Conflict and Leadership

Christian Muntean

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781631579608
• eBook ISBN: 9781631579615
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Conflict Resolution

Conflict is one of the greatest sources of tolerated business expenses and loss. This is despite the fact that this expense and loss can, in most cases, be easily turned around to revenue and gain. In the nonprofit world one of the greatest inhibitors of mission success is not that there isn't enough funding, or the challenging nature of the cause. It is the simple fact that teams struggle to work well together.

What if conflict was the starting point for developing trust? What if it catalyzed a deeper, more meaningful understanding between team members? What if it was crucial for building stronger and more powerful organizations? Last of all, what if there were simple steps you could take to automatically help your teams communicate and work together more easily? This book shows you how.

CHAPTER 1

The Nature of Conflict: What it Means, Where it Originates, Why it Gets So Weird

My Messy Story

In 2003, I was hired to advise on peace building in Southern¹ Sudan. At that time, Southern Sudan was at the tail end of decades of civil war, drought, and famine. Secretary of State Colin Powell was driving peace talks forward. However, as anyone who’s spent time in conflict zones knows, building peace isn’t peaceful. It’s unstable territory. It shifts balances of power. It changes the economy. It creates unknown, unfamiliar dynamics that are difficult and sometimes dangerous to navigate.

I was hired by the disaster relief agency, Medair—the primary medical provider in the eastern half of Southern Sudan. Their questions were: How will our work be impacted by peace? Can our programs contribute toward building peace? And, if so, how?

In Kenya, I joined the rest of the research team: Alfred, a Kenyan sociologist, and our team leader; Rebekka, a German psychologist; and Jacob, a Sudanese cultural liaison and interpreter. Within 2 weeks of my arrival, as we prepared to begin field research, I became locked into an intractable conflict with Alfred.

Communication shut down. Attempts to talk and to resolve the situation were ineffective. I felt frustrated and angry. Unable to work together, Alfred and I split efforts. We conducted two separate research projects. We produced two separate papers. We offered two separate presentations and conclusions to Medair. About peace.

Medair sent us, separately, to counseling. The counselors didn’t know what to do. So, we did what most professionals do. We stewed. We avoided each other. We waited until our contracts ended.

The irony of this experience ate at me. I felt embarrassed professionally. Here I was, studying and advising on peace building, yet, unable to get along with my colleague. I felt helpless. I felt like I had failed an opportunity to serve both the agency and a world region that deserved better.

I also realized that conflict was a constant presence in my life. As much as I preferred to blame other people for it, I had to acknowledge the one constant variable was me.

This experience drove me to learn about how I could relate to conflict differently. I accepted that conflict was inevitable. If I couldn’t avoid it, I knew I had to learn how to engage with it more effectively.

This was a challenging, slow, and messy process. It was full of false starts. But I learned. I grew. I changed. I am still growing.

Here is the hope: Learning to engage conflict well is very possible. It is also a powerful key to personal transformation and professional growth. It’s well worth it.

For the first few years, I didn’t even consider trying to add peace building or dispute resolution to the list of professional services I offered. I focused, instead, on trying to change me. As I changed, others seemed to notice. This resulted in others beginning to ask for help with their conflicts and difficult conversations. That grew into part of my professional tool belt.

Now, helping people navigate disputes and build stronger relationships and healthier organizations has become an area of expertise.

Before we examine how to relate well to conflict, let’s answer an important question: What is conflict?

Conflict’s Usual Definition and Why it Doesn’t Help Anyone

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, conflict is defined as (“Conflict | Definition of Conflict in English by Oxford Dictionaries” 2017):

• A serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one

• A prolonged armed struggle

• An incompatibility between two or more opinions, principles, or interests

When the definitions above are our only ways of understanding what we experience as conflict, our options are usually very limited: We can try to escape conflict, attempt to avoid it, or decide we must win it.

This is exactly what the person or people on the other side of our conflict are simultaneously attempting to do. So, the conflict protracts. We arm ourselves, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally. The sides remain incompatible. The definition above is only helpful in identifying conflict. It doesn’t help address it, at all.

Here is a slightly improved definition: Conflict exists any time there is a disagreement over something important to all sides.

The change in this definition is nuanced. But it’s a critical nuance. The difference is the words: something important. Typically, I know the conflict I’m involved in is about something important to me. But usually, I think about the other side as being stubborn, arrogant, unjust, and irrational.

However, what if I accepted (even if it didn’t make any sense to me) there was something important to the person I’m in conflict with? What if they weren’t simply being a jerk or being irrational? What if they were afraid there was something they might not gain or something they could lose in this situation? What if I could discover that?

Would that, possibly, change the conversation?

The answer is, “Yes,” it does. It changes the conversation dramatically. Having mediated hundreds of disputes, I’ve discovered, about 90 percent of the time, people find agreement. I’ve seen this between executives and boards, teams and departments, majority and minority leaders in the legislature, environmental groups and industry, and parents trying to understand and navigate co-parenting.

What does this tell us? People don’t really want to be stuck in a fight. We really don’t. Instead, we desire a way through it. We just don’t know how to achieve resolution. And we’re afraid that resolution might cost us.

At a deep level, people want resolution. Which brings me to my favorite definition of conflict.

A Better Definition of Conflict and Why It Makes All the Difference

Conflict = Opportunity!

