Healthy conflict

It is in the darkest of times that we need light the most, and yet, it is in the hardest of times that darker thoughts pull us back like tide to the shore.

Every day we wake up ready for uncertainty. Every day we get out of bed, we get ready and we go about our day, we unconsciously follow whatever routine or lack of one we choose and knowingly or not, we face and embrace the most irrefutable reality: that we do not know what this day will bring.

We do this daily. And yet we often tell ourselves, and others, that we are “not good with ambiguity”. The truth is we are quite advanced experts of ambiguity. We live our lives making choices that more often than not don’t yield the results we wished or expected. As children we learn to fall when we hoped to make a leap and fly, and as we felt the wind on our cheeks and immense joy in the deepest corner of our souls, the never before experienced force of gravity becomes a certainty we had not encountered. We deal with ambiguity by learning how to approach the next jump.

As teenagers we feel the urge to declare our love to one special being only to find it is unrequited. But we tell ourselves, as much as regret having been through the rejection, that our love was too great to control and therefore we deal with the uncertainty by embracing the force of our own feelings.

And as adults we learn to work hard towards something that eventually leads us nowhere. We work hard for something knowing there are no guarantees and we deal with that ambiguity when we fail, when we hurt, by telling ourselves we did our best.

So we have the tools and the proof that in uncertain times we learn, we relinquish control, we console ourselves and we move on. Deep inside, we know we were never capable of making our external environment be as we wished, we know we need to see things through - sometimes through difficulties, to be able to adapt. And we know we do adapt, sometimes in ways we unable to imagine.

Then why is it then that we become more comfortable with the illusion that we are in control, than accepting the reality that we are not? Why is it we don’t know how to respond to hardship and conflict that come from external sources? So much so, we avoid this conflict and challenges to the point of detriment of our own growth and progress? Or even worse, why is it we respond to hardship with toughness, and attack hoping it will make things go away?

Is it because we’ve disguised this avoidant and delusional response as something positive? Something called “grit” and “ambition”.

I cannot know, but it is likely our culture is at the root of this. Possibly because we are told that all it takes to achieve something is to truly want it. Because we’ve heard “winners never quit” on multiple occasions, because “impossible is nothing” and because “if you want something right you have to do it yourself”.

All of these are sayings that have shaped us. Our mentality is one obsessed with brute force. But what if a softer way of interacting with our environment was as successful, or even more rewarding? What if we approached externally caused hardship by understanding, appreciating and leveraging what surrounds us? What if we’ve thought we needed brute force to make it, but we are actually the ones breaking inside from all the pressure?

Conflict at work

This is actually what happens when we face ourselves with tension at home and at work. In our jobs, our patriarchal customs have taught us that we must make change happen, at any cost.

Here are some examples of situations where our society rewards brute-force behaviour:

A boss requires us to meet a deadline that is objectively needing of more hours than there are in a working day.

We are strongly encouraged to make a sell to make our commission even when we know our client wants something different.

In a working project or company, two or more team members have different objectives to meet, and they are encouraged to fight for resources.

Unsurprisingly conflict becomes associated with winning or losing. Unwillingly a difficult dialogue becomes a duel. Ironically, also at work, other companies avoid conflict altogether. Often it is actually thought to be an attribute or a company value. And people actually start checking out or fleeing when any tension builds up, because they know they are encouraged to avoid conflict. In short, we are asked to deal with uncertainty and ambiguous situations through our instinct to fight or flight.

The downside of this is that when teams fight or power through they lose energy, they lose focus and they put too much pressure on a fragile ecosystem. With time people break and the environment becomes unlivable. In the case of the flight mode: it leads to discordance in opinions that are never affronted. It can take share as disparity between team sentiment and leadership satisfaction. Or it can become individual discordance, like an entrepreneur or manager who struggles with a client or superior and resorts to accommodating their every wish as a way to keep their job, but as a result feels internal dissatisfactions. Which in turn becomes exhausting and unsustainable.

But there is another way. Tension can be used as a driving force of change. All it takes is for us to remember some of the lessons we learned already about uncertainty at an earlier age. It is about accepting we were never in control, it is about leaving room to emotions to shape the best outcome, it is about everyone aiming to do their best and move on. But how can we practically do this? How do we salvage the relationship? How do we not leave ourselves exposed to ridicule? How do we lead the change in compromise ensuring we take into consideration our perspectives? 

Follow the steps and read through the concepts of our learning guide. You will learn about the 5 steps to resolve and prepare for healthy conflict:

1. Step out of the comfort zone

2. Face the facts

3. Understand your own perspective

4. Map the trigger

5. Define success

If you want to receive our working guide, click on the image below: