Employing Differences, Episode 76: Conflict is bad, isn't it?

Karen: 0:07

Welcome to Employing Differences, the conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Paul: 0:14

I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 0:16

And I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 0:18

each episode we start with a question and we see where it takes us. This week's question is, "Conflict is bad, isn't it?"

Karen: 0:29

I don't know if people say any more that conflict is bad. They just think it a lot. I think. There is the sense of, you know, how do we avoid conflict? How do we make it go away once it starts? Conflict resolution really meaning conflict goes away and not here anymore? And so even if some level, we know we don't want to say that conflict is bad, we certainly act like it is an awful lot of the time. And so we ask this question to sort of dig into that conflict is bad, isn't it Is it? When is it when isn't it? Paul, I'm gonna let you jump into that one.

Paul: 1:12

So it's funny, because a number of years ago, I was in a coaching class where we were talking about conflict. And one of the things that we were doing was we were moving around the room in response to certain statements. And so the more we agreed with a particular statement, the closer we were supposed to stand at the center of the room. And the more we disagreed with the statement, the further from the center of the room where we're supposed to stand. And the statement got made, something like, "I think conflict is a healthy and normal part of working in a group, and I'm able to navigate it skillfully." And I was like out the window. What amused my co-workers because I had three co-workers who were in this workshop with me was that that was my response. Because they thought I was the guy who always just stirred stuff up, so clearly, I was good with conflict. I think conflict is a rich and nuanced subject. And when I do workshops with groups about conflict, one of the things that I really start to dig into is like, what is your relationship, even with that word, with the concept of conflict? I will sometimes do an activity where we have paint swatches on the table of have different colors. Back when we used to do things where we could, all be in the same place. And I would say, grab the color that represents conflict to you. And then explain to the people at your table, why you chose that color. And what's interesting about it is that people have a really strong, intuitive, like, it's that, and then they have to unpack, why did I pick this color? And so I think that's one of the things that you're getting at is that, we might say certain things about how we see conflict, or how we might like to see conflict, but then we also have a very different relationship with it, where there may be some disconnect between what we say and what we do. And so I think even for those of us who say things like, "conflict is useful, conflict is a natural part of any relationship of any working together" we can still have that, "and I don't like it, and it stresses me out, and it makes me feel like I'm walking on pins and needles!" So oftentimes, I think what the thing that's really useful to do is unpack what is our relationship to the idea of conflict?

Karen: 3:52

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think another of my frames around conflict is there is such a thing as doing conflict well. I have a course I teach on conflict and people keep telling me I should call it conflict resolution or conflict something. Because nobody wants to learn how to do conflict. But that's exactly what I'm trying to teach is how to do conflict. Well, in the same way, when you take a cooking class, they don't say cooking a good meal, it just, it's a cooking class. Because everybody cooks, but you want to learn how to cook better. And conflict, everybody has it, everybody does it, everybody is in conflict. And if you take a course in it, at least my course is about learning to do conflict better, which is a different thing than learning to escape it. Learning to get out of it. And I think both will result in getting to places where you don't feel like you're in conflict anymore. But if you're looking to escape it or resolve it or end it, the tendency is to shut it down. Which is it different thing than moving through it in a productive way. And when we shut it down, we tend to either power over someone like, "I got my way and I won," or give in and be resentful. And of course, when I win somebody else was resentful, and when I give in, I'm probably resentful, but resentments probably going to be now ongoing for a long time. And that doesn't actually get you out of conflict. It just delays it to the next round, because it will come up again. Whereas moving through conflict is a process of growth and healing and self-discovery that is powerful, and powerful in a way that nothing else that I know of is. It is a rich, rich space of personal growth that, frankly, nobody raises their hand and volunteers for but all of us actually need.