People don’t fight over things they don’t care about. Underneath the nonsense of many arguments, there is something that’s deeply important to those involved. Often the surface argument, or position, has become symbolic for something deeper.

I once mediated a dispute between a nonprofit executive director and the associate director. The executive director “Jim” had founded the nonprofit and had steadily grown it over many years. It had regionwide presence and impact. He had met “Sarah” and realized that she could bring tremendous value to the organization. So, he created the associate director role and hired her. Unfortunately, shortly after Sarah was hired she began to insist that she be given Jim’s position. She framed this from the perspective of social justice and gender equality.

Jim attempted to placate her by creating a coexecutive director position. This created role confusion between the two. The board rightfully intervened and affirmed a single executive director role. She was unwilling to accept and I was called.

I’m simplifying the story quite a bit, but the surface position for Sarah, in this case, was the position of “Social justice will be achieved with a woman executive (herself) in this organization.” We carefully explored this. There was no one else in the organization or in the population they served who felt that the organization was preserving an unjust status quo of male leadership. It began to appear that, for her, the cause of gender equality and gaining the executive director role was symbolic of a much deeper need. That is her legitimate need to feel valued and validated.

Unfortunately, no role can fill that need for someone else. As a result of the board’s affirmation of a single executive director, she resigned. She moved on and has continued a career trend of not being able to maintain any position for more than two or three years.

To my knowledge, she’s been highly valued everywhere she has gone. I suspect she carries inside of herself a sense that she is “not enough.” So, she begins to demand a recognition that is often already given. This creates friction and conflict and eventually she moves on again.

Like Sarah in the story, it is very common that we aren’t even aware of what that deeper something is. Not only are we often unaware of what is truly important to us, but we are also completely oblivious to what might be important to other side. In the story above, Sarah diminished Jim’s years of commitment and personal sacrifice to build a nonprofit that impacted many lives. She was unable to recognize that a position had been created for her precisely because she was viewed as valuable. Our needs and how we view symbols can obscure our perspective of reality.

Some of us might even feel like it’s a compromise to even explore or listen to another person’s perspective. When I was younger, I was convinced that giving a competitive perspective “airtime” would just validate their opinion. Instead, in interpersonal communication, refusing to allow someone to express themselves more often inflames the conflict and causes them to entrench in their position.

In the workplace, disputes over differing perspectives can emerge over:

• Leadership styles or priorities

• Management preferences

• Strategies or processes

• Budget or financial management choices

• Decision-making approaches

• Hiring decisions, and so on

Additionally, on a broader level this list can be expanded to include:

• Political perspectives

• Religious perspectives

• Lifestyle choices

• Financial choices

• Parenting priorities and styles

I’m not suggesting that every perspective is equally valid or true. Just as you can’t market however you want and expect identical results, you can’t lead or relate to people however you want and expect that all your leadership or relationship efforts will work well.

What I’m suggesting is that taking time to understand what someone else’s perspective is, along with how they arrived at that perspective, often worthwhile. At a minimum, it communicates that you’re willing to value and offer respect to the other person, even if you don’t agree with them. Additionally, taking time to understand someone else offers insight into what really motivates and drives others.

I recently received a request to help with a serious dispute between two business partners. Let’s call them Nancy and John. Nancy had contacted me to ask for help. Communication had completely broken down. She couldn’t get John to respond to e-mails, calls, or even a letter from her attorney. I reached out to John. He was willing to mediate, but wanted me to meet his wife first. His wife quickly made it clear she didn’t trust me. Her tone was abrasive. And, as she spoke to her husband, John, she kept using the phrase, “How do we know that he is legit?” as she referred to me.

It’s easy to feel frustrated in a situation like this. Nancy and John had already agreed to meet. Now, this agreement was being undermined by a third party—John’s wife. My legitimacy was openly being questioned.

Instead of defending myself, I acknowledged her perspective. I validated her point, voicing that I was, indeed, a stranger to her and there was no reason to automatically trust me. I continued to discover her perspective with questions like, “What is it that you would need to see, or experience, to feel like I was legit?” I wasn’t volunteering to do a “song and dance.” But, I wanted to hear what was hidden underneath.

Her answer was surprising. It had nothing to do with me at all. John’s wife began to spill stories of how Nancy had violated her trust. What she really wanted was to kno...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Abstract
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Nature of Conflict: What it Means, Where it Originates, Why it Gets So Weird: My Messy Story
• Chapter 2 Conflict Is Good: Why You Want It
• Chapter 3 The Primary Sources of Conflict: It Ain’t About Chemistry
• Chapter 4 Being the Change We Seek: Addressing Our Personal Approach to Conflict
• Chapter 5 The Four Steps to Resolution: It Really Is This Simple
• Chapter 6 Can’t We All Get Along? Conflict in Relationships and Groups
• Chapter 7 Driving on the Wrong Side of the Road: Using Structures and Systems to Build Good Conflict
• Chapter 8 I Can’t See What You Are Saying: Why Culture Is So Powerful and How to Shape It
• Chapter 9 Resiliency: How to Bounce Back (Sometimes Stronger)
• Chapter 10 Healthy Tension: What It Really Is, How to Practice It
• References
• Additional Resources
• About the Author
• Index
• Backcover