If conflict were a human being (and not an abstract idea) and you saw it heading your way, what would you do? Would you run to a corner and hope it didn’t see you hiding there? Would you rush over, hoping you might knock it down and you could move on with your day? Would you slowly walk toward it and offer a hand, curious about where you might go together?
I used to do a version of this activity during in-person workshops where I would stand in the middle of the room, representing conflict, and ask people to respond in their bodies. Most often, people chose the corner strategy.
I understand this impulse, in part because, even as a conflict practitioner and trainer, I often fall prey to the lures of conflict avoidance:
· You don’t have to deal with something scary
· You don’t have to risk saying the wrong thing and making it worse
· You don’t have to challenge a relationship that might otherwise seem like it’s going fine
· Maybe it will just go away on its own
Certainly some of these things can be benefits in the short term but they almost always lead to long term costs:
· The conflict may get worse as it simmers below the surface
· Your relationship may suffer because you don’t work through an important issue
· It probably won’t go away but it may filter into other interactions, taking new shape
· You miss out on the opportunity for growth and transformation
This last piece is critical, but often hard to believe if we have a track record of conflict hurting us, bringing stress, and even fracturing relationships. One amazing resource for helping us to embrace conflict as an opportunity is Turning Towards Each Other by Jovida Ross and Weyam Ghadbian. In an article about this workbook, they outline five gifts of conflict, especially for social justice-oriented organizations and movements:
1. Conflict connects us to our values and needs
2. Conflict clarifies strategy
3. Conflict surfaces assumptions
4. Conflict heals
5. Conflict strengthens relationships
These gifts are part of why we’re not all bunkered down in those corners any time we have a disagreement or need to have a tough conversation.
Inspired by Tema Okun’s work on dismantling white supremacy culture, they also highlight the connection between conflict avoidance and dominant culture patterns within organizations where “open disagreement is considered impolite; superficial niceness is rewarded.” This can result in punishing those who bring up hard conversations, often BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), and working to preserve an inequitable status quo.
Of course, we can’t fully control whether our partners in conflict or our organizations will view conflict as a gift and opportunity for positive change. Yet if we enter conflicts thinking they’re doomed to cause us pain and grief for little payoff, they are much more likely to meet that expectation.
Recently I was helping a friend prepare for a conversation with a co-worker with whom she had a conflict. She was, understandably, nervous about how it would go and that if it didn’t go well, she’d still have to work side by side with this person. I encouraged her to enter the conversation with the perspective that it could go well, that it might even help the relationship in the long run. And even if it wasn’t as successful, it would be a chance to grow and develop on a personal level.
We can think of this as having a conflict opportunity mindset. It doesn’t guarantee that every conflict is transformational and leaves us better off than when we started, but it reminds us that this is a possibility and increases the likelihood that this might be the result.
In the end, my friend reported back that the conversation went better than she had expected. Not perfect – conflict rarely is – but I saw this as a win. Conflict isn’t going anywhere and, if it did, we’d miss out on some of the gifts it has to offer. That conflict opportunity mindset may just help us see more of those gifts come to fruition.