From Conflict to Courage

How to Stop Avoiding and Start Leading

Marlene Chism

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781523000746
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Conflict Resolution

A framework to help managersdefuse disagreements in the workplace and turn conflict into an opportunity for growth. Unresolved workplace conflict wastes time, increases stress, and negatively affects business outcomes. But conflict isn't the problem, mismanagement is. Leaders unintentionally mismanage conflict when they fall into patterns of what Marlene Chism calls "the Three As: " aggression, avoidance, and appeasing. "These coping mechanisms are ways human beings avoid the emotions that come with conflict, " says Chism. In this book she shows how to fearlessly deal with conflict head-on by expanding your conflict capacity. Conflict capacity is a combination of three elements. The foundation is the Inner Game—the leader's self-awareness, values, discernment, and emotional integrity. The Outer Game is the skills, tools, and communication techniques built on that foundation. Finally, there's Culture—the visible and invisible structures around you that can encourage or discourage conflict. Chism offers exercises, examples, and expert guidance on developing all three elements. Leaders will discover techniques to increase leadership clarity, identify obstacles, and reduce resistance. They'll develop powerful skills for dealing with high-conflict people and for initiating, engaging in, and staying with difficult conversations. Readers will learn that when they see conflict as a teacher, courageously face it, and continually work on transforming themselves, they can get the resolution they are seeking. They can change minds. "A very practical and excellent how-to guide."—Bill Stoller, CEO and founder, Express Employment Professionals "An actionable blueprint for how to handle... difficult conversations." —Tanveer Naseer, MS, Inc.Top 100 leadership and management expert, author of Leadership Vertigo

1

Conflict Capacity: Comfort Is Not a Requirement

Skills development that doesn’t lead to embodiment is just a notch above entertainment.

My tolerance for certain types of personalities was limited when I first started working for myself. I found it difficult to be around know-it-all aggressive types—those who are extremely resistant and argumentative. When they became confrontational, I either avoided or became passive-aggressive. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. Once I got triggered, my sarcasm, quick wit, or eye-rolling seemed to manifest out of thin air. This was a vicious emotional cycle of anger, regret, and aggression. I didn’t want negative people to bring me down. My justifications seemed reasonable. I’d say, “Business doesn’t have to be this difficult” and “It’s for my own peace of mind.”

I studied the effects of negativity, and I justified eliminating negative people from my life. But something kept eating at me. I believed in personal responsibility. I believed we’re all responsible for our experience. I believed Eleanor Roosevelt—“No one can make you feel anything without your agreement”—and all the other motivational quotes you hear on TED talks and Instagram. And even though I believed in personal responsibility, secretly I blamed them (negative people, complainers, high-conflict individuals) for being who they were. My real conflict was internal: my divided mind. To be honest, I wanted them to change. I didn’t want to change myself. If she could just accept things instead of complaining. If he would listen better. If he wasn’t so rude. If they were a little more self-aware.

There are a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to managing conflict and keeping peace. When we say, “I don’t tolerate drama” and “I keep negative people completely out of my life,” we are in essence saying that by controlling outer circumstances and avoiding certain types of people, everything will be fine. I’m now convinced that these beliefs are an incomplete way of understanding conflict and our ability to expand enough to truly manage and resolve conflict. To manage conflict effectively, we need to redefine conflict, recognize our dysfunctional patterns, and then work on expanding our conflict capacity. Let’s get started.

The First Way We Mismanage Conflict

The first way we mismanage conflict is how we view and define conflict. We make conflict personal; then our brains look for evidence to support our views. Most of us view conflict as some version of win-lose, right versus wrong, us versus them, liberal versus conservative. Sound familiar? All you have to do is go to social media during an election year and you’ll be reminded of how mismanaged conflict can escalate and contribute to personal loss. The dictionary definitions won’t encourage you either: A state of open prolonged fighting. A fight or a disagreement. A state of disagreement or disharmony between persons or ideas; a clash. A battle or war.¹ No wonder most of us have such an aversion to conflict.

What definition of conflict would be more helpful for building conflict capacity? What if you defined conflict in such a way that you no longer had to worry about who’s to blame or think of the other as an enemy? What if you could view conflict in such a way as to be able to initiate difficult conversations that get results? Would that be more valuable to you? You bet it would. Redefining conflict in a way that took all the emotional and mental pain away would help you to build conflict capacity so that, as a result, you would be a better leader, a better partner, and a better friend.

Let me share a mental model that has significantly helped me, and I hope it helps you too. My definition of conflict is to view conflict as misalignment due to opposing drives, desires, and demands. This definition takes personality out of the equation, eliminates your assumptions about motive, and makes conflict much more interesting. Think of two arrows going in opposite directions (see figure 1).

