John: You're listening to The Present Professional, where we explore the intersections of personal and professional development.

John: To change your experience of life and work with every episode.

Tony: So tune in, grab your notebook, and let's go. Let's go.

John: Welcome to another episode of The Present Professional. Today, we have a special guest with us, Cinnie Noble. We're so excited to have her on and discuss all things conflict management, conflict competency, for one thing that we all encounter personally and professionally, likely on a daily basis if we're not aware. So Sini is based in Toronto, Canada. She's a former lawyer with the Master of Law and Dispute Resolution, and she's been working with conflict for the past 35 years and is a recent recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award. Now, she's developed the evidence-based cinergy model for conflict management coaching, and she and her team coach leaders and others worldwide. And she's also the author of two coaching books, Conflict Mastery, Questions to Guide You, and conflict management coaching, the synergy model. And I'm so excited for you all to learn more about Cine today. I'm excited to learn more about Cine today and a little bit more about how we can better manage conflict in our lives and be more aware of some of the dynamics that our clients have experienced. And with that, I want to hand it over to Cindy to hear a little bit more about her story. How did you get to where you are today?

Cinnie: Well, thank you for asking. It's nice to be here, John and Tony. It's kind of a long trajectory, really, but it started it started as a social worker, a medical social worker many, many years ago, and I was often dealing with conflict I was working in a hospital that had a specialized unit for people with arthritis. And there were lots of dynamics going on that I had to sort of navigate as a young person in my first profession, really. And that led me to when I realized that there were people with disabilities who weren't able to travel. And we thought, well, how does that make any sense around what I've just said to you? But I was a big traveler and I started to notice that people with disabilities weren't traveling. And I ended up, this part of the story is going to make it short, I ended up starting the first travel agency in Canada for people with disabilities. And that was a long time ago. And I came face to face with conflict airlines and hotels and every way I looked and I had to learn how to negotiate when I really didn't have those skills and the amount of conflict about accepting and integrating people with disabilities in the travel world was astounding to me and really difficult and so although I don't think I really knew how to handle conflict well and when I was working in the hospital I learned some things I had to really learn and that actually led me ultimately to go to law school. I became, I realized that I had some advocacy skills in me and that led to that career and I, what I realized though was that that wasn't how I wanted to do conflict and there are other ways but I really became aware of more and more and more about how much conflict pervades our lives, takes over, makes people nuts and and lasts for a long time. The kind of durability that conflict has is ridiculous and makes people's lives miserable. And it taints how they manage conflict generally. And once I was practicing law and realized that there was this whole field of mediation that was out there, I was relatively new at the time and I took training and ultimately became a mediator. But what I realized with that work was that We can help people by training them, by mediating disputes, the issues of dispute, but we don't come with a whole lot of skills to know how to manage conflict. And all the training in the world doesn't really help people's idiosyncratic ways that they've learned how to manage conflict. That doesn't come with training. And I just inadvertently heard about the world of coaching. And it was new. It was in the early 90s. And I heard about it sort of mid to late 90s. And this to me was the penultimate. This is finding some way to figure out what is needed in order to work with people on a one-to-one basis. The most of us are not conflict competent. We don't come with skills. We don't necessarily learn them in our households. We might have some theory, but we don't have enough experience about how we want to be and how we can get there. And so that led me to look at there was nobody doing conflict management coaching. I looked at the International Coaching Federation, and that led me to develop a model. And that's what I've been doing for it's the longest career I've had. I've shifted around a bit, as you can tell, but they've all kind of led to where I am now, which is really around supporting people to gain as much conflict competence as they want and need in order to participate in a healthy way in relationships.

Tony: Wow. That's an amazing story. Cinnie, I wanted to just chime in because I never was a social worker, but I worked in social services. And when you talked about your pathway, kind of having a social services background, a social work background, and how it led you to where you are today. I just wanted to commend that because I understand that when you're in those environments, the people that you work with and that you see, it just leads to a bleeding heart for advocacy. So I just wanted to comment and just say that. I'm sure John has a comment too, so I'll let him go ahead as well, but just wanted to say that, lift that up.

