Redefining Your Relationship to Conflict
Greg AbellSound Options Group, LLC
www.soundoptionsgroup.com
Where did you learn about conflict? What is your current “story” about conflict? What is your current strategy?
Expanding our notion of conflict?
How does your current strategy work in an expanded model?
What to do . . .
Objectives
Identify 2-3 events in your life that you believe shaped the way in which you currently relate to
conflict.
Why were they significant? What did you learn about conflict? About yourself? How do these experiences affect how you act in
conflict today?
Share in dyads or triads.
Activity
Ingredients of a ConflictTwo or more people
interact
and perceive
incompatible difference or threats
ResourcesNeedsValues
behave and respond
to escalate or deescalate the conflict
Choice
Point!
There is a way that things should be.
And when they are that way, things are
right.
When they’re not that way, there’s
something wrong with me (the interpreter of
events), with them (other people), or with it
(anything in the world).
“Universal Human Paradigm”Tracy Goss
A Winning Strategy is a lifelong, unconscious formula for achieving success. You did not design this Winning Strategy, it designed you. As a human being, and as a leader, it is the source of your success and at the same time the source of your limitations. It defines your reality, your way of being, and your way of thinking. This, in turn, focuses your attention and shapes your actions, thereby determining what’s possible and not possible for you as a leader.
Your “Winning Strategy”Tracy Goss
Five Conflict-Handling Styles
Assert
ive
Un
assert
ive
ASS
ER
TIV
EN
ESS
Uncooperative
Cooperative
Competing Collaborating
Compromising
Avoiding Accommodating
COOPERATIVENESS
What, if any, is your dominant style for engaging conflict?
How would you describe your current strategy for engaging conflict?
How does this strategy serve you? When and how does this strategy not serve
you?
Share with your partner
What is your current “Winning Strategy” for Conflict?
Conflict flows from life. Rather than seeing conflict as a threat, we can understand it as providing opportunities to grow and to increase our understanding of ourselves, of others, of our social structures. Conflicts in relationships at all levels are the way life helps us to stop, assess, and take notice. One way to truly know our humanness is to recognize the gift of conflict in our lives.
John Paul Lederach
One example
In great teams, conflict becomes productive.
The free flow of conflicting ideas is critical for
creative thinking, for discovering new
solutions no one individual would have come
to on his own.Peter Senge
A second example
What is your initial reaction when engaging these two quotes?
How would you compare the relationship with conflict described in these two quotes with your story about conflict? Where are they similar Where are they different?
Identity an example, either personal or professional, in which you experienced conflict in line with these descriptions?
How do these stories fit?
A new framework for understanding conflict
Based on the book:Staying with Conflict: A Strategic Approach to Ongoing
DisputesDr. Bernard Mayer
Three models of conflict
Resolution Cognitive Emotional Behavioral
Transformation
Engagement
Six faces of conflict
Low-impact Conflict Latent Conflict Transient Conflict Representative Conflict Stubborn Conflict Enduring Conflict
Characteristics of enduring Conflict
Deeply rooted Identity based Value driven Embedded in structure Systemic and complex Rooted in distrust (reactive
devaluation) Involve fundamental issues of power
The capacity to imagine ourselves in relationship (even with our “enemy”)
The refusal to define life in terms of duality and polarity
Faith to believe in the creative act – believing that creativity is possible, living as if the possibility of the unknown (mystery) is real
The willingness to imagine and take a risk (to step into the unknown)
Moral ImaginationJean Paul Lederach
Dilemmas of Enduring Conflict
No Comprehensive Solution Will Solve the Problem but the problem must be addressed
Struggle over time of many people with different perspectives is necessary, cooperation is essential
Decisions must be made in condition of profound uncertainty
Need to live with ambiguity but find the energy that derives from clarity (move beyond despair, rage, false confidence, and bravado and develop a willingness and capacity to live over time with uncertainty)
Anxiety
Moral ambiguity
Emotional turmoil
Identity confusion
Cognitive dissonance
Intellectual uncertainty
Develop capacity to be with:
Keeping a focus on what is essential
Finding the appropriate level of depth and
breadth
Putting the conflict in historical, cultural,
economic and political context
Allowing for possibility the adversaries can
change
Conceptual factors
Maintaining congruence between values and behavior (in-integrity)
Being authentic (congruence, integrity) Being accountable Engaging reflection and reexamination
Ethical Factors
Commitments + Action + SpeakingALL
IN ALIGNMENT
What are your commitments when engaging conflict?
Being “in-integrity”
Use power constructively (know and improve your BATNA)
Building and maintaining lines of communication
Negotiating
Use agreement strategically
Attend to the conflict cycle
Behavioral Factors
Developing resources
Maintaining energy
Managing emotions
Encapsulating conflict
Attending to safety
Sustainability Factors
Six steps to staying with conflict
Focus on Engagement/Confront Avoidance Frame for the long term Establish Durable Patterns of Communication Use Power with a Long Term Focus Find Agreements where Appropriate but
Keep them in Perspective Help Sustain People Through Conflict
Changing 0ur narrative
From:
Prevention
Management
Resolution
To:
Anticipation
Support
Engagement
Ask a Different Question
Instead of asking: “What can we do to resolve or de-escalate this conflict? �
Ask: How can we help people prepare to �engage with this issue over time? �
“Staying with conflict relies on the ability to remain
productively, creatively, and even serenely in a state of
nonresolution (not to be mistaken for irresolution). Many of
us who help others with conflict are not particularly good at
living with nonresolution. If there is a problem we want to
fix it, if there is a conflict we want to resolve it, and if there
is uncertainty we want to find the answer. Staying with
conflict, however, requires us to live with unsolved
problems, unresolved conflict, and more questions than
answers. A need for certainty and closure often gets us into
trouble; it impels us to act as if we know more than we do
and to solve problems superficially or ill advisedly, and it
limits our ability to think creatively and broadly about
difficult issues.”
“The choice we face in most conflict is not between
reaching an agreement and continuing the conflict,
although this is how it is often posed. The true
challenge is to see the resolution process as an
ongoing part of the conflict process. Wise agreements
solve problems, but in the case of enduring conflict,
their more important function is often that they allow
the conflict to proceed as constructively as possible.
We see this in every arena of conflict.”
Staying with Conflict: A Strategic Approach to Ongoing Disputes Bernard Mayer
29
The Immunity X-Ray
Commitment(Improvement Goal)
Doing/Not DoingInstead
Hidden Competing
Commitments
BigAssumptions
Worry Box:
What is your initial response to this expanded model for understanding conflict?
What resonates with you?
What questions does it raise?
What in this model most engages you?
Where might you find yourself resisting this model?
What action does it begin to suggest for you?
Activity
Revisit your Winning Strategy Where is it in-integrity Where might it be out-of-integrity? What action(s) might you take? What action(s) will you take? By when . . .
Winning Strategies-revisited