other person's "I don't know why I'm here".

I've lost count of how many times that has happened.

And then by the time we get to the joint meetings,

it's like, "Ahh!"It's surreal, isn't it?

And we can really find ourselves up about

other people's behaviour without them having any idea whatsoever.

And it doesn't mean it's OK.

But we're all having a different experience at the same practical scenario.

Absolutely. That frame of reference.

Absolutely. So that's been really great advice.

Anyway, so the next big topic, this is

something you and I discussed the other day, that you see that we need to actually

start having open conversations about now in the workplace.

I'd love to hear from you on that. Yeah.

So the big ones that are coming through at the moment, there's two in particular.

It's that return to work, the hybrid working.

And the biggest thing that's going to

cause conflict there is having those conversations.

So one of the tenets of Psychological safety is fairness.

So if you're having conversations with people about Hybrid working is about

making sure those conversations are fair to everybody and understanding that some

people are going to have greater needs and others.

So some people are still shielding, some people still classed as vulnerable.

They're not going to want to be in the

workplace, but they're also not going to want to be excluded or facing 20 questions

as to why they're working from home five days a week, whereas everybody else has to

be in three days a week or whatever, so that Hybrid working has the real potential

to generate a lot of destructive conflict, a lot of destructive conflicts.

The other one, and I think this is going

to be even bigger, is the vaccine versus no vaccine conversation.

Now, I'm not going to get into to the merits of which ones.

Right. In which one went wrong.

The key issue here is that some people out

there do not have a choice in terms of not being able to have the vaccination.

So I have family members.

I know Claire, we talked about this the

other day, but can't have it for medical reasons.

It's going to cause bigger problems than

actually having probably covered would do so.

So in those situations, it's about having

the empathy for those people and understanding that everybody makes a

decision as to as to why they're living their life the way they are.

We all should take responsibility for that

decision, but it's appreciating that not everybody can make that decision.

Some people have no choice. Absolutely.

And I'm definitely seeing this as

something that's going to come up as a hot topic.

I'm totally with you on this summary is

because there's been so much fear built up, particularly on social media and in

the mainstream media, about vaccinated versus unvaccinated.

It becomes such an immensely emotionally charged topic.

And because it's coming from that place of

fear, it's already triggered the Fight-flight-freeze-fawn mechanism.

And I've already started hearing conversations of I won't be in an office

with somebody who's unvaccinated because they might kill me.

And I think we need as managers, as leaders to actually be managing that

discussion now, saying, actually, here are the facts.

Here's what we're doing to keep everybody safe.

If you've been vaccinated, here's the stats on how safe you are.

And actually, you know what, right.

Does anybody have to know somebody else's medical history in the workplace?

We need to be having I don't have the answers.

Like you don't have the answers, but it needs to be something that's

discussed in an organisation rather than imposed.

And it's something that people need to feel safe talking about because there will

be so much fear built up around the story that's in their head, because people have

been through massive fear in the last fifteen months.

If this gets projected into a workplace, you can imagine everybody.

You can imagine how destructive that will be

suppressed in a workplace.

You can imagine how somebody who, for

whatever reason, has not been vaccinated is going to end up being ostracised or

bullied or harassed or excluded or forced to work from home when actually.

They are desperate to be back in the office because they hate having to sit on

their bed to work with their dressing gown in the background.

Yeah, so there is no right and wrong on this.

And it's really important for us to be having those challenging, courageous

conversations now so that people feel safe.

It's that psychological security again, isn't it, Marie?

It absolutely is. I mean, right.

The bottom line is it's the word safe that

we have to feel safe before we can move off that hierarchy of needs.

And that's that's one of the essential tenets of Islam.

And the last 18 months, we haven't been safe.

I don't think any one of us has felt safe for the last 18 months.

We turn into the workplace. I'm very lucky.

I work from home, full stop. I'm self-employed.

I don't have to go into an office and work with people.

But I have clients are expecting me to go into the workplace and I'm having to ask

for risk assessments and make sure that everything is the same as the health and

the normal health and safety in the workplace is important.

This forms part of that for me.

So it's about making sure I am safe and

everybody needs to take responsibility for their own safety.

But at the same time, organisations need

to, as part of the psychological contract, as part of the Health and Safety at Work

Act is part of all these are the things that underpin is making sure that people

are safe at work and covid falls under that.

Absolutely.

And there are two levels to that safety aren't there, Marie. You've got the.

Yeah, we've done the risk assessment.

Here's the written document, if I will say that Psychological safety.

And now we're going to discuss it.

We're not just going to email that document round.

We're actually going to talk about it, why

it's got what it has in it and how how if somebody got concerns, how they can easily

raise those without feeling judged, which I decide on whichever fence they are.

Yeah.

So, Marie, before we wrap up, I just want to hear from the group with us live.

If you've got anything else that you'd like to ask Marie or anything that's been

a light bulb for you today in this session, let me know via the chat.

Emori, how can people get in touch with you?

Because you and I have talked about how sometimes we think mediation doesn't

happen until you hit, like, serious kind of court level conflict.

And actually, the best time to bring you

in is so much earlier in the process. How does that work for an organisation?

So there's still several ways to contact me.

I have my website and my my details and my

QR codes there as well, which will direct you to sort of getting in touch with me.

But I'm one of those I I'm very much about.

Prevention is better than cure.

Understanding how to

not avoid conflict because it's a conflict is inevitable, but how to make it

constructive because constructive conflict, it drives innovation.

It drives creativity.

It drives engagement because people are allowed to speak and be heard as well.

So it is very, very much about

encouraging people to speak up, but creating the environment.

And that's the biggest thing that I can help organisations do, is create help them

create that environment for constructive conflict, for constructive dialogue, for

making sure that everybody feels heard and supported.

But I am also there when things do go wrong and that extra level of support as

well as on the whole process, that that's fantastic.

We've got some lovely feedback by the comments from those who've been here live.

Going to read more about conflict styles, apps.

Love listening to you, Marie, on such an

interesting topic of conflict and difficult conversations.

I'm going to think about how it might be useful to help people increase their self

awareness and help more constructive conversations.

So Marie, people can find you over on LinkedIn.

They can find you a wee WeRestoreCalm.com.

And also you do offer half hour

consultations to organisations as well, don't you?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So get in touch with Marie if you think

this is something that your organisation needs to learn from or that your managers

might benefit from some training in this, which right now, given the level of

difficult conversations we're all going to be having, is essential because simply

imposing decisions on people is the best way to make sure they leave.

Then please do get in touch with Marie and Marie.

If you could just wrap up by sharing that one thing that maybe you wish you'd known

back at the very beginning of your career before you started out as a mediator on

how to have these conversations, what would it be?

It's not personal.

That's probably the biggest thing, because the amount of times I didn't speak up for

fear of thinking that it was going to be a personal attack on somebody else or

reacting in such a way when somebody brought up something with me, I'm one of

those that in the past, if somebody criticised me for something, whether it

was done correctly or incorrectly, I always went straight to the defensive.

And now I appreciate is very much about it's not personal.

It's just about getting stuff out there,

getting stuff in the open and being able to move on constructively.

I think that is possibly one of the best

bits of advice for life if it's not personal.

It's such brilliant advice.

Marie, thank you so much.

It's been wonderful talking to you today.

Thank you so much for taking the time.

And everyone, you can find Marie and find

out more about her work at WeRestoreCalm.com.