John: There's so much gold and I wish we had enough time to, you know, to unpack all of the different stages of all of the different stages of your journey. But it sounded like that coaching really made this click for you in a way that you found that you could actually serve the root of the problem. And could you could you say a little bit more about like what clicked for you there and you know how coaching helps folks get to the root of the problem when it comes to conflict?

Cinnie: Yeah you know what I'm not sure you it's always getting to the root of why people manage conflict the way they do that's often you know as you know in coaching you don't go back into it's not a psychological model it's not dealing with some of the root causes. However, it is important to deal with the root of whatever the person brings to you, because the root of how they manage conflict could be very different, or it could have some influence on how they manage your conflict. Now, because coaching is much more here and now and future oriented, I don't go so much the route, but I do want to find out what is it that triggered this? when people bring a dispute. It's really about what happened that the other person said or did. It's not you know, this reminds me of my father. It's really, you know, this is what they said or did so that people can bring to the present and to whatever situation is going on that seemed to trigger off conflict for them. And that process of just people identifying it is not always that easy. You know, where we come from with our the things that trigger us the roots of that is underneath is that what values they hold and what needs they have about their relationship with the other person and what what their identity is about and it's getting to when someone said or did something or didn't say or do something what was it that was which value or values were touched and undermined and which needs that they have that were not being acknowledged and what happened to their identity. So I think values, needs, identity are the underlying and that can come from, you know, wherever it's at. We develop them over time and we all have them and they can change over time. So it's common in my work with leaders, which is who I'm mostly coached, that that discovery of what it is that they felt was being undermined, what it was that was being challenged, is a really critical piece before people can even figure out what to do about how to move forward.

John: Hmm. What was being undermined now? And I don't want to get too far into values, needs and identity and and not overstep, but go deeper into the you know, what would be part of your model. But I feel that that's something connecting the trigger to something that people can really understand, resonate with, and feel, and then to coach around something like that. Now, if we're thinking about, if you're sitting here listening right now and thinking about a conflict in your life, personally, professionally, things that come up and noticing what would be the one thing that actually triggered you. I feel that a lot of times even when I'm talking to clients about triggers, it ends up being like the emotion itself. I felt angry, but it's really that underlying value and need that had been overstepped or that had been disregarded that is the root of the trigger.

Cinnie: Right, exactly. It is. But it's really what you look first at the action that the other person said or did, or didn't say or do. It's that that is you connect to the to the values needs identity. It's not because unless people can make a connection right there, then it's kind of a kind of a vague way of identifying what's going on for them. So it's understanding when people do this, or they know, let's say, when people are condescending, when somebody was condescending towards me, then there's a value needed entity. It's not, it doesn't come in a vacuum. And the important piece about that is that it's, you know, what is the action, or words that were that experience is being undermining or threatening or challenging? What did they say or do? looking at the value. And then what happens is, because this is usually historical, we go through a common sequence. When that happens is that we make assumptions about why the other person didn't say what they did. You know, it's an attribution bias thing that comes in. It's a natural way of people thinking. And it doesn't, just because it's natural, doesn't make it right. It just means we've gotten to some assumption about the other person based on that trigger and our values being undermined. And that sort of piece of it, that whole sequence, really reflects why somebody is responding the way they're responding, what's going on. So that's the important part of when you're coaching someone to find out what assumptions they made. Because, you know, I think it was Young that said, well, make an assumption about why they've done something, our reaction is based on what we've just assumed about why they did what they did when we don't even know why they did what they did. We just do it. We attribute intentions to people.

