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