The arrows represent the opposing drives, desires, and demands between two people or—surprise—even within yourself, with no one around to argue at all. Should I, or shouldn’t I? If I do this, then I might miss out on that. I’m not sure. Yes, I’ve decided . . . no, I haven’t. If you’ve ever stayed on the hamster wheel of indecision, you understand the cost to your mental health of not having clarity and alignment. The point here is that conflict is a misalignment that happens because there are opposing drives, desires, and demands.

FIGURE 1. Conflict

When two business unit managers argue over budget, it’s not because they’re bad people; it’s because they haven’t found ways to align their opposing desires, drives, and demands, and they can’t align until they have a conversation and seek to understand. Nor can they collaborate or compromise when all the elements within the conflict are yet to be uncovered. It’s not necessarily conflicts that ruin relationships. It’s the emotions and behaviors that emerge from a response to mismanaged conflict: disrespect, discounting, and dismissing. Think about the conflicts you’ve had. Did you give the other person the benefit of the doubt? Did you get curious as to why they saw things the way they did? Or did you immediately see them as an enemy and assume ulterior motives? Were you willing to change your own position, or were you absolutely certain you were right? If you were offended, did you take it upon yourself to humiliate someone in public, or did you use discernment and address the issue when you were self-regulated? I’m sure you can guess how most people will answer those questions, myself included. Part of the equation is self-management, and we’ll talk about that in chapter 4. Be patient with yourself and others as you try on new ideas about conflict and experiment with new methods to manage it.

Remember this: disagreement doesn’t ruin relationships; disrespect does. So, we must build conflict capacity so that we learn how to disagree without disrespecting.

Expanding Conflict Capacity

Expanding conflict capacity is about the ability to stay engaged in a difficult conversation, stay present to a high-conflict personality, and build enough self-awareness to create space or set a boundary before getting triggered into old dysfunctional patterns. Just like expanding your physical capabilities such as aerobic capacity, strength, or stamina, building conflict capacity requires conditioning, discipline, and deliberate practice, which enables you to withstand the storms instead of avoiding, appeasing, or aggression.

Building conflict capacity requires you to give up what has made you comfortable up to this point. When it comes to building conflict capacity, comfort is not a requirement. In fact, the biggest barrier to building conflict capacity (outside of cultural influences) is the commitment to comfort. When it comes to building capacity, you must be willing to recognize dysfunctional patterns within yourself. This is extremely uncomfortable. The benefit is once you recognize your own dysfunctional behaviors, you’ll be fully equipped to recognize them in the organization.

Recognizing Dysfunctional Patterns

The ability to spot dysfunctional patterns inside your organization can help you pinpoint mismanagement that’s leading to the organizational problems. In short, just because you think you understand the problem doesn’t mean you understand the cause of the problem.

I sat across from an executive team of a private practice medical clinic at lunch as we talked about all the poor performers who weren’t measuring up. When I asked for names, behaviors, and specifics, no one on the executive team could say specifically who, or what was happening. Since the defined problem was “directors who needed to be micromanaged, which resulted in wasted executive time,” I suggested we start measuring the amount of time executives spent on managing what their directors should be managing. The CEO didn’t like that idea. He said, “We don’t want people to think we are nitpicking.”

“They won’t even know we’re measuring it. It’s just to get a baseline to see how much time executives are spending doing the directors’ jobs,” I reassured him. He abruptly changed the subject and summoned the waiter to bring the bill. From my perspective, this is an example of a huge blind spot—avoiding that which is difficult to talk about today without realizing the future consequences. In an organization, the problems you can identify are problems you can fix, and the problems you misidentify equal continued frustration. Mismanagement happens when we don’t know how to define the real problem or when we avoid it because we don’t want to nitpick, hurt feelings, or seem like a micromanager.

A former client who worked as an HR leader in a large healthcare organization wrote to me when she realized the detrimental effects of avoiding conflict.

I’m just about at the end of a yearlong process of managing a disruptive employee. This situation ended up with lawyers involved and should reach a settlement today. It’s been a long and painful process, as this employee had been tolerated for 18 years. This employee was occasionally talked to, but since she was considered a “high performer,” she was allowed to carry on, hurting patients, families, and staff along the way, as well as creating chaos in her wake of disruption. The entire process has taken a toll on me, my team, and the employee. I didn’t realize how hard emotionally and mentally it would really be.

It’s difficult to learn the lessons of avoidance because the pain usually doesn’t happen immediately. There’s always a lag time between the avoidance, the justification, and the result.