Tony: I hear what you're saying and I wanted to ask a question about a piece of what you mentioned in the beginning of your prior answer because when you talk about conflict management and you kind of mentioned this a second ago around what people aren't saying. How do you, in conflict management and with the coaching that you do, how do you coach around or help find the root cause of things when you're talking about conflict management, when you use what's not being said? The pieces of maybe an advocate who's dealing with a bully or they're on the victim side of a conflict. There's something that's not being said sometimes, and how do you work with that without passing judgment, without making assumptions? But you know there's something that's holding space there that adds value to maybe your model or how you coach, but I think you understand what I'm asking. I just want to know, how do you work with that? They're dealing with a bully, it could be that, or maybe there's something that they're not saying because maybe it's avoidance that's happening.

Cinnie: Yeah, you know, I think that's it's a good question. I think, Tony, that some of this is like about the relationship you develop with clients so that I'm a huge proponent of naming things as a coach. I think that the the unsaid, but I don't name it.

null: I say to client, what aren't you saying?

Cinnie: You know, something's going on. What's what's happening? What is it you'd really like to say here?

null: Or

Cinnie: I'm picking up something. So I don't speak for clients or put words in people's mouths, even though I think I might have a sense of what's going on, which is a lot of coaches are very talented at doing that. I think it's much more about it's much more client driven in my process. So it's more about having clients find their voice rather than using my voice or what I'm cleaning. And, you know, I because that whole the whole kind of skill base of coaches that I learned and paraphrasing, because I think that we're not doing justice to people whose verbalization of it, of what's going on is far more powerful than anything that I could say or do. So the unsaid is, I might even say to somebody, what's the unsaid here? What do you wish I'd ask you? If you were out in the middle of a forest, nobody could hear you, what would you want to say? It really requires having a huge trust relationship with your client before any of that can happen.

John: creating that foundation of trust to be able to say what's not being said. Now, I feel that that ties really well with the assumptions. What are we assuming about something? Because how else do you determine what is the the driving factor around why someone else did or say what they said or didn't do or didn't say. It's like how do we help someone become conflict competent and move beyond the assumption and be able to actually work with something there to understand the intentions of the other individual.

Cinnie: It's probably the crux of a lot of conflict management, John, which is around how do you get a perspective that you don't have already? And most people, when you're in conflict, have lost a perspective on where the other person's coming from. They even lost their own perspective. And so part of what coaching is about is shifting people to be able to be into the part of their brain where they can think from the emotional part of blurting out what's going on for them. And that requires So I use a particular tool that I developed through research, which is called the Not So Merry Go Round a Conflict. And it's around having my clients break down the conflict to understand what did you assume happened? And what was it that triggered you? What was undermined for you? And what went too far? And then for you and what consequences there are. So there are a lot of elements of conflict that are depicted in a not so merry-go-round. It's a circular nature of conflict. And when I work with clients, I talk to them about the circular nature. That's we all get on this merry-go-round. And just like I do, and you do, so does the other person. So let's see, what did you observe about how the other person got into conflict as well with you? Because if you just operate on the basis that the client's in conflict, but the other person's squeaky clean, you're, you know, that's not the case. And the client's squeaky clean and the other person it's all their fault. You perpetuate it if you don't look at what did you observe going on for the other person. And that is a way of, I still use the not-so-merit ground, which is an analytical tool. And it's important to use it once the person's starting to shift, to be able to think that they're ready to look at the perspective they've invented, or they've, you know, gone on about the other person, and now it's time to analyze what went on. And What happens is that clients start to step back and that's probably one of the best ways for people to get perspective is to look at their piece of what happened and what would the other person say happened between the two of you. Again, you have to have lots of trust with the client because this is admitting that they also had a part of it. And it's so critical to coaching because otherwise, if you don't do that, you're operating the basis that the person has been bereaved by, you know, some awful thing the other person said or did when in fact they also were part of it. So that process is an integral part of coaching. And I think that once people are able to step back and look at how they might have contributed to the dynamic, then they're better able to step back altogether to say what they need to do about it. So they've owned it. And that ownership piece is probably one of the biggest parts of conflict management coaching. And if it's not done, One of the reasons it's not done is because many coaches, because we train coaches in our practice, is that people feel like it's confrontational to ask their client, what part did you play in this? And so the way that you do that is important and the trust you build and that people are comfortable enough saying, yeah, I screwed up here. And so the role of the coach, besides asking powerful questions, is really about creating that crucible with letting on, you know, yeah, I'm not so great at this. You know, most people are not great at conflict. We don't get trained in conflict as kids, you know, and even if we do in our schools, one of my nieces works, was working at a school where they had, thank goodness, conflict management for little kids. And that's not easy because they still go home to a family that doesn't necessarily manage conflict very well. So we don't come with the tools. So being able to be an adult, who I mostly coach, although the model is used with younger people too, to be able to feel safe enough to really dig into what you do that you need to change. that just isn't working for you. And it's all about habits. And we develop habits about conflict. They may not be good ones, but they're habits. We're used to it. When this happens, this is what we do. And it's that part in between that I'm talking about. Until you can gain more perspective, you'll just continue to do the habit over and over.

