Evan Renaerts

Conflict - Honestly

March 6, 2008

There is a light frost on the roof tops – a clear sky last night. Each day brings spring more fully into being, and yet the last bit of winter hangs on.

Many people dread conflict to the point where they are willing to accept profound levels of dysfunction rather than address the issues that are begging to be looked at.

It isn’t uncommon for people in organizational teams to ignore the fact that two team members despise each other. If it is talked about it usually happens behind the backs of the parties concerned. On one team that comes to mind there was a person that nearly everyone else was afraid of; their response was to work harder at trying to appease her.

When you question people about why they haven’t said anything to the people they are in conflict with you are likely to hear things like: it’s not that bad, they may be difficult but they do a great job, I don’t want to make things worse or what’s the use, nothing will change.

Most of the resignation is likely to be learned behaviour from family and school where we learned as little people that we didn’t have the power to affect the changes we wanted. The suggestion that we should put up with conflict and disruptive behaviour from people who are good at what they do is just plain missing the point.

Conflict is a feedback mechanism (like physical illness) telling the organization or the individual that something in this system is out of balance. Life is always sending us information about what needs to happen next; it is up to us to pay attention and act on the information.

The overwhelming majority of conflict is rooted in opinions and beliefs – the more rigidly held those are the more likelihood for conflict. Clinging fiercely to the notion of having the only right belief or viewpoint is always a form of self protection.

We become identified with beliefs and opinions (which football team is the best) no matter how serious or silly. Those beliefs become part of the great ME and anyone who challenges those beliefs is in fact challenging ME.

To begin any inquiry into conflict we need to surface the explicit and the implicate beliefs of all concerned parties. In other words people need to get deeply honest with each other.

This is a fact that often surprises people in conflict situations; most people are certain that they are quite honest. What isn’t included in this personal assessment is the more-or-less automatic self-censorship that most of us run at all times. We don’t say what we think.
The quickest way out of conflict and the best way to reduce the chance of conflict is to actively develop a culture of deep honesty. When people learn to really listen to each other what they tend to discover is their similarities, their shared humanity.

Whether we agree with someone else’s perspective becomes secondary once we genuinely understand how and why they think and feel as they do. On the flip side, whenever we have the experience of being heard and understood we almost always find it easier to relax our insistence on having the only valid perspective.

Organizations of every size and type express the belief that there isn’t enough time. Despite all the world’s wealth, riches and technological advancements we just don’t feel that we have any time to simply sit and talk to each other. And yet talking and listening to each other is still the most technologically advanced way for human understanding to occur.

It turns out that, regardless of our intellectual and scientific progress, simple honesty is still our greatest hope for happy and peaceful co-existence.

Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com