Paul: 5:54

Yeah, the moving through is actually often the metaphor that I use for it. Where I don't talk about resolving conflict or managing conflict. The verb that I often use is navigating conflict. Where it's a there's stuff out there, there's rocks we could steer into, there's shallows we could beach ourselves on, there's all sorts of monsters out there. But how can we actually navigate through this and come out the other side. And that that's actually, I think, a really powerful and transformative sort of thing. Because it actually means that, then we're through it. When we avoid or we bottle it up, or we shut down, in a lot of cases, we just delay it. And then sometimes we then give it a chance to ferment become a little harsher. Unresolved things can sort of come up, right. And obviously, that's actually a legit thing for certain situations. But getting better at navigating conflict, about being able to go through that with another person, opens up options. If the only thing we know how to do is avoid, then that's all that we can do. But if we're actually going, "Okay, I know how to navigate. And I also know how to avoid. Which is actually going to be useful here and now?" Then I'm at choice. I actually have more agency more autonomy there around that. So yeah, that's, that's the same metaphor that I use. And also, in a lot of my workshops, we talk about how conflict is often a signal that something new is trying to emerge. And if we can treat conflict that way, where it's an emergent property of what's going on between us because conflict is absolutely relational. Conflict doesn't exist with only one person. I mean, as much as you might say,"I'm conflicted about this," really, you're stuck. You're not in conflict. Conflict requires more than one person. It exists in the space between. And so that's often, I find, a result of a new thing that's trying to emerge a way of working together, a new change in the world, something that is impacting the relationship. And so conflict is a signal of that. And so, I often in navigating conflict, one of the things that I talk to people about is what happens when you put that lens on? When you start to see conflict, as a signal that new something new is trying to emerge, what does that reveal? And that's part of the skill of it. And so, conflict is often uncomfortable, often painful. But in and of itself, I don't think it's bad.

Karen: 8:45

Yeah, I'd agree with all of that. And it points to that word we keep bringing up in this podcast, which is curiosity. Okay, the first thing is well, the first thing might be pain or resentment, or anger, or any number of other sort of emotions coming up. And then that leads us to this conclusion of, "Oh, we're in conflict. Yikes." And I think, "Yikes," actually might be a reasonable response. Like,"Something's going on here. Something's trying to happen. Buckle your seatbelts, we're in for a ride." As well as, "Okay, now it's time to get curious, what is the thing that's going on here?" And I like what you're pointing to about something new is trying to happen. I would also say, it can be that. It can also be something's been amiss for a while. And so it can go either way. And those might actually be the same thing. Something's been amiss, so something new is trying to happen. But I think it can be a marker that, yeah, we didn't do our relational homework, or we didn't do our sort of visioning/connecting space. We didn't form well as a team. We missed a piece that we needed to be able to work well together, to function as a team, to be whatever this relationship is." And now conflict is giving us a signpost to say, "You need to do that." That we got to go back and clean that up. And if we can see it as that, then it turns out to be a very, very good thing. And my hope would be that at the end of conflict, we feel closer, more connected, more able to work together, stronger relationship than we had before the conflict.

Paul: 10:32

To your point about being able to do conflict well, when we're able to do that we're often able to address it earlier. When we see it, "We go, Oh, yeah, okay, this is the thing where we missed it. We should have had this conversation. We didn't have it then. We can have it now. Or we can let it get worse and have it later." But we're at choice about that. And it is the thing, where when we start to recognize that it's going to be painful and uncomfortable, but also knowing it's going to be more painful and more uncomfortable, with greater chance of failure, if we don't do it, if we wait to have it until later, that actually allows us to navigate through and to get to where we need to go to the other side quicker. It's way more efficient, to get good at dealing with these differences. And that's the thing that I really want to point at. Oftentimes in conflict, we identify the other person as the problem. And part of getting good at it is recognizing that conflict exists in the space between. That it isn't a"they're the problem," or"you're the problem." The problem actually gets in the way, prevents us from seeing the other person. Because it's sitting between us, we think the other person is the problem. And so a part of that navigating is recognizing what part of the situation can you own. But because it sits between, that means that actually, we both want to deal with it, like we would both prefer it to be out of the way. One of the challenges becomes that each of us has different behaviors and responses to that imminent conflict. And then there's the meta conflict. It's great; it's just like it's level-upon-level, right? Not only do we disagree about this thing, but we also have different relationships with the idea of conflict, which means we disagree about whether or not we should do anything about it, and how we should deal with it. It's funny when you're not in the middle of it. But it is one of the real challenges for for partnerships, for groups is really seeing how do they want to engage in conflict? And so the oftentimes people will make the distinction in conflict about personal conflict versus idea based conflict. Is this a case where we are we disagree about what might be the best thing to do? Inevitably, the example we come up with is about a parking structure. It's like, we have a legitimate disagreement about what we should do with regards to this parking structure. And those conflicts are often useful, because new things can emerge. We've talked before about how option A and option B can lead us to option C, when we actually have that idea-based conflict. And I think what most people think of when they think of conflict, and the thing that's really difficult, is that idea of personal conflict. Of we've gotten to the place where it's no longer about the parking structure, it's about the fact that you're wrong, or you hate me, or that's just how you are. We've actually drifted away from the problem, the thing we're actually trying to deal with, and now it just becomes about, about identifying the other person as the problem. And so that's one of the things that I think is useful to think about is when we talk about healthy conflict and unhealthy conflict, good, bad, whatever it is, oftentimes people will say, idea-based conflict, disagreement, debate, whatever, that that can be really useful. Where we run into trouble is when we get deeper into that space of very personal conflict.

