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Conflict: Good, Bad or just Inevitable..?
Business change can often cause conflict: upsetting the status quo creates the possibility of loss and gain, for winning and losing. Recognising this, most organisations involved in change engage in some form of Stakeholder Management. However, ill-defined this is as an approach, it is viewed as best practice in this area and yet it rarely seems to resolve the potential conflict issues it’s intended to address - why is that?
What’s your reaction to conflict or even just the possibility of it? A common, natural reaction to conflict is to avoid it – and for good reason. Conflict is deeply destructive - both personally and organisationally - as opposing parties settle into entrenched positions. Each can expend considerable energy in often futile attempts to change others viewpoints, positions, degree of influence or power bases through various forms of coercion.
What if there was another way? What if the essence of conflict could be used to generate value? What really is conflict?
The essence of conflict is in how we react to and manage differences, particularly differences in priorities, perspective, beliefs, values, world-view, expectations, rules and preferences. Most of us in business have direct experience of the positive power of difference, often without recognising it. Anyone who has participated in a successful team activity, workshop or brainstorming session will have experienced the power of creativity that springs from the differences between people.
Everything that an individual brings with them, from their experience to their beliefs and values, can stimulate fresh ideas, novel solutions to old problems or to new challenges in the right environment - but what is that environment and how do you create it? There is deep value in the differences between individuals and it’s of considerable significance in business, particularly during change - if it is managed, used and exploited appropriately.
Unmanaged differences easily become conflict if your people have not learned to deal with differences. What would it be like for your change initiative if conflict were minimised and your people had the skills to work co-operatively and constructively with their differences?
Self-Limiting..?
Some organisations have significant problems due to a lack of innovation, creativity and constructive competitiveness. In many organisations, staff are discouraged from being seen as or acting outside the strict norms of behaviour and any sign of active disagreement is severely frown upon. Overt conflict - as seen in terms of lively disagreement - in any form is a taboo. Yet conflicts still occur, either as undercurrents of deep disagreement resulting in lack of engagement between executives, political turf wars, stand-offs or occasionally bursting into open argument.
Senior executives unable to work with differences cannot overcome the inevitable blocks in their thinking and the behavioural flaws associated with it. They often find their change initiatives bogged down in relationship issues that prevent substantive progress from occurring. Over time, the consequences of these problems increasingly surface at the interpersonal, group and organisational levels and impinge on business performance.
GroupThink, Stagnation & the Dark Side
Depending on the culture and prevalent attitudes within your organisation - and yes, all organisations have these - the accepted norms of behaviour around conflict tend to be well-defined. People know how far they can express different viewpoints and preferences for it still to be viewed as acceptable.
Too much suppression of alternative views and outlook - to minimise conflict - and the result is a form of ongoing ‘groupthink’ - where only one view prevails (or is even allowed to be expressed). This is usually the boss’ view or the views of some key influencing group. The result is an organisational unit (or the whole organisation) that appears selectively blind to certain alternatives options and sometimes to serious risks. In the meantime conflict goes ‘underground’, resulting in behaviours like passive aggression and ‘jobs-worth’ attitudes.
At the other extreme, too little suppression of alternative views and outlooks - to emphasis the importance of maintaining good relationships - and the result is stagnation of direction and alternatives: when anyone can express their views and insist on having their needs accounted for then everyone has a de facto veto on change. In these cases, the mere threat of conflict is enough to stop any real change being made.
Either extreme results in an organisation that is unable to respond or change effectively, and where role, function and hierarchical authority is often undermined through informal relationship structures and inappropriate influence.
The ‘dark side’ to conflict is when it's used as a political tool for coercion that progressively disables the organisation as it becomes the norm of behaviour. Here the threat of conflict, and sometimes short displays of it, becomes a form of currency and an abuse of ‘power’ within the organisation.
Have You Got What It Takes..?
While overt conflict that expands into active aggression is unwanted, unnecessary and dangerous behaviour, the ability to both express and genuinely consider alternatives views, outlooks, priorities, beliefs and values - without being provocative - is immensely powerful, motivating and valuable. This is particularly true during periods of change.
Often we are unaware of why we hold the views and outlooks that we do. These were often decisions that we made some time ago and in specific circumstances. They have now generalised into views and beliefs that seem to be applicable all the time - for no sound reason. These types of views limit our ability to see situations clearly and result in our losing options and choices that may be very useful, powerful and valuable - especially in business.
At the same time, there is huge potential value in developing the ability to consider these unusual views from new and different angles - without creating undue provocation or getting drawn into unhelpful emotional states or associated behaviours when discussing them with others.
There is a set of cognitive and behavioural skills that can be learned and exercised. These form the basis of developing deeper levels of expertise in conflict resolution, negotiation, creativity, motivation, innovation and problem solving - all important skills for any senior executive - particularly when involved in business change. Have you got what it takes?
Harnessing the Power...
Here at Kairos, we’ve built on the work of such pioneers in this field as De Bono, Bailley, van der Heijden & Bandler to develop a framework that provides an easily learnable set of approaches, tools and techniques for working with and managing differences that broaden and deepen your view of possibilities and alternatives.
These tools and skills enable executives and staff at all levels to generate and fully explore alternative views and scenarios available about any situation where alternatives are possible and potentially valuable. As part of our One-Team approach, we create an environment in which differences naturally develop creativity and potential business value. Destructive conflict becomes an unnecessary option.
We can help you and your team exploit the valuable differences between you to create important new business resources for increased motivation, innovation and enhanced relationships.
As well as customised solutions for clients, we also provide a range of pre-framed workshops for addressing common client issues. These include:
- Stakeholder Engineering & Alignment
- Developing Strategic Conversations & Alternatives
- Resolving Intra-Organisational Conflicts
- Developing Deep Negotiation Skills
- Exploring the Organisation’s Cultural Constraints
If you’d like to know more...
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