John: Wow. Do you find that those conflict habits have certain patterns or you would say, would you say that there's, I don't know, three core habits that show up in different flavors or something like that, that the folks default to, or is it truly as dynamic as the individual?

Cinnie: It's really as dynamic as the individual. If you get triggered by somebody who criticizes you, for some people that would be Bring it on. I need to hear it. No, I don't like what you said. For other people, it would be, you know, reacting to it. And there's that in a way that says, you know, who are you to give me that criticism? And the in-between is pretty long and it'll depend on the person. So I think that's why breaking it down, which you cannot do in training so much, being able to get to people's, as I mentioned earlier, idiosyncratic ways of doing is a discovery, a self-discovery as much as anything.

null: When that happens, where do you go?

Cinnie: What happens to you? Where do you go in your mind? And I've been surprised many times about what somebody would say would trigger me, wouldn't trigger you, vice versa, all over the place. And then why? Which values needs identity? And those are very basic. Values needs identity are really basic. It's what we've developed for eons. It's how it doesn't mean we don't hold pretty strongly to them. But that's, you know, when something happens, we're holding pretty strongly to whatever is going on there. And what happens in coaching is that people start to, once people identify that, and get a sense of why they went to where they went, and the assumptions they made, you can question assumptions by saying, you know, why those assumptions? What happened? How does that connect? If it weren't those things, And if you've ever done that, if your best friend did it, what would you assume? It's like we don't know the reason. So let's just throw it all the possibilities here. And just doing that opens up a whole lot of thinking for people that they wouldn't normally come with.

Tony: Wow. Cinnie, can you can you talk about the healing process that you've seen occur when a person has for the first time maybe seen themselves as a part of the problem in conflict management?

