Sathnam Sanghera: Five Pieces of Advice

Five Pieces of Advice

A couple of Mondays ago I wrote a piece about coaching and was inundated with e-mails, some of which were supportive, some of which were not. Among the messages that were not so positive was one from a female reader.

“Dear Mr Sanghera,” it began. “Your comments on coaching are almost a direct quote from Raj Persaud’s article on psychotherapy and counselling in the FT about 12 months ago. Heaven forbid that you may have quoted him without attributing it. I imagine that your readers are likely to be using coaches to help them deal with dilemmas in their business lives. But then what would you know about running a business? The closest you will get is penning fascile [sic] prose about something which you know nothing about. Still, it made a good read and made you look a total plonker. Not something I expect from the FT really. Regards.”

This message gave me a certain satisfaction. One of the points in the column was that people who relied on coaches – essentially untrained shrinks – were a bit daft. And here was someone who employed a coach showing all the signs of being just that. Case proven. As with all abusive messages, I did not bother to reply and moved swiftly on.

But the e-mail preyed on my mind. Should I reply after all? Being regarded as a plonker was fine; being accused of plagiarism was less so. But if I did reply, how should I do it? Would a cross message just antagonise this reader further? Would a nice message have any effect? I had no idea what to do. Maybe I needed a coach.

Somehow, I could not bring myself to do something quite that silly. Instead I enrolled on a course offered by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development entitled “Managing Relationships and Conflict”. I had read on the internet that the two-day course could help participants “deal with conflict in a constructive fashion”. Exactly what I needed.

Not long after enrolling I found myself in a meeting room in London with two tutors, 10 trainees and a flip chart. Much of the content was irrelevant, until we got to a seminar called “Understanding Conflict”. “Any difference of opinion is a conflict,” explained the kindly tutor. “But it can vary from a helpful difference of views, to a dangerous disagreement. In certain workplaces it can end up with people getting killed.”

Having alarmed us in this manner, he introduced something called the Thomas-Kilman Conflict Mode Instrument. This outlined five basic approaches towards conflict. The first three were “confrontation”, “avoidance” and “accommodation”. These, he said, were all undesirable, as they tended to reinforce the conflict and create more ill-feeling. Even the pleasant-sounding “accommodation” approach was no good: it involved “apologising and conceding the issue to the other person regardless of the rights and wrongs of the matter”.

Much more preferable approaches to conflict, he said, were “compromise” (“bargaining with the other person until a compromise is reached”) or, better still, “collaboration”, (“treating the need to repair the relationship as a problem which the parties need to resolve together”). He then outlined a five-step guide to resolving conflicts in this “collaborative” style: (1) identify what you agree about; (2) identify what you disagree about; (3) agree to what you disagree about; (4) agree to what you agree about; (5) agree a process for resolution.

With these words glowing on a Powerpoint slide behind him, he added: “You could tackle any conflict with this framework, even the Israel- Palestine dispute.” I could not wait to get back to the office to test out this claim on my abusive reader. I composed the following message for her: “Thank you for your e-mail about my column on coaching. I agree that many readers are likely to be using coaches and I agree that I know little about running a business (though I did run the tuck shop at infant school). However, I disagree with your suggestion that my piece was plagiarised, that my prose was facile and made me look “a total plonker”.

“I think we need to agree that we disagree about coaching. We also need to agree on what we agree about – namely, that many FT readers use coaches and that I know little about running a business. I hope this e-mail goes some way to restoring your faith in the FT. Very best wishes, Sathnam.”

I did not expect much in return: she had sent her message in “confrontation” mode and I suspected she would switch to “avoidance”. I was surprised therefore to receive a response in a matter of hours later. “Thank you for responding to my e-mail,” it said. “You are absolutely right. I lost track of the FT’s prime function, which is to stimulate debate.

“As I ranted and raved in the office, several people challenged me on my opinions and a very lively conversation ensued, which would not have happened had I not read your piece. So my apologies for calling you a plonker and for suggesting you plagiarised Raj Persaud’s piece. Good luck with your writing. I look forward to reading your columns and I applaud you on how well you have handled this situation. Regards.”

I had been looking forward to making some facile observations about the CIPD course. I was going to take the mickey out of the “how to listen” session and complain that, at a cost of GBP875 for two days, the whole thing was a complete waste of money. But it seems it was not at all. In fact, I could not recommend the course more strongly.

If you need help with conflict, then sign up. Hurry though – there will probably be a fight for places.