Falling in Love with Conflict
I was in a training class for advanced coaching skills recently. One of the things that I got out of the class was the idea that conflict is a signal of something new trying to emerge in a system. The system could be a marriage, a work team, or a small business.
I remember when I was in my twenties. My sister’s husband, an in-your-face New Yorker, tried to provoke me to see how I would react to conflict. I politely tried not to disagree with him, preferring to side step our differences. He said to me, “You’re not like your father. Your father was a man who addressed conflict head-on.” I thought of my father, already dead for several years by the time I had this conversation with my brother-in-law, as someone who had a volatile temper. I didn’t see his way of handling things as productive or desirable. I couldn’t understand my brother-in-law’s admiration for a trait that I considered to be unpleasant to be around.
Now, many years later, I can see the value of conflict. I’m still not completely comfortable with it but I am able to be with it more. Last week, I was on a three-way call with two colleagues who ended up in a heated, even bitter argument. Inside, a voice was saying, “Please, just stop the yelling.” I kept returning to this new image of conflict as a marker for something new trying to happen between people. It surprised me that being in such an emotionally charged atmosphere, I felt okay afterwards. I would not die from getting too close to conflict.
This reminds me of a quality present in healthy marriages—partners know how to fight, how to handle conflict so that no one “dies.” Spouses in good marriages let conflict arise naturally.
I’m now able to let conflict be a natural course of events as opposed to something to be avoided or suppressed. What doesn’t get expressed doesn’t go away. It just builds up. People need to move through strong emotions. Otherwise we can get stuck—not expressing, not moving on, building up a head of steam over time. As a coach, part of my value is to