Workplace Conflict Resolution: Alice Shikina Of Shikina Mediation and Arbitration On How Team Leaders Can Create The Right Environment To Resolve Conflicts
An Interview With Eric Pines
Get Your Team Trained in Conflict Resolution. Over 60% of employees have never received any kind of conflict resolution training. Don’t be in this group! Bring in a trainer to give everyone tools and strategies, so that your team does not shy away from conflicts. You want to make sure people are not avoiding conflicts and hence, allowing conflict to fester.
An important component of leadership is conflict resolution. Why is conflict resolution so important? How can leaders effectively incorporate conflict resolution into their work culture? In this interview series called “Workplace Conflict Resolution: How Team Leaders Can Create The Right Environment To Resolve Conflicts,” we are talking to business leaders who can share insights and anecdotes from their experience about how to implement Conflict Resolution at work. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Alice Shikina of Shikina Mediation and Arbitration.
Alice Shikina is a mediator and communication/conflict resolution and negotiation trainer. She mediates divorces, workplace conflicts and family issues. Alice also trains corporate and non-profit staff on communication skills for leaders, conflict resolution skills and sales/negotiation strategies. Alice has over 20 years of theatre experience in acting, directing, writing and producing. Alice volunteer mediates with the San Francisco Department of Police Accountability. She is also one of the first mediators to get started in the same kind of mediations with the Oakland Police Department. She recently spoke to thousands of Toastmasters members at their 100th International Anniversary Convention about Conflict Resolution. Alice works and lives in Oakland, CA with her two boys. She enjoys swimming, rowing, playing the violin and travelling in her free time. At the time of this writing, Alice just completed a 2.3-mile open water swim in Waikiki, HI.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
The most interesting story that has happened to me since I started my career just happened a few days ago. I was invited by Toastmasters to present “Navigating Conflicts Confidently” at the 2024 Toastmasters International 100th Anniversary Convention. I spoke in front of several hundred international members both in-person and live streamed. It was such an amazing opportunity to share these critical skills with people all over the world. My hope is that people in all corners of the world begin using some of the skills that I shared with them, and they can all begin to create peace in the world, one conflict at a time. People came up to me after the talk to share stories about the various conflicts that they were embroiled in, both personally and professionally. They felt that they had gained some tools to be able to make a difference in the conflicts that they had to face, when they returned home. It gives me such a grateful feeling to be able to help people in this way.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
My favorite quote is “It’s not a sprint. It’s a marathon.” Too often we get caught up in the business of life and forget to slow down, so we don’t burn out. It is a good phrase to remind me to stop and smell the roses. I also want to make sure that I am prioritizing the right things in life, which for me are health, kids, family, friends and finally work. Don’t get me wrong. I work hard for my business and for my clients. But I try to keep sight of what is truly important in the end. I also want to design my days, so that I can run that marathon and I do not burn out prematurely.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
I think I stand out just in the variety of services I offer. I do most of my work in the communication arena, but that is a very wide arena. People have gravitated towards me and have created niches for me to work in. For example, one lawyer decided to use me to prep their clients for depositions and trial. As I learned how to do this work, I began to offer it to more attorneys. Now, it is something I do regularly. The difference between me doing trial prep for a client and an attorney doing trial prep is that I focus on a lot of mental, emotional and physiological preparation for clients. We do work on their testimony, but I am keenly aware that the emotional state a client is in while on the stand can affect their testimony. Unless a lawyer has some psychology background, they won’t prep their clients the way I do. I do not have a psychology degree, but I am endlessly taking psychology courses in order to serve my clients in the most effective way. I also train my clients on how to re-regulate themselves if they become dysregulated, as well as how to de-escalate strong emotions in others, while in a difficult conversation or negotiation with them.
Most recently, I prepped a woman with a traumatic brain injury. She had difficulty with her memory and regulating her emotions. I made sure that we went over her answers repeatedly, so that she could recall her testimony. We also went over how to regulate her emotions when she felt dysregulated. I taught her deep breathing techniques and we made visualization mediation a regular practice. Using all the tools I taught her, she was able to get through a total of 30 hours of testimony, even with a traumatic brain injury.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
One of them is definitely grit. As an entrepreneur, you will try many things. Some will fail and others will not. You also have to live through the ebbs and flows of the business. Without grit, you would likely quit, because this entrepreneurship journey feels very much like a roller coaster. My mediation business is not my first attempt at starting a business. It is my third. Every time I tried and failed, I tried again. I was determined to have my own business. It was what I believed in and my failures did not deter me from trying again. Even now, I am constantly offering new services or products and testing what succeeds in the market. If you truly want to build something great, you need to hang in there during the hard times. That leads into my next character trait, which is belief in myself.
