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Driving a Wedge Between People

Posted on July 29, 2014 by Cinnie Noble

As you may know, the phrase driving a wedge between people describes the act of causing people to oppose or turn against one another – to spoil their relationship.

This expression seems to be used when referring to what a third party does that results in a schism between two (or more) others. That is, the two (or more) people may not be in conflict or there may be some tension but they are not necessarily disconnected. However, for some reason the third party attempts to turn one or both against the other.

Reasons that someone may intentionally drive a wedge between others undoubtedly vary. It may have to do with jealousy, insecurities about being left out, feeling territorial about one of the people, bearing negative feelings towards one, wanting to protect one, and disapproving of the relationship.

Driving a wedge may lead to conflict between the two people and/or between one or both of them and the person driving the wedge. In any case, it is helpful to consider the reasons that someone would drive a wedge between others. This is whether you have been on the receiving end of someone’s efforts to do this or have done so yourself. This week’s ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) blog invites you to consider when you have driven a wedge between others, or someone has done that with you and another.

  • If you have ever tried to or succeeded in driving a wedge between others, what reasons motivated you to drive the wedge between those people?
  • What specifically did you do? What was the wedge? In what ways did you drive it?
  • How did you succeed in driving the wedge? What does that mean for you – that you succeeded? What does it mean for the two or more people?
  • If you did not succeed, what happened? What does that mean for you? What does it mean for the people that you drove the wedge between or among?
  • What reactions did you have from the people between or among which you tried to drive a wedge, other than what you may have answered so far?
  • When someone has driven a wedge between you and one or more others, what did she or he do specifically? What was the wedge? In what ways did she or he drive it?
  • How did the person succeed? How did she or he not succeed?
  • What was the experience like for you?
  • Where are things at now between you and the person who drove the wedge? Where are things at now between you and the other person or person between whom the wedge was driven?
  • What lessons are there to be learned from driving a wedge between people?

What other ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) may you add here?

Posted in Conflict Coaching, Metaphors | Leave a comment

Stepping Into Someone’s Shoes

Posted on July 20, 2014 by Cinnie Noble

You will know from the ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) blogs that the series of questions usually invites readers to look at the conflict from the other person’s viewpoint, as well as their own. It is a typical approach for helping people understand the full picture of conflict situations, including their contribution to the dynamic.

The phrase stepping into someone’s shoes – the subject of this week’s blog – is commonly used to describe a way to envision the situation from the other person’s perspective. As one source said, “only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches”.

I have always liked the folk wisdom in the expression stepping into someone’s shoes. However, when I thought about it more, I smiled as I imagined myself stepping into fancy high heels (since I don’t usually wear them), or shoes too big for me, ones that are too small, styles that typically make me cringe or laugh, men’s footwear, and other sorts of shoes that you will not find me wearing!

This all became fodder for today’s blog that invites you to consider a conflict situation in which you may not have a full grasp of where the other person is coming from. Stepping into her or his shoes – and your own too – in a metaphoric way may be a fitting (excuse the pun) way to consider the dynamic.

  • Standing in your own shoes, what is your perspective on what happened in that situation you have in mind?
  • What, if anything, about your version are you most uncomfortable conveying? Why is that? What else does not fit exactly right? Why is that?
  • Standing in the other person’s shoes, how would she or he explain what happened?
  • What did the other person specifically say or do in the conflict that resulted in you feeling a pinch?
  • If you stepped into the other person’s shoes, what may you experience as a pinch as a result of what you said or did?
  • How do you describe the other person’s shoes as you attempt to step in them?
  • What fits about them? What doesn’t?
  • If you asked the other person to step into your shoes, what would you like her or him to feel?
  • What may fit well for her or him? What may not?
  • What is different about the other person’s shoes that you can accept anyway? What do you want her or him to accept about yours?

What other ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) may you add here?

Posted in Conflict Coaching, Conflict Perceptions, Empathy, Metaphors | 2 Comments

Do You Flip Your Lid?

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Cinnie Noble

I was unable to find the derivation of the expression flip your lid, but I have heard it used to describe an excessively angry reaction. In recent years I have heard the term apoplectic used when referring to extreme rage and for me, the meaning of these two expressions are similar. The visual of flip your lid however, conjures up an interesting image of the top of the head blowing open – presumably with fury propelling it. Perhaps, the expression symbolizes the emotional part of the brain (limbic area) becoming over-activated and overflowing with anger, pushing out the front of the brain (pre-frontal cortex) which loses its capacity to think!

When it comes to interpersonal conflict I hear people in my conflict management coaching practice use the expression flip my lid when describing their adverse reaction to what someone said or did. Or, some use it when describing their observation of someone else whose response to an interaction is severe and noticeably so.