Three Dysfunctional Behaviors

The three dysfunctional behaviors that leaders use to avoid discomfort are avoidance, appeasing, and aggression. Avoiders say “We’re all adults” and “I shouldn’t have to tell them.” Appeasers justify high-conflict behavior because “they are a high performer” or “they have seniority.” Aggressors retaliate and say “I didn’t ask you to work here. Find another job.”

Some leaders put off (avoid) difficult conversations because they’re afraid of their own aggression, they don’t want to make someone cry, or they view themselves as a “nice leader.”

Yelling at an employee (aggression) won’t improve their performance or build trust, but some leaders do it anyway. The release of anger feels good in the moment and dissipates some of the discomfort.

We tell a high-driving salesman we’ll consider the product next year (appeasing) to get him off the phone. We tell people what they want to hear instead of engaging in a tiring conversation where they might pick an argument.

When you think about it, it’s all avoidance . . . the avoidance of feelings, the avoidance of furthering the conversation, the avoidance of personal responsibility, and the avoidance of personal growth. The purpose of avoidance is to escape discomfort, or in the case of aggression, it’s a way to release the buildup of discomfort. Let’s look at avoidance in its purest form, and then I’ll address appeasing and aggression.

Avoiding

Some leaders know they avoid and readily admit they hate conflict. The rest of us don’t realize how much we chose comfort over accountability. Case in point: Are you eager to step on the scale after a weekend of binge eating? Me neither. But the point is, the facts are what they are, whether you know it or not. If you have a nonperforming salesman who isn’t making rain, you can avoid having an accountability conversation. In that case you’re choosing comfort before growth for yourself and the nonperformer.

If there’s a bully employee in your department, you may deny it, but the bully is still creating toxicity that’s about to explode—whether you know it or not. Ask yourself this: Am I walking on eggshells to avoid the bully? Are you avoiding because they are a good performer otherwise? Figuring out why you aren’t addressing the issue is half the battle. Looking to the future is a great motivator. What happens if you keep avoiding? Choosing small comforts in this moment often means accepting crisis in the future.

A big excuse managers have for not having a conversation is “I already know what they’re going to say.” The fact is, they don’t know because the conversation hasn’t yet been had. What they do know is their past experiences, but when we make these assumptions, we’re choosing a past experience over a future possibility. This habit of “already knowing” is costly to our personal and professional growth. You have to stop focusing on your past and focus forward for your growth. You owe it to yourself, to your employee, and to your organization. Denial and justifications only make things worse in the long run. You’re going to have to climb Mud Hill someday, and it might as well be today.

Appeasing

The distinction between avoiding and appeasing is subtle: when you avoid, employees are in the dark. They can’t tell if you’ve forgotten or if you’re just afraid to have the conversation. When you appease, employees might think you’re nice, or they think you agree when you don’t; they think you’re interested when you’re not. Appeasing is telling someone what they want to hear to get the issue off your plate. If you’re a “people person,” it feels good to see their eyes sparkle when you tell them something they want to hear. In the end, appeasing erodes trust. How many times has your own boss said something like “Good idea! I’ll get back to you” but they never did?

Let’s explore appeasing. Suppose you disagree with a colleague, but instead of saying “I disagree” and opening up for dialogue, you say, “You have some excellent points, but I have a meeting. Let’s discuss it later.” Do you really circle back to discuss later, or is it more convenient to let it slip into the dark?

Most of us use appeasing at least some of the time—for example, when you don’t want to let someone down when they ask you to work on a project, be on a board, volunteer for a committee, or do whatever with them. You feel honored, but your insides are screaming “NOOOOO!” But—you want them to like you. You don’t have the energy for listening to them try to convince you, so you say yes. Saying yes felt good in the moment, but after the high wears off, you feel resentful and misaligned. You decide to back out later. You just have to create a little white lie that they’ll buy into: Your mother is sick. Your teenager is having a breakdown. Your car is in the shop, and you don’t want to hold up the project. “Maybe next time,” you say with feigned regret in your voice. All of these behaviors compensate for the discomfort you feel when your decisions are misaligned.

Aggression

Then there’s aggression. Aggression ranges from behaviors such as eye-rolling, the silent treatment, dirty looks, innuendos, sarcasm, telling someone off, putting someone in their place in front of others, name-calling, threats, voice-raising, fist-pounding, rage, and violence. I’ll be transparent here. I’ve had to work on eye-rolling and sarcasm, and I’ve raised my voice plenty of times. I find I’m most aggressive when I’ve been fretting about something for too long and I’ve had the conversation in my head and not with the other person. Just ask my husband. He’ll confirm.

Remember my boss that I told you about in the previous chapter? He didn’t play games, and he didn’t undermine, eye-roll, or give dirty looks. No, he was straightforward. He was rude and defensive. He seemed to take any complaint as a personal threat rather than interpreting a complaint as an employee caring a...