I believe that my business is destined to succeed. I also believe that the work I do is not only important, but necessary. When I first started my mediation practice, I had some well-meaning lawyers advise me that I would be a great community mediator, but that I would never make money doing this as a non-attorney mediator. I did not let their beliefs limit my own. I continued to work hard at my business until it became a six-figure business and actually shocked the very people who did not believe it was possible. I was even dubbed “the purple squirrel” by one of them. She meant it in a complimentary way in that she felt I was truly unique in being able to have a thriving mediation business as a non-attorney mediator.
The last trait would be the ability to read between the lines. This is a skill I was trained in as an actress in my undergrad days. This skill has served me well in mediations. I am always listening for what is NOT stated and for the real meaning lying underneath words. I once mediated between a husband and wife to determine whether they could resolve the issue at hand or decide to get a divorce. When the wife entered the mediation, she announced that she would be seeking divorce if the mediation did not produce a favorable outcome. She then proceeded to NOT negotiate for the next two hours. Her husband diligently came up with multiple counter offers, but she remained steadfast in her unwillingness to negotiate. Finally, at the end of the mediation, I felt that there was something else going on that we were not seeing. I painted the high-level picture of what I was seeing. I said, “You came to the mediation stating that you would seek divorce if this matter did not resolve. You have since spent the last two hours not resolving this issue. Let me ask you a question. If your husband granted you absolutely everything you are asking for today, would you be happy?” There was a very long silence while she considered the question. Finally, she responded, “It would relieve some pressure.” At that point, the husband saw what was going on with his wife and he politely excused himself from the mediation and stated that he would be calling his divorce attorney. It was my ability to read between the lines that allowed me to understand that there was a hidden motivation within the conversation. When I was able to unearth this, things became clear to everyone in the room.
Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader?
As an entrepreneur, you are in charge of hiring employees and contractors. The difficult decisions you make are when you need to end a working relationship. Several years ago, I had to make a very drastic and sudden decision about breaking away from my co-founder. There was a very dramatic breach of trust and I had to immediately sever all ties with this person. It was a difficult decision, because until that point, I had trusted him as my co-founder. We got along well and shared ideas freely. It had been a positive relationship thus far. So, to find out that he did not tell me the truth about his finances was a huge shock for me. My human instinct was to talk it over with him and figure out how to work it out, but my business acumen told me otherwise. I realized that this person was dangerous to be in business together and that I needed to protect what was left of my finances. I called a meeting and confronted him about what had happened. He reluctantly admitted that he did in fact mislead me. It was very difficult to accept and move on so quickly, but I did what I needed to do in order to preserve my own health and financial safety.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Let’s start with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. What does Conflict Resolution mean?
The ability to resolve conflict means you understand how to get to the root of the real issue, and you also understand how to effectively have a conversation that resolves the issue.
What are some common misunderstandings about Conflict Resolution that are important to clear up?
Conflict is not necessarily a bad thing. If people are experiencing conflict, it usually means that multiple people are having different perspectives on something. It might also be a great opportunity to learn and grow. A lot of conflict averse people might believe (or hope) that avoiding the conflict is one way of dealing with it. Unfortunately, avoidance typically ends up escalating or spreading the conflict to multiple parties.
This might be intuitive to you, but it will be helpful to clearly express this. Can you please explain why it is so important for leaders to learn and deploy conflict resolution techniques?
It is very important, because where there are people, there will be conflicts. The way conflict is handled by leaders is woven into company culture. So, if you have a dysfunctional way of dealing with conflicts as a leader, your company will begin to mirror this. As more and more people emulate the way you handle conflict, the more toxic the environment becomes. You want to take courses in conflict resolution if you are a leader. You want to then make sure that your teams also gain the same skills that you do, so that conflicts are resolved swiftly and with little drama. The more a company deals with conflict, the slower the growth and productivity becomes, because instead of producing and growing, people are concerning themselves with the conflict.
On the flip side, what happens to a work culture when there is not an effective way of resolving conflict? How does it impact employees?
So many bad things can happen to a company if there is no effective way of resolving conflict. The worst thing that could happen is litigation. If people are not heard or taken seriously, they feel powerless. In order to mitigate this feeling of powerlessness, these people may turn to the law. Many workplace lawsuits are more about the emotions, because people do not feel like anyone listened to them. So, they take their voices to the court. There are other issues besides litigation, which can affect the workplace environment. People begin to silo themselves and shortly thereafter, they begin to build allies in the conflict. If the conflict spreads, the workplace or department will find that it is splintering into multiple factions, with everyone in support of one side or another. Because unresolved conflict can affect morale, turnover rates can increase and productively can plummet.
Several years ago, I worked as a contractor for a tech start-up. I was only one of two contractors. I worked in the office with the sales team. The company decided to throw a party at the park to celebrate its 2-year anniversary. The HR person did not include me in the invitation. I asked her about it and her curt response was “It’s for full-time employees only.” I had been hired, because I knew the company owner, but when I approached him to ask him if I could attend (the only cost was the cake that they brought with them to the party), he deferred to the HR person and I got excluded. You can imagine how upsetting this was for the sales team, who considered me a part of their team. This conflict dampened morale within the sales team. People were sad and disappointed that the company would choose exclusion over inclusion.
When people don’t have the skills to resolve conflict at work, they may choose to avoid it entirely. While they hope that the conflict will go away on its own, this rarely happens. Instead, communication between the parties stops and the flow of information is interrupted. Management may also have to spend more time trying to get a handle on the conflict, so they are unable to do their jobs effectively.
Can you provide examples of how effective conflict resolution has led to increased team performance, collaboration, or innovation within your organization?
Mediation is a great way to resolve conflicts, if the conflicts have gotten out of control or has stopped productivity entirely. As a mediator, I work with many organizations and companies who have mediated with me due to workplace conflict. Many times, it could be interpersonal issues or a due to a difference in communication styles. These conflicts have caused people to stop communicating or working collaboratively with one another. Once this happens, there is no more flow of information between colleagues. This is the beginning of a more insidious issue, where the conflict spreads to other employees and people begin to take sides. By the time this happens, the workplace is a very toxic.
I worked with an Executive Director of a non-profit. He had just been hired and knew that the organization had a lot of conflict, so he requested mediation services from day one of his time there. Every stakeholder got a chance to be heard. Several who had issues with others were able to resolve the internal conflict via mediation. Finally, we had a facilitated dialogue at the end of the process to set up frame works that everyone agreed with. Once we finished this process, the Executive Director said it really helped to set the tone within the organization and get everything going in the right direction.
What are your “Five Ways Every Team Leader Can Create the Right Environment To Resolve Conflicts”? If you can, please share specific examples of a workplace conflict you’ve encountered, and how you applied conflict resolution techniques to address it.
1 . Get Your Team Trained in Conflict Resolution. Over 60% of employees have never received any kind of conflict resolution training. Don’t be in this group! Bring in a trainer to give everyone tools and strategies, so that your team does not shy away from conflicts. You want to make sure people are not avoiding conflicts and hence, allowing conflict to fester.
I deliver conflict resolution training to staff and every time I teach a session, everyone has a conflict that they plan on resolving using the new skills that they have learned. They feel more empowered to approach difficult conversations, but their unease is transformed to ease and confidence.
2 . Role-Play in larger groups on a regular basis. Communication of any type, especially communication surrounding conflict resolution is a skill. Practice is a must. Similar to athletic activities, people need to practice in order to stay in shape. Instead of working out a physical muscle, people are working out the brain muscles. Without regular practice, people forget the skills or become rusty at resolving conflict. This means that when the need for conflict resolution arises, the skills are not as sharp as they could have been. Meet with your team on a monthly or semi-monthly basis to work through role-play scenarios. Give them a scenario. Have a couple of people attempt to resolve the conflict while others observe. If someone gets stuck, ask for another volunteer to jump in and try. Once the conversation is completed, debrief the conversation with the role-play participants and the observers. Discuss how each person felt during the role-play. Discuss what worked and what did not. Have the role-play participants share how they felt emotionally during the role-play. Regular practice will really set your team up for success when they need these skills.
When I have my students role-play, inevitably, real emotions come up. For people who do not have a theatre background, they are surprised that a made-up scenario can elicit authentic emotions. What role-plays do is allow the participants to experience what it is like if they suddenly get upset. They will usually not be able to think clearly and their ability to resolve conflict decreases. Recently, we had a business negotiation role-play and when one of the participants said, “This isn’t anything personal. It’s strictly business,” it really upset the other participant. So she immediately responded with “You have only been here for two years. You have no idea about the community here and the bonds that people have with our company.” Within moments, two different people were feeling agitated and confrontational. Without practicing de-escalation techniques, this role-play could have deteriorated. But luckily, both parties took a deep breath to re-center themselves and continued to move through their negotiation.
3 . Lead by example. Make sure that you are the type of leader who does not shy away from dealing with conflicts. You can either mediate conflicts between your team members or use your skills to gracefully handle conflicts as they come your way. Prioritize your team’s conflict resolution skills. Listen before you express your own opinions, so that you can formulate a more accurate response to a situation.
4 . Set rules of engagement with your team BEFORE any conflict arise. Set ground rules before anything escalates. Go over ground rules with everyone as a team, so that everyone uses the same frameworks when dealing with difficult conversations. Make sure that you have buy-in from everyone about the ground rules. You can suggest things like, “No interrupting”, “Either party can call for a time-out”, “Repeat back what you heard before responding.” “We agree to each speak for no more than five minutes at a time.” Setting these rules before any difficult conversation will go a long way to having a productive conversation.
