Why lean into conflict?

I think there is a lot in common between standing at the top of a ski run and standing in the doorway about to enter the room when you know the conversation could be a bit rocky to navigate. When you are snow skiing, you need the right equipment, the right skills and importantly, you need to learn forward and engage.

In conflict, it is quite similar, those who are not prepared and particularly don’t have the skills they need to manage conflict or negotiate the conversations that need to be addressed tend to lean back, and avoid engaging. When you are skiing, if you get your weight back you become a passenger as you head down the mountain, hitting the bumps and being knocked off course, travelling down the mountain as more of a passenger, hoping for the best. If you lean forward and you have the right skills you are able to traverse the mountain in control and manage your descent.  

So how do you prepare for that conversation that you know you need to have? Let’s start at the start…..

What is conflict?  

We all know what conflict feels like but unpacking some of the elements of conflict can help us to understand conflict. Cinnie Noble in her book Conflict Management Coaching identifies the following as elements of conflict:

• At least one person perceives that there is something amiss with the other person or persons.

• At least one person experiences negative emotions that prevail indefinitely about a specific interaction with another person or persons.

• Incompatibility exists about how one person views another’s perspectives, actions, words or ways of communicating.

Who might respond to conflict?

Humans are fundamentally social and conflict represents a relational crisis that destabilises people, and people act and interact in ways that produce unproductive and destructive dynamics. When we dive in and learn more about why we respond in this way, we can learn skills to be better prepared for conflict. 

Why take this approach?

The work of Robert Bush and Joseph Folger and the principles that surround social constructionism and transformative mediation identify that a mediation can generate two important effects, empowerment and recognition and the CINGERGYTM  method builds on the above principles.

How does it work?

The transformational process identifies the importance of empowering the individual with the strength to understand that they have capacity to handle life's problems. 

I integrate these principles into the work I do with people both in mediations and also with my conflict coaching work. People are often mistaken when they are embroiled in conflict and think that they don’t want to see the other person empowered as this somehow weakens their position. 

The reality is both people involved in conflict need to be empowered so they can make decisions and move through the conflict and reach resolution. The reality is that if one person is not empowered and not at a position where they can make decisions, maybe they don’t have access to money and can’t get legal advice, this actually slows the process of resolution for both people, which usually means it will cost more time and money than it would if both people were empowered.

The transformational process of mediation also identifies the importance of recognition, or the identification by the individual of acknowledgement and empathy for the situation and the problems of others. If people can understand the impact of conflict from the shoes of the other person, they have the capacity to change the quality of the interactions and regenerate the relationships and communication in constructive ways. More on this in the next couple of weeks.

When is the best time to address conflict?

Conflict should be occurring all the time if we have a healthy environment in which we work and play. Conflict has the potential to bring change and growth and if the pandemic has taught us anything it is that we all love certainty but we all need to get better at coping with change because change is inevitable. 

So often people see conflict as arguments or large scale disagreements and while this is true, there is so much conflict that is more of the quieter, lurking in the dark corners kind of disquiet, but equally destructive.  Conflict that is left unaddressed is destructive to both the people involved and the organisation when occurring in a workplace setting.

Learning the skills to confidently understand the response in yourself and others when conflict shows up will help people change the quality of their interactions with each other as people learn to engage in conflict without sacrificing relationships in the process. 

Conflict coaching can be helpful to build the skills of all people who work with people, yes, that is most of us.

I so often hear “oh they need conflict coaching” but in reality, the skills of learning how to do all of the above and being able to incorporate it into a 5 minute interaction is a skill that we all need. We can be quietly changing the landscape of our work environments and our interactions with our families, our children’s schools and dealing with issues that might arise in our sporting clubs, without the need to wait until conflict has escalated to the point that relationships have been damaged and need CPR to repair the relationships.

Learning how to incorporate conflict skills and reflection into each week and coach those that work in our teams how to be more comfortable in conflict, the more empowered we all are to perform in our roles. If we can all learn to lean into conflict and make the most of conflict to create positive change, when it arises and importantly, how to do this constructively. 

Next week: The first step in understanding conflict is to understand what the trigger is so that you can understand more about why you may respond to conflict in the way you do.

I am trained as a CINGERGYTM Conflict Coach and I help people to understand and resolve conflict through Conflict Coaching both individually and in group settings. I offer mediation services and I can help you facilitate a discussion in your family, workplace, school or anywhere you need some assistance to change the impact of conflict to a positive one.