What Being a Narc in High School Taught Me About Conflict Resolution

Everyone wants to be understood. Few people know how to make others feel understood.

My high school. Photo Credit: Colin Black

“Can you jump on a call? I’m meeting with legal in 5 minutes, and I really hate them.”

This was a message I received from a coworker a week or two into my summer internship at one of the largest banks in the world.

Lest you think that sounds a bit exaggerated or unprofessional, I’ll assure you it’s 100% real. You have to understand… I was working with mostly New Yorkers and a fiery Australian whose favorite words were all four letters.

My job that summer was designing a content creation process for a new education center for the bank. What no one told me was that this project had already failed once because the teams involved didn’t get along.

So that was my job. Cleaning up the mess.

With only 10 weeks to do it.

When I joined that call, I realized I was going to have to fall back on some old training.

Without further ado, this is what being a narc in high school taught me about conflict resolution.

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Back in Southern California, when I was 14 years old, I did what any overachiever (or at least a disorganized overachiever) might do. I signed up for basically every class, every sport, and every club possible. I really didn’t have a plan. I just signed up for anything that sounded remotely interesting.

I signed up for a volunteer drug counseling program called PAL: Peer Assisted Leadership.

We were the narcs on campus.

Or, at least that’s probably how our classmates felt about us.

The idea was that if a student was struggling with drugs or alcohol, by the time a parent or teacher observed the problem, it was probably too late. So the goal was to train students to recognize the signs of addiction and become adept at supporting their fellow students by observing, listening to the needs of their friends, and bringing in adults when necessary.

The truth is, it wasn’t really about policing behavior. We were just trying to notice when something felt off, so we could help our friends.

I don’t have any scientific data behind whether this worked, but I think the idea made sense. Plus, the woman who ran the program had a genuine heart of care for the students.

The most useful takeaway I got from the program was from a training session we did on a crisp Saturday morning.

We were put into pairs of students and given a fake conflict to reenact. Each student took a side and began to argue with each other. What surprised me most was how committed people get to an idea they think they’re supposed to support. Even though it was a reenactment, students got genuinely heated and defensive.

The fake conflicts started to feel like real conflicts.

So here’s what we were told to do. Once the argument got heated, one of the students was supposed to take a pause, think about what the other person was saying, and then repeat it back to their partner.

Now that I’m an adult, I know that’s called active listening.

It’s not exactly rocket science, and it wasn’t surprising to me even as a teenager.

At the same time, just because something is simple or obvious doesn’t mean it’s easy.

And it doesn’t mean that people actually do it.

Most people don’t.

In the case of my high school training session, I tried it out and was shocked to find that it worked. My partner got less tense. The muscles in his shoulders relaxed a little. We started to work our way to a common ground.

Maybe this volunteer drug counseling stuff wasn’t so bad after all.

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When I joined the Zoom call, I went in with some apprehension. After all, I was just a summer intern, and all I really wanted to do was get a job at the end of the summer.

I didn’t expect to be the mediator between teams of lawyers and senior writers.

The conversation started out heated. I decided to let it play out a little, since I didn’t really understand yet exactly what my project would entail that summer.

After a few minutes of back and forth, I could tell we were getting nowhere.

So finally I asked each side, “If you could get everything you wanted, what would it look like?”

I think they were surprised to be asked that. I’m not sure that the idea they could both get what they wanted had seemed within reach.

Once they spoke, I repeated their answers back.

In this case, it was something simple. Both sides wanted more time to do their work, wanted to feel like they weren’t being micromanaged, and wanted to feel respected.

In the end, we made it work.

When I worked at the bank, I didn’t always feel like I contributed much value.

Seven years later, that program generates roughly a billion dollars in lifetime customer value.

I’m not saying that’s because of me. There were dozens of writers, lawyers, web developers, marketers, and others involved, producing thousands of hours of work.

I just helped get the ball rolling.

And oddly enough, I did that by thinking about something I learned in high school.

People don’t want to be listened to. They want to feel listened to.

The only way to make someone feel listened to is to show them.

The next time you find yourself in a conflict, ask yourself: Am I actually listening? Or do I just want to make myself heard?

There’s a quote attributed to St. Francis (and repeated by Stephen Covey):

“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Once people understand each other, they stop acting like enemies.

They start acting like a team.

Teams solve problems.

And that’s what I learned about conflict resolution from being a narc in high school.