Karen: 14:23

And that idea that we get deeper and deeper into conflict, I think is useful to think about. Because another pattern that I see is, "Oh, there's some conflict here, but it's just little, I can ignore it. It's not bothering me that much." And I'm going to say, that's the place to learn how to do conflict. That's the place that you want to engage and if you can engage there and that's both true of like me on my own journey about conflict, if I start engaging in smaller conflicts, I get better my muscle about engaging with conflict is better. It's also true if I'm in relationship with you, and you do something that it's a little annoying to me. If I talk to you about the thing that's a little annoying to me and say, "Hey, can I give you some feedback about, can we talk through, we work through?" and we get to the end of that, and we're okay, you and I together have learned about how to work through conflict. And so I think that sort of "conflict is bad, icky, uncomfortable, so I'm going to avoid it until I just can't anymore" makes it really bad if you're uncomfortable when you can't anymore. Whereas if you're developing the relationship from early on, yes, we're going to engage in conflict, and this is how we're going to talk about it. And you know, that kind of thing. And of course, it takes courage and vulnerability to to address that, bring it up with that other person. And and here's the Brene Brown lesson about vulnerability is the most desirable thing, the most sort of attractive thing I can possibly do from someone else's perspective is that I'm willing to get vulnerable. So if I willing to come to you and say, I've got this thing I want to talk about, especially if it's not a huge thing, and I can do it from my own vulnerable place, and I'm uncomfortable, odds are, you are instantly going to feel safer with me. And feeling safer makes the likelihood of the conflict coming out well increase dramatically. So there is this thing, sort of, ironically, about if I want you to feel safe enough to engage with me in conflict, being vulnerable with you is one of the really powerful tools to get there. And it's exactly the opposite of what instinctively I feel like doing.

Paul: 16:42

Yes, yeah. So I think to sort of track where we've been on this, this whole idea of conflict is bad isn't it? Despite what we might say to the contrary, I think many of us have a fraught relationship with the idea of conflict. And one of the things that can be really useful to do is to sort of explore that. Just come to discover how it is that we actually relate to this idea, because that's going to color any conflict that we're, in any situation that we're in that seems to be veering towards conflict. So there's a piece of self-awareness around that. Another thing we've kind of talked about is that conflict really is something that exists in the space between. and being able to get curious about that. If the idea is that something new is trying to emerge, or maybe something new was trying to emerge, and we've been ignoring it for a while, and it's still trying and still popping up. If we can treat it that way, where we can treat it less personally, that it's not so much about the other person, it's about whatever it is that's between us here, and something that's going on, then we can probably engage with it a little more effectively. That allows us to be less blame-y, it allows us to really see the situation as it is, it allows us to engage more effectively with it. And if we can engage with it earlier, if we can build our muscle and our comfort for engaging with this often painful, often difficult topic and really situation if we can do it earlier, when it's lower stakes, when it's less of a big deal, we have a better chance of being able to be vulnerable about it, which is going to create more safety around it. And so if we can get better at navigating conflict, that becomes a choice that we can exercise more often. So we can actually deal with it when it's gonna be less of an energy sink, when it's gonna be less of a danger zone. It's going to be unpleasant. It's going to be a little uncomfortable. But it's going to turn out better than if we just keep kicking the can down the road.

Karen: 18:50

Absolutely. And I think that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 18:55

And I'm Paul Tevis. And this has been Employing Differences.