8 Conflict Resolution Tips For Entrepreneurs
I want you to think about the five people that you trust the most. Boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, sister, brother, sibling, best friend, business partner. Did you get those five names ready? What caused you to have the level of trust that you have in them today? Was it by accident? If you really take a look at those five names, it’ll typically you became closer after you overcame a massive conflict together. If you’re going through something together with another person or business partner, an enemy, etc. and you overcome that together, you officially have an additional person in your life that you trust a little bit more.
I’m going to talk to you about five different ways you and I handle conflict and eight steps on how to address conflicts as it comes up in your life. If you want to dig deeper on this topic, obviously you’re going to pick up a lot of different hacks from this video on how to address conflict. But if you’re somebody that beginning 2019 forward, you want to create a system in your brain that can handle conflicts, problems, and issues.
This morning I was talking to a Webinar with hundreds of students and one asked me, how do I come up with better ideas and what do I do to protect my idea? We spend way too much time talking about your great idea. I want to give you a system that will provide an endless number of ideas that you can look at for any industry. So you’re never worried about losing your ideas because the guys in silicon valley don’t wake up in the morning saying, oh my gosh, I hope somebody doesn’t steal an idea. No, they have a system on how to continuously come up with ideas.
I am hosting a three-day conference in Dallas from May 1st to May 4th called The Vault. We’ve already had people register from 36 different countries. The whole purpose of this event is to have everyone from entrepreneurs, executives, CEOs, founders, salespeople, and intrapreneurs to move up in their careers. I’m going to be sharing with you my system on how I grew my business at a time in the financial industry when everybody was afraid. Back in 2008 after the market crashed, I took one small office of 66 agents and I scaled it to 9,700 insurance agents. Oscar de la Hoya became one of my investors. Gabriele Brenda, who owns the Houston Dynamo became one of the investors. We scaled this business during good and bad times without the CEO, me, having a four-year degree or even a two-year degree.
How did this take place? I’m going to share all my hacks with you for three days at this conference. One of the things that I want to transfer over to you is a formula, a problem-solving formula, that you can use in every aspect of your life. War Room, board, room, bedroom; it doesn’t matter. That’s what’s going to be transferred at The Vault event and this event will sell out. Go and register now, and I hope to see you there in Dallas. I hope you’re going to make an investment in yourself, in 2019, and realize that you today, can’t get to the next level until you figure out a way to change yourself and recreate yourself. I’m a byproduct of many of these events. This event could end up doing for you what so many events in the past have done for me.
The Five Different Ways People Handle Conflicts
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The first way people handle conflicts is the lowest level, these people are stubborn and closed-minded. This person I recognize very well because that’s who I was for the first 22 years of my life. I knew it all. I was stubborn. Don’t tell me anything. I’m good to go.
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The second level is somebody that accommodates. These are people that are passive. They conform. Oh, I really don’t want to do that, but I get it. They are not as bad a stubborn person, but it’s pretty bad to be confirming all the time.
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The third level is avoiding. All of these conflicts in your life add up and if you avoid conflict you end up carrying a 500-pound backpack of unresolved issues. If you constantly avoiding conflict, it’s because you are afraid.
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Level four people compromise all the time. Some people think compromise is the highest level. You know a marriage, you’ve got to compromise. Maybe she is offering a better choice, but you must compromise because it’s healthy for you. I don’t think so.
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The highest level is to collaborate. What is collaborating means maybe your idea is better than mine. Maybe spending the million dollars in the area that you are suggesting is going to give us 80% return on a million. If I compromise, we meet halfway, and I give you half a million. No. Collaboration means tell me what you’re thinking, and I share what I’m thinking, and we work together so nobody gives up their position.
Every single year I had to remind myself to get closer to collaboration and lower compromise. That’s how I helped my business grow. So now, now that we know the five levels, you must assess yourself. You must be very honest with yourself when it comes to how you handle conflict. It is not something you should hold over anybody else. It is about you. I ask the very simple question every time I’m trying to challenge somebody to improve their way of thinking. What got you to where you’re at right now and are you happy where you are? If you say yes, don’t change your way of thinking. If you said no, guess what? You must change your way of thinking.
