203. Embracing Conflict: Transforming Tension into Growth with Judy Bornstein

Judy Bornstein, Boomer, joins me to discuss conflict – whoa! Judy is the Founder of C Suite Resolutions, where she provides mediation, ombuds services, conflict and negotiation coaching, and corporate trainings to organizations and executives. She has worked extensively as a CFO and Chief Compliance Officer, and brings her business experience to her work in addressing conflict.

Topics Covered:

Conflict definition

Disagreement vs conflict

Gossip

Consequences of pushing down conflict

Costs involved in unresolved conflicts

How organizations set themselves up to handle conflicts

Ombuds (trained independent designated neutral to build trust)

Working in conflict and understanding our reactions

Mediations

Three Episode Takeaways

1. If we only think of conflict as a fight we can lose that it can be a really powerful engine for creativity, change, and self-reflection.

2. Responses to conflict can fall along gender lines. Many women are raised to “be nice” and “be good”, and told “don’t make a scene”. Women may be uncomfortable acknowledging a conflict so will be quiet or not address it directly, and there is less latitude for women to express conflict than is often afforded to men

3. Humans are naturally (evolutionarily) wired to not like conflict, so that means our managers, bosses, and leaders probably don’t like conflict. As a result conflict may pushed down or silenced, which can lead to unintentional consequences like blaming the people involved rather than learning from the situation. Conflict is an inherent part of growth and innovation in organizations.

Great Quotes:

Hope is not a strategy.

We may have conflict because we are wise enough to see the complexity in our world.

If you have conflict in your life it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.
Conflict can be perplexing.

Episode Resources:

Baruch Bush:

https://www.beyondintractability.org/bksum/bush-promise

More About Judy:

Judy is a doctoral candidate at Penn State University where her research interests center around organizational conflict. She holds a Masters in Dispute Resolution from Pepperdine University’s Caruso School of Law, and an MBA from Simmons University in Boston, where she graduated first in her class. Judy is a Mediation trainer and serves on the San Francisco Bar Association Mediation Panel and on the Arbitration Panel for FINRA (the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority).

She is a regular mediator for the Congress of Neutrals where she mediates court cases in Contra Costa County, CA. Judy also co-facilitates a Transformative Mediation group inside San Quentin State Prison, where she offers mediation and conflict-resolution training to incarcerated men interested in non-violent conflict resolution.

How to reach Judy:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judybornstein/

Email: jb@csuiteresolutions.com

Website: www.csuiteresolutions.com

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