When I set the ground rules prior to a mediation session, it is incredibly easy to police those rules, because everyone has agreed to them. If people interrupt, they usually stop themselves and apologize. One time I made the mistake of not stating that I would be asking parties to repeat what they heard, because everyone was in a separate session and I did not think that I would need to ask them this. However, it turned out that even in separate rooms, the parties were getting upset and when I asked one woman to please repeat back what it was that she heard me say, she got very offended. She felt that I was condescending to her. You can see that unless I set up the expectation beforehand, things can go sideways so quickly.
5 . If you end up being the mediator of various issues, get trained in mediation. Mediation is a skill that does not necessarily come naturally to people. It is so important to gain these skills if you find that you are in the middle of a conflict between others. You want to ensure that you are providing neutrality. I have heard stories where people try mediating, but do not understand the nuances that come with mediating. Parties end up feeling worse than before. The mediator might end up looking like they side with one side over the other. Mediation is a great skill for leaders to get trained in. It is not too long of a training, but it will really propel you to excel where others do not. You will have a greater understanding of human nature after being trained. This will not only help you when informally mediating conflicts among your team, but it will help you lead-quietly, yet powerfully.
I used to work at an agency that required many untrained staff to mediate between families and their live-in childcare givers. Without proper training, some people ended up looking like they sided with the host families. The childcare givers felt unheard and bullied. Some of the managers did not understand that being a mediator required us to be neutral, even if we were being paid by the agency. This created mistrust among some of the child caregivers during mediations. Each word we choose to use is very important and choosing the wrong word could mean breaking the trust that people put into you as a neutral third party mediator.
In your experience, what are the most common sources of conflict within a team, and how do you proactively address these potential issues before they escalate?
Mistrust and interpersonal dynamics are probably two of the most common reasons why people end up in conflict at work. Another more insidious reason why conflict may occur is due to someone trying to sabotage a colleague. The best way to proactively address any of these issues to set a strong tone of collaboration as a leader. What does this mean? It means to prioritize team building every day. You can do this by have a team stand-up every day at the beginning of the day for a few minutes. It can also mean you meet once a week for a little longer and discuss what is on everyone’s plate for the week and what the collective goals are for the team. It is also critical for leaders to ensure that their team members have the tools and skills required for conflict resolution. If that means getting training for your team, then do it. It will be well-worth the investment. It will save you turnover, create loyalty within the organization and save money on litigation.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I think teaching conflict resolution skills to everyone at the grade school and repeating it again in high school would be fantastic. It really is a critical skill that so many of us lack. This inability to resolve conflicts can help spread conflict throughout the world. Part of the reason why the U.S. is starting to feel more and more fractured to people is due to our lack of conflict resolution skills. Because we cannot resolve conflicts civilly, we begin to feel that we are at odds with one another. The reality is that we are more alike than we are different. We just need to understand how to move through our conflicts more easily, quickly and with grace.
How can our readers further follow you online?
I have two websites. One is for my mediation work and the other is for my negotiation and communication training work. You can find me at https://shikinanegotiationacademy.com/ or https://www.shikinamediation.com/. People can connect with me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/aliceshikina/.
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
About the Interviewer: Eric L. Pines is a nationally recognized federal employment lawyer, mediator, and attorney business coach. He represents federal employees and acts as in-house counsel for over fifty thousand federal employees through his work as a federal employee labor union representative. A formal federal employee himself, Mr. Pines began his federal employment law career as in-house counsel for AFGE Local 1923 which is in Social Security Administration’s headquarters and is the largest federal union local in the world. He presently serves as AFGE 1923’s Chief Counsel as well as in-house counsel for all FEMA bargaining unit employees and numerous Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs unions.
While he and his firm specialize in representing federal employees from all federal agencies and in reference to virtually all federal employee matters, his firm has placed special attention on representing Veteran Affairs doctors and nurses hired under the authority of Title. He and his firm have a particular passion in representing disabled federal employees with their requests for medical and religious reasonable accommodations when those accommodations are warranted under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (ADA). He also represents them with their requests for Federal Employee Disability Retirement (OPM) when an accommodation would not be possible.
Mr. Pines has also served as a mediator for numerous federal agencies including serving a year as the Library of Congress’ in-house EEO Mediator. He has also served as an expert witness in federal court for federal employee matters. He has also worked as an EEO technical writer drafting hundreds of Final Agency Decisions for the federal sector.
Mr. Pines’ firm is headquartered in Houston, Texas and has offices in Baltimore, Maryland and Atlanta, Georgia. His first passion is his wife and five children. He plays classical and rock guitar and enjoys playing ice hockey, running, and biking. Please visit his websites at www.pinesfederal.com and www.toughinjurylawyers.com. He can also be reached at eric@pinesfederal.com.
Workplace Conflict Resolution: Alice Shikina Of Shikina Mediation and Arbitration On How Team… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.