How to Handle Conflict:
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You’re looking at conflict, you must be very hard on the problem, soft on the person. If you’re hard on the problem and soft on a person, the person is willing to take your feedback. They will understand what went wrong and how to avoid the problem in the future.
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Every time you have a conflict you are trying to shorten the lifespan of the conflict. Last year, North Korea and South Korea met. Imagine how many years that conflict has been going. What if they were to meet each other sooner? You want to figure out a lifespan of a conflict and shorten it as much as possible. So how do you do that?
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Gather data. Whether that is hearing all the sides to a story, gathering actual numbers for your business, whatever it is; be diligent.
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The next thing you do is you qualify to conflict. Start by looking at trends that emerge from all the data. Gan some perspective from what the data is telling you.Whenz
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Then you quantify the conflict. You’ve got to put a number to it on a scale from 1-10. “How urgent is it? Very. It’s a nine. Okay. We’ve got to address it right now.” The higher it is, the more I’m needed, the lower it is, I assume the other leaders can handle within their departments. You leave it up to them because you know in order to develop leaders, you must allow your people to handle problems and conflicts themselves. Next, do not hyperbolize to conflict. Don’t start promoting the conflict. I’m not trying to bring more problems into other people’s lives because it will cause their momentum to slow down. A lot of times we have the habit of, hey, did you know about what happened? You’re hyperbolizing and you’re getting other people to be less efficient.
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Get a second opinion. Have somebody just like an advisory board or board of directors and ask them for 10 minutes of their time. Hey, here’s what we’re going through. What do you think about this that that that that, you know what? I’ve done this so many times. If you ask any employee that works with me closely, if you ask any of my directors, any my executives, any my board members, they will tell you Patrick’s most common question he asks is what do you think? What do you think? Get a second opinion.
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The next thing you do is you either deal direct or you let it go. If you have an issue with someone bring it to them, work on the conflict only with them. You can look for advice and some people to help with perspective, but you should deal directly with them or let it go. It is so much easier regardless of who the person is you have a conflict with, to deal with the conflict directly. If you can’t, letting it go will make it easier to sleep at night.
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If you allow your pride and ego get in the way of problems and conflict, you’re not going to have the highest return when dealing with those conflicts. My wife and I, we’re fixing up one of our homes and we have this paint job that we had to do. It’s a bigger dollar amount. So, she gets the estimate and she agrees to it. No problem. They start the job and they finish the second floor. Next thing you know, yesterday at 6:00 PM my wife comes into my office and she tells me they are asking for more. We sit down with the CEO of this big painting company and he is caught by my wife, who proved they made a mistake in estimating the cost. He acts like a jerk to her, so I appeal to him a little bit by saying, “I understand you are very proud. I am very proud. I’m Iranian we are very proud, but you made a mistake and you have to make it right.” He admitted the mistake and apologized. The point I’m trying to make is you may win an argument short term by letting your ego take over, but I guarantee you lose long term because when it comes down to it, people like me are I’m driven by principles. It’s how I am. Set aside your ego and find some way to collaborate because that will resolve conflicts.
I don’t like dead weight. I hate dead weight. If there is a problem that we solve two years ago that keeps resurfacing, I don’t like. Not in my marriage, not in my friendships, not in my business life, not in my health, none of it. I don’t like dead weight. I like a permanent solution, so we don’t have to come back and revisit it. Come up with your game plan on how to address your issue permanently. Don’t come up with a solution that’s going to just fix it for a month or two months or three months or a year. Doing so will gain you a lot of respect.
Now obviously this is a short summary on how to deal with conflict. I’m going to spend three days at The Vault giving you hands-on examples and systems that you can integrate now into your business and life. If you haven’t yet registered for the vault, do so before it sells out. This is not a regular conference. We’re not going to have 20-30 speakers all selling you a $2,000 package to buy. We’re actually going to process a lot of issues with you for three days.
I want you to watch post this video, How to Think Big as an Entrepreneur. The reason why I chose this video is because the bigger you think you, the bigger I can get you to think. The more you realize your ego when dealing with conflict, the better you will handle a lot of change and challenges that are between you and becoming big. The other video, Good Voice, Bad Voice, there are three of me going through a conflict to show you how collaboration works the best.
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