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Conflict. Part 2

October 12, 2011 in Family, Leadership, Life, Politics with 2 Comments

Today I want to talk about why avoiding conflict is so dangerous. For many of us and for different reasons, mostly negative, conflict has a very harsh and negative emotional backlash which keeps us from entering into healthy conflict but avoiding conflict will create more problems and that is what I want to talk about.

Conflict usually gives permission for people to engage in emotional discussions about real issues, sometimes the rules for these engagements, if not set before hand can get broken quickly and people can get hurt occasional when instead of talking about the issues people get side tracked by their own personal opinions and want to win the arguments instead of solving the problems, they start talking about what’s wrong with the other person, attacking character, performance or commitment, in this case, yes, I agree, conflict is negative and dangerous to us all. Here is what I find interesting, I have two children, 6 and 2 and they have no idea what rules for conflict are and I can tell you, I see adults talking to each other they way my kids do, what does that tell you about maturity in some people.

The real dangers of avoiding conflict:

1. You encourage dangerous tension- If you are leading people, a team or just working one on one with another person but don’t have a system that allows for open, honest conversations, which are built on trust by the way, real issues that are noticed will never, ever get resolved. People within your organization want to make things better, they want to address real issues but want can tend to happen is, leaders, if they have not created trust within their network or teams will not engage in healthy discussions or conflict that allow for these issues to be addressed openly, most times people get pretty passionate and want a resolution quickly. By avoiding conflict, you encourage the issue to stay bottled up, never resolved and your people to realize their voice isn’t being heard and feel as if no one cares not only about them but also about real issues.

2. You encourage negative results-  As much and as passionate people may be, by not engaging in healthy productive conflict, what I would call “weighing in for buy in“, if people cannot take or address real issues with their leadership the momentum for real results within the team will begin to shrink real quick. People instead of building on trust and unity will turn to individual results, looking after their own careers and welfare instead of focusing on the results of the team first.

3. You encourage poor standards- The moment an issue is brought up in a meeting, say a person on the team had an observation and wanted to address is openly and having done so a few other team members, being aware of the same issue nod in agreement, the moment the leader chooses not to address it there, although it’s perfectly appropriate for the team to fix it, you encourage the whole team to rethink what “standards” are. Sometimes leaders will say something like “let’s talk about that “offline” or “let’s get together after the meeting and discuss that you and me” you basically tell the team, issues aren’t a team issue, don’t bring them up. The message for standards isn’t something the team should be concerned about. Instead of the entire team being passionate about upholding the standards now everyone in the room has their own opinion of standards because their wasn’t a unified vision casting from the leader to discuss, engage or invite everyone in that moment.

Conflict isn’t easy but there is a very healthy way to engage in it, if you remind the team how much work can get done if everyone would trust each others intentions during the meeting, allowing everyone to speak freely about the issues, you’d be amazed how many problems you can solve and how much more alive your meetings would be, how much less time they take and ultimately how much less time you have to revisit the same issues again and again because you aren’t avoiding issues anymore.

Do you avoid conflict in your meetings or are you engaging in healthy conflict?

 

Conflict. Part 1

October 10, 2011 in Family, Leadership, Life, Spiritual with 2 Comments

As we enter into the topic of conflict try to keep your mind open to hear everything clearly without bias or opinion, understanding that I myself am still learning a lot but only offer what ever revelation I believe to have come to through experiences and clarity when reflecting on the topic. Conflict, although never fully avoidable, unless you avoid people can be handled in a way that is seasoned with grace and doesn’t result in emotional bloodshed, turmoil and disaster. There are a few things you have to set your mind to before deciding to confront the person, these small steps will take discipline, they will take intentional thought and will challenge you in every way. Why? Simple, we ALL want to win when we feel hurt or cheated and most times when we enter conflict we carry feelings like this into the conversations which is why, most times conflict can turn so nasty so quickly. So, here are the tips you need to try if you want to get better at conflict.

1. Separate the your personal feelings and opinion from the main issue - Too often leaders, teachers, parents, you name it, we’ve all done it, we carry our own feelings and opinions INTO the conversation when we begin talking about the issues. This is why the conversation gets distorted, most times it gets the best of us and the person listening gets defensive and instead of confronting to solve something, we’ve chosen to confront simply to prove something and nothing gets solved.

2. Choose your words wisely and carefully- Every word you say and the tone in which you say will be remembered. If you choose inflammatory words, hurtful words with harsh tones and begin accusing and start even guessing at a person motives, you have destroyed all hopes of resolution, the bridge of recovery is likely broken and the relationship will suffer incredibly. Every time you enter into conflict you should carefully choose your words, state the issue without harm, that don’t accuse the character of the person unless it actually is a character issue and you have solid evidence of that, other than that stick to the facts, avoid opinionated words that carry infliction.

3. Conflict is supposed yield a positive result- If you could sit and think carefully before having the conversation that your desire is to help this person, it would dramatically change how you speak. Often times, people view conflict as a way to get even, a way to lash out or back at a person verbally, “this is my turn to tell you exactly how I feel”. No, thats not conflict, that’s just cruelty. A leader, teacher, parent, etc,..about to talk with someone they appreciate or love wouldn’t verbally abuse someone on purpose right? Yet, we do it all the time, stop and think about what you hope to achieve out of the conversation, start your conversation by discussing that and as you have you conversation keep telling yourself and that person “I am not your enemy, I am here to walk with you through this” and that will always keep the tension down and hopefully yield a positive result.

What are some ways you are using to enter into conflict that bring about positive results?

Understanding conflict

October 7, 2011 in Family, Leadership, Life, Spiritual with 0 Comments

Everyone, everywhere goes through conflict. You might be a leader, a family member, in school, where ever, doesn’t matter at some point, at some time you will have to face conflict with someone. It’s unavoidable unless you don’t deal with people. Now, everyone, depending on how they were brought up handles conflict differently, I want to spend the next few blog posts here at Live love diving into conflict because it is a part of everything we do, all of our relationships and many people are hurting because we don’t understand it, we avoid it or we simply think we have a handle on it, when we really don’t.

There are three ways I see people dealing with conflict, the first is implosive. Perhaps in their home no one spoke up, no one really expressed their feelings openly or they weren’t allowed to so they carry around this learned behavior too. The implosive person does not like conflict, they avoid it at all costs, every time any of their relationships have any type of tension they choose the path of least resistance, choosing to carry the burdens internally, hurting themselves emotionally but also hurt the other person because they don’t tell the other person how they really feel, at least not yet!

The second is explosive. Perhaps this person had a loud family, everything was aired out verbally, often, no matter what it was, it was said, loud and proud so they learned this behavior. The explosive person doesn’t avoid conflict, they engage in it and will seek it out if they even sniff tension between them and someone else, sometimes they might instigate a situation just to get the conflict going because to them tension and verbal conflict is how problems get solved. They need to tell you how they feel, openly, loudly, with time, if not controlled and tamed this behavior can be very abusive and hurtful causing many relationships to be distant or shallow.

The third is simply passive, balanced and mature, very rare, quiet most of the time, will speak when they have to but not concerned with winning an argument, more concerned with solving the problem. As John Maxwell says, “You don’t get rid of conflict you just help people get through it”

How do you deal with conflict? Share your thoughts.

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