13 | Step 5: Clear the Air
- Mar 9
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 8
Read the lesson.
Welcome back. Today we cover the fifth and final step of 1-1 Healthy Conflict and that is the actual conversation. We’re going to call this conversation Clearing the Air - you can term this type of conversation however you like with your family or team, but for today’s session we’re going to call this converwation clearing the air.
And as a reminder you are approaching this conversation
Clear on who you’re offended with and what they did to offend you
Clear on why whatever they did or said offended you
You’re in a Healthy Emotion window
And you’ve made the choice to lean in because this is a person to invest in reconnecting with
And that’s where we’re going to pick up - you’re goal in this Clear the Air conversation is to reconnect. Connection has been lost due to something they’ve done that has caused a loss of trust.
Your goal here is not to teach them a lesson, make them feel bad.
It’s all about reconnection.
So because you’ve done the inner work ahead of time you’re ready for this to be a successfull conversation.
Success in 1-1 healthy conflict is to leave more connected than before and to maintain, maybe even elevate, a sense of honor towards yourself and them.
And here’s how.
One-on-one.
Face to face or real time conversation.
Start with a neutral curious question about your one specific thing.
End with one clear expectation moving forward.
For starters, why one-on-one? The loss of trust can only be built back up one person at a time. And even if something happened in a group that offended you, the only way to get trust back is one person, one relationship at a time.
I've never seen healthy conflict go well with more than two people. It just doesn't work. So one-on-one, face-to-face, so no texting or emailing. There is a human factor that happens when we see someone's face and we hear their voice.
Healthy conflict is between two people, not one person expressing their frustration. And that's what happens, unfortunately. That's the unhealthy side of conflict. It's so easy to sit back and type and craft a message to send someone. But at that point in time, it's not about rebuilding trust. It's about expressing my emotion. So the skillset of self-leadership comes into play here.
The ability to process emotion and have self-control. So when I text or email someone, the human factor significantly decreases. I forget honor way more easily and I want to teach someone that I'm offended by them, not build up trust again.
When I get face-to-face with them or at minimum a phone call where I can hear their voice and they have a chance to respond, to have their voice part of the immediate discussion, that's where honor can live. That's where trust has its best chance of being built back up.
And finally, you start with a question. So what does this do? It gets them speaking. If I come out immediately expressing my offense, they're put on the defense, and a wall comes up. And the goal of building trust back up is now near impossible. But if I start with a question, get them talking, I could possibly learn something that I didn't know.
So if you've ever heard of Stephen Covey's "Seek to Understand," this is what we're talking about here. And you can use these three questions to open up that conversation.
Let's get back to that first example. Let's say it's 2 p.m. on a Wednesday. You expected me to have that project in your inbox by noon. You could start out with a phone call to me and start with, "Hey, help me understand what happened to that project I was supposed to have in my inbox by noon."
And you just go quiet. So what you didn't do was start that phone call with, "Hey, you didn't get the project to me by noon today, now I'm going to have to stay late at work, miss my daughter's game, dot dot dot."
Which would cause me to start defending myself, and building connection back up is kind of out the window. But, good thing, you started out the conversation with a question. "Hey, what happened? I thought I was supposed to have that project in my inbox by noon." Open-ended question.
So I'm either going to answer in one of two ways. I either tell you something that makes sense to you, like "Hey, yeah I'm so sorry I should have let you know, but I got in a wreck this morning and I'm actually at the hospital right now." So you just learned something that increased your perspective to understanding. And trust doesn't really need to be built back up because it wasn't ever lost because now you understand what happened.
Or, I tell you something that doesn't make sense to you, and now we have to work to build that trust back up. So I say something like, "Oh, it's only 2 p.m., I didn't know you literally needed it at noon."
Now you can say, "Okay, so when I say noon, I mean it in the literal sense. And the way that I want to move forward working together is when I say a timeframe, it's rock solid. If you can't meet that timeline, you need to let me know."
You could go on even further and clarify: "I want to make sure that we're on the same page with this, and I want to have that reliance on you. So moving forward, can you get that to me today by four and no later?"
And I say yes, absolutely. We move forward with clarity.
So remember the expectations not meeting reality gaps. The best healthy conflicts end with clarifying expectations moving forward. Because usually the reason expectations aren't met is due to the lack of you clarifying them. And at the end of healthy conflict, there's your chance to clarify.
I've surprisingly found that lack of clarifying expectations is more so dishonoring. It's like me expecting that you know everything that I want or need. So some people think that it's dishonoring to express expectations or make requests. To me, it's the kind of thing that we should do more often, because you're making it really easy for me to meet expectations, because I know exactly how to work with you. I don't have to guess.
Leaving me guessing how to make you happy is dishonoring. So don't hold back. End those one-on-one healthy conflict conversations with making a request or clarifying expectations moving forward.
So to wrap up again the main point on leaning into Healthy 1-1 Conflict
1-1
Face to face or real time conversation (never text or email)
Start with a neutral curious question about your one specific thing
End with one clear expectation or a request moving forward.
Now here’s the deal - there’s a lot that can happen in between beginning with a neutral curious question and ending with your expectation moving forward.
Here’s something to avoid: bringing in add ons. You know what these are. When you start saying general statements like “you always” or “you never” - that means you’re bringing in more than your one thing to clear the air on. You’re in essence “adding on” … and honoring connections do not keep a list. Honoring connections don’t stack up offenses to build into a court case for later. We clear the air one offense at a time. Avoid bringing the add ons in. Avoid starting a conversation and then taking a turn into something else. Now, here’s the deal, you may get into a clear the air conversation and realize there’s a deeper offense. Perhaps you haven’t processed it and you realize there’s a deeper offense. That’s fine to shift as long as you drop the other offense. Remember clear the airs are about clearing the air on one thing at a time - and make sure that is clarified to whoever you’re talking with. If you want to discuss this a bit more feel free to reach out to me and we can dive a bit deeper.
Okay there’s so much more to say, but I’ll end with this:
This is a daily practice.
I dream of a world where every team, every family, every community has normalized heathy conflict because of how much honor we carry in ourselves and for one another.
My closest comrades - we clear the air multiple times a week.
It takes two minutes.
And we get stronger every time.
This is my dream for you.
Imagine how internally strong your team would be. What could you not get through if everything was on the table to talk through.
The legendary Mr. Rogers - he always said “Whatever is mentionable, is manageable.”
Imagine a team where you could be 100% honest, maybe 120% more honest - meaning more honest than you ever thought possible. Because you had cultivated a safe, honoring, environment where we lean into these things. We always work to honor one another better and we all understand the pathway to that is honest conversations clearing the air when we’ve missed the mark.
I am personally committed and ready to guide you every step of the way.
Practice clearing the air. Be okay not being good at it. Be okay with it being uncomfortable.
Be the leader to go first.
I’ll be with you the entire way.