For this week’s ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) blog, I invite readers to consider a dispute in which you have or could have used this expression about someone’s reaction to you about something you said or did. Also, please consider a scenario in which an observer could have used that expression to describe your reaction.

  • When you observed the other person in a conflict with you flip her or his lid, how do you describe what this phrase means in that context?
  • What did the other person look like? What did she or he sound like (if you did not answer these questions in your first answer)?
  • What came out from under the lid that surprised you? What upset you most?
  • How do you describe the impact on you?
  • Once the lid was off, what did you do or try to do to bring it back down, if anything? If you did not try to bring the lid back down, what happened?
  • What did it take for the person’s lid to settle back down?
  • If you have flipped your lid in reaction to what someone said or did, what was that? How do you think you looked? What did you sound like? How did it feel?
  • What came out once your lid was open that surprised you? What surprised the other person? What other impact did you observe on the other person?
  • What did it take for your lid to settle back?
  • If you do not want to flip your lid in the future, what may you do instead? If you do not want the other person’s lid to flip in a conflict with her or him, what sorts of things may you do to prevent that?

What other ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) may you add here?

Posted in Conflict Coaching, Emotions in Conflict, Metaphors, Reactions | Leave a comment

Walking Away With Grace

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Cinnie Noble

Sometimes when we are in conflict with another person we are faced with a dilemma about what we are or are not willing to say or do, or give or take, to reconcile matters. Though at some level of consciousness we want to settle things, there are times when we realize that what it may take to do so would compromise our values and needs. Or, we may have an excessive amount of antipathy towards the other person or sense that coming from them. Or, we may be worn down and despairing, have lost our energy, no longer be vested in an outcome we originally wanted, realize that settlement is too high a price, and so on.

Walking away from conflict situations and doing so with grace, if that is how you want to proceed, takes lots of thought about the risks of doing so and also, the advantages. It is reflecting too on what that means for the dispute and the relationship. These and other important considerations are the subject of this week’s ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) blog.

To answer the following questions, I invite you to bring to mind a dispute about which you are contemplating walking away and doing so with grace.

  • How do you describe the expression – walking away with grace?
  • What is the situation from which you want to walk away – with grace?
  • What is the strongest push that is leading you to walk away at this time?
  • What are the risks of walking away regarding the issues in dispute?
  • What are the risks of doing so for the relationship?
  • What are the advantages of walking away for the dispute?
  • What are the advantages of doing so for the relationship?
  • What will walking away look like in a way that fits your description as you answered the first question here?
  • When you think of walking away with grace in this way, what does that feel like? What do you not like about how it feels, if anything?
  • What are you thinking now about this situation?

What other ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) may you add here?

Posted in Conflict Coaching, Reactions, Resilience | Leave a comment

Jumping from the Frying Pan into the Fire

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Cinnie Noble

It happens in conflict that things frequently escalate in a way that results in the other person or us making things worse. The expression “jumping from the frying pan into the fire” applies here as an idiom that generally means escaping a bad situation for a worse situation. According to one source, “it was made the subject of a 15th-century fable that eventually entered the Aesopic canon”. Here is the story in brief:

“The Italian author Laurentius Abstemius wrote a collection of 100 fables, the Hecatomythium, during the 1490s. This included some based on popular idioms and proverbs of the day. Abstemius’ fable 20, De piscibus e sartigine in prunas desilentibus, concerns some fish thrown live into a frying pan of boiling fat. One of them urges its fellows to save their lives by jumping out, but when they do so they fall into the burning coals and curse its bad advice. The fabulist concludes: ‘This fable warns us that when we are avoiding present dangers, we should not fall into even worse peril.’  The tale was included in Latin collections of Aesop’s fables from the following century onwards but the first person to adapt it into English was Roger L’Estrange in 1692.”

Other interpretations and versions followed and the expression is still used by some today to refer to actions, words, etc. that take an incident from bad to worse, as sometimes happens in conflict situations.

The ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) blog this week invites readers to consider when you have jumped from the frying pan into the fire, even inadvertently.

  • Considering a conflict in which the expression – jumping from the frying pan into the fire – applies to you, what is the situation? What did you do that applies to this idiom?
  • What propelled your jump?
  • What specifically was bad about the situation in the first place when you jumped?
  • What did the frying pan represent?
  • What happened that made the situation worse?
  • What did the fire represent?
  • What may you have done instead of jumping into the fire?
  • What do you think stopped you?
  • What result would you have preferred?
  • Where else may you have jumped to achieve that preferred result?

What other ConflictMastery™ Quest(ions) may you add here?

Posted in Conflict Coaching, Metaphors | Leave a comment