Cinnie: Yeah, those insights are amazing. When people start to dissect and I refer to it often as deconstructing the conflict so you can reconstruct going forward. When people start to make some realizations of how they made assumptions based on the trigger and their values and their identity, the insights are pretty huge. And, you know, it's what happens as an aside to this is that once people start to realize the connections, the next time that they are triggered, they are bound to look at, OK, this is what I'm experiencing, at least because when I do follow up with people or they come back for coaching, they've often already realized that the assumptions that they made and the insights they gained by looking at what they do helps them with durability, with other conflicts. That alone is like a huge reward for people to realize that once they have identified how they go there, that they are more likely to stop themselves earlier on or when they get there, they'll do some figuring out some, you know, reckoning of what went on with them. And I think the biggest insights come not only when they identify their own values and identity and why they responded the way they did, but when they realize they're part of it. And that's what many people are afraid to go to. There's a lot of resistance often for that. Once we own what we believe happened, pretty hard to change that. And we build 12 people what's gone on in that situation, each time it gets a little bit different. And it's one of the reasons why I'm not huge on storytelling when it comes to conflict is as a concept, because it's been told many times, it's taken on arms and legs of its own. And the reality is, we're not hearing the whole story when people do that. So the whole story, it really is more humbling for people. and that breaks it down in a way that they have the kind of recollections of their part and probably the insight to be able to make a shift about the habit that they've got and how that's going to change in the future. In my world, if you get a lot of time with clients, Some clients that I have, they're executives that have got not just one dispute, but many. And it's not just the disputes, it's the way they manage confidence or conflict confidence. They haven't developed the tools in the first place, and so they have repeated disputes. And that way of being able to gain some confidence to be able to understand, firstly, that conflict's inevitable. It's going to happen. Managers get named into leadership positions, and they are really great at the expertise that they've got in the field, but it doesn't make them good managers. And one of the biggest things they have problems with is conflict. And so, I mean, ideally, as soon as people are named leaders, they get coaching around us so that they can start to undo habits. And that takes time. And I've had clients for five, six months, I've got clients that have come back, I've had clients over a two or three year period, every time they're running into another conflict, they realize that it's not just about the dispute, it's about the way they react to conflict. And it's about shifting habits. And that takes a lot more time. You can deal with a dispute in a relatively short period of time, but the actual changing of a habit takes a lot of time.

John: I'm seeing these steps evolve of this more like self-awareness, looking in at what are the things that trigger me and why. What are the values, needs, and identity that I'm holding on to so strongly that it's causing this visceral reaction that then puts me into this, conflict habit that puts me into the way you know the automatic way that i can respond to conflict based on you know however many pieces of upbringing and you know conditioning and things that have created that habit So there's the becoming self-aware of that process, taking ownership over it, and really taking responsibility for it. And then there's this next step that I feel like we just moved into of, okay, now what? Now I'm aware of the automatic reaction. Now, how do I want to consciously choose to engage in conflict, which is what I'm hearing with conflict competency and shifting habits. Now that you've become aware, you're moving into this stage, what are some of the strategies or conscious choices that you've seen really work for people or people have breakthroughs on and how they've manage the conflict once they're aware. So I'll just leave that to you as where do you see or what strategies do you see people taking on in this step?

Cinnie: So another great question. You men have really great questions. I want to just clarify that not everybody comes to conflict management coaching to look at developing stronger conflict competence. It's often around managing a certain dispute. And so the trajectory ends up after they've kind of made some insights as to how they want to manage it. The overall changing conflict competence, becoming more conflict competent, isn't necessarily about a specific dispute. It's generally about how you manage conflict and what you need to know. And so it would be not just this dispute, but for generally. And so the kinds of strategies, so some of this is people trying out new ways of being. and they really do it with me and with themselves within the code in a safe place. They might go out and try some new things based on having being able to identify how they want to be instead. So, you know, the classic goal, the classic coaching framework, you know, here you are and here's where you want to be. It's where do you want to be and how do you want to be? Most people actually can identify that. And if they're saying, well, I'm not sure, it'd be like, that you would really like to emulate. It's getting people to get set intentions and getting really clear on, you know, what is, who do I want to be when it comes to conflict? And how do I want to be seen? How do I want to be perceived that I'm not now? And so people can work hard on that. And that's, that's a very goal oriented kind of question about, you know, when, when you're done here, what are you going to be like, how will people describe you? How do you want to be described, all of that. And working away at that, then takes okay, what situation are you not that person and in taking it and how, what's the redo? And so that kind of rehearsal looking at, you know, being very concrete about how will you be? How will I see you? What, how will your tone of voice be? How will your, you know, how will your face, like getting people really to get in touch with who that person is, that isn't now that they want to be, without taking away from who they are as a person, you know, that you can, it's, it's, you know, our how our how we function, how we communicate, generally is not somebody might not want to change that. They just want to change when they get triggered, how they change or when they're going to react, how they're going to change. And that that rehearsal until people get comfortable and then trying it out can take a long time. I don't think we always, think about any habit you want to change. It just doesn't happen right away. People who wanted to give up smoking, for instance, that wasn't a habit of mine, but I certainly had lots of friends who wanted to do that. It doesn't happen in a day and it doesn't happen right away. And I remember someone saying, oh, it's just when I'm sitting at a restaurant after a meal that I just want to sit. Well, that period of time. So what are you going to do instead is the kind of stuff you actually do in this where you get people saying, when you start to go there, what do you need to be doing? And what do you need to be thinking? What do you need to be, what do you want to be feeling? Like getting people so in touch with the wide range of how we show up when it comes to conflict. And that could be body language, facial language, words, tone of voice, all of that. So you might record, sometimes a record if people want that, play it back. How do you want to say it differently? You know, it's really, it's a process. And it's not something that happens very easily. And I always think it's, sort of an interesting thing about coaching that people underestimate or undermine the amount of time it takes for people to shift habits.

John: I agree. And I think that it involves a level of grace as well too, right? And not being so hard on ourselves through the process and understanding what you're doing is rewiring neural pathways. It takes time for that to physically occur in your mind. So give yourself a little grace.

Cinnie: Oh, I think also, Grace, I think absolutely. And I love using it that word for it. It's also like using humor, like this hard stuff. So unless you're kind of having some fun with your client about it, so that they can. So I mean, sometimes I might say, Okay, so what's the old self going to say here, and they'll play it out, like, really, like, you know, huge. And, you know, so once you develop rapport, because you don't get people can play with it and then try things out and feel safe with you. It takes a while, but once they get there, it can be fun, it can be interesting, it's really usually quite mind-expanding for people. And the kind of feedback, to go back to Tony's questions around, you know, that people actually have seen a shift in how they react and that they get feedback from people, like their partners or their kids or not just their work people. about, you know, I really like who you've become. And I don't know, I've told this story. I don't know, John, if I told the story that you heard me in a webinar some months ago was I had a client who said to me that his wife wanted to meet me. And I thought, oh, I wonder what that was about. And so, of course, you know, I'm happy to meet her. And do you want to bring her to the next session? Yeah, she'll just come at the beginning. She wants to meet you and open the door. And she gave me a hug. She just hugged me. And she said, thank you, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. And he said to me, he was a head of a board and he's of a nonprofit board. And he said that, that apparently what I'm learning, I'm doing at home. And I said, Well, remember, and he said, I remember, he interrupted me that I said, practice with your partner, practice with your kids, practice with your sibling, like whatever. So he did. And he told me he was doing it, but I hadn't quite realized what had gone on. And I guess she became sort of party to him, saying to him, no, that one won't work.

null: And so it became something for them.

Cinnie: And I think that's fantastic. I love that story.

Tony: That's a great example of it working personally and professionally. I wanted to ask a question about something you mentioned because John and I are both dads here and you talked about conflict management in kids. You kind of briefly touched on that. Can you expound on that just a little bit and maybe touch on how that works and what ages?

Cinnie: Well, I don't do it myself, but I have trained people that have trained, you know, kids, teenagers, and they've coached them with the with using the model that I have. There's not enough of starting when kids are young to teach them how to manage conflict.

null: There's more and more.

Cinnie: I can remember my actually my former husband many years ago, he worked at a peer mediation program. So a peer mediation program. And it had its roots in the US, I don't know where now, but it seemed to fall off. And my niece who works in public schools said they had this program where they, if you're in a conflict of what you say and what you do and how, you know, so it was giving people real instruction, you know, take a deep breath, like it was very, you know, instructional. We don't do enough of that. And I think that looking at where you can get conflict programs for starting kids young, the thing is kids go home to a household that might not manage conflict well, unless the parents know how to manage conflict well, kids are getting double messages, they are more likely to use what their parents have than what they're learning at school, and they're going to go off to the next grade and next grade and new kids, etc. And so having some way of how you manage, I was just working actually with a woman who she's she was yelling at her staff about things and she said you know I was kind of brought up this way and I do that and people you know my staff don't like it very much and she was referred for coaching because people were complaining about it and in the course of the conversation one of her she was working out of the home and one of her kids yelled and she yelled back and they're going back and forth and I said so any lessons you're getting from like she, it took a while for the penny to drop, that her kids were doing what she's doing in the household. It was like, and I think we don't, you know, we just do it our daily life without thinking that everything you do in your relationship is what they're going to be doing. That they think it must be right, because you're mom and dad. And I think or dad and dad or mom and mom. And I think that kind of is really, like how to how to have families learn how to manage conflict would be amazing. I don't have time for that. But I think it does start young. And I think that not only does it start young, but that if you're going to teach kids at school, you need to be teaching the families as well about what you're doing and how to reflect that in the household, like how to be consistent about what we're teaching in the household. I think it would be really hard. People just come, we're hardwired, you know, at a pretty young age about how we pass it on generation after generation about how to do that. Interestingly, I come from a family that there's not a harsh word in our house. If anybody was angry, they would go to their room. Right? So it's not, took me a long time to figure that out.

John: Wow, so it's a process. There's something to become mindful of and I hope this discussion helps really spur some thoughts in our listeners to think, how do I manage conflict or have I ever even thought of? how I manage conflict and you know that's the that's the first step is just deciding is this something that you want to look at and become more self-aware of and what would you what would you say to you know to that person that's like just becoming aware and you know wants to wants to go a little bit deeper after hearing this conversation What resources would you direct them to for them to go a little bit deeper? And how could people choose to work with you or some of your associates?

Cinnie: cinergycoaching.com.

John: Perfect. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And it's one thing that keeps coming up for me is, you know, is mindfulness and its role in, in this, you know, in a, you know, developing that self-awareness, whether that be, you know, some type of meditation practice or something that, that resonates with, you know, with each individual it's in that, you know, that, then that process of self-inquiry, but then how to be able to do that in the moment. I love how when we do these topics and new conversations that so many different concepts that we've talked about through the different episodes end up making their way in some way. It's all connected.

Cinnie: I was going to add one more thing around on my website cinergycoaching.com under free resources, your listeners who are listening to it can get the second chapter of that book I just mentioned for free. And your listeners are welcome to do that. The password is GetFreeChapter. It's capital G, capital F, capital C, GetFreeChapter. And so they just look under free resources on my site. And when it comes to conflict mastery questions to guide you, put in that password.

John: Awesome. Thank you so much for that, Cinnie. Any final words from from you, Tony, or questions?

Tony: Well, I think what you just mentioned about the different ways that these types of conversations kind of synergize into, you know, I wouldn't say one thing, but a theme that I'm hearing even from today and other conversations we've had like this is self-awareness is a crucial element to it all. And if two people show up self-aware to a conflict, you know, maybe there'll be less need for conflict management. But that's a big part of the problem is people show up with different things. I'll just leave it at that.

John: That's for sure. Any last words, words of wisdom or final message that you want to leave with our listeners, Cinnie?

Cinnie: Only accept that conflict is inevitable and don't run away from it. If you want to be better, have better relationships, feel better yourself, there's lots to do to get there. And I think it just makes for a happier person if you kind of, you know, more peaceful. Our motto is peace building one person at a time. way of living.

John: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We are super grateful to have you on for this conversation and listeners, we are grateful for you. We will have links to everything that we talked about today with Cinnie and ways that you can work with her and our organization in the show notes and links to the book, the books that she mentioned as well. So, I hope you learned a lot today and you're ready to lean in, give yourself some grace and engage. Engage with not just conflict, but engage with life. So again, thank you for being listeners. We'll see you next time.

Cinnie: Thank you.