High conflict

High conflict individuals really got me thinking. I decided that I am probably in the 90% of people who are not high conflict and I would like to remain there for the rest of my professional life.
Now, my parents own their own business and have grown it from a 3 person company to 45 plus employee company and I couldn’t be prouder, but they have to deal with so many different personalities and adapt their leadership style to each one.
Shannon is one of their employee’s who I would consider high conflict and when speaking to my parents about how they deal with her they reiterated a lot of what we learned in class today. They would first speak to her emotions saying that they understood where she was coming from, they would use non-verbal cues to help her through and lastly, they try to educate other people in the company on how to deal with high conflict people. My parents also decided that it would be beneficial for Shannon and the company in general, if she was able to learn about high-conflict and they sent her on a course.
I believe that their action plan reflects how leaders should approach this question. Control yourself and your actions towards the individual, and then reach out and help that individual to better himself or herself.


One last unrelated note would be that during a presentation today I saw a quote that really spoke to me. “ The status quo is more dangerous than the unknown”. If everyone could live by that philosophy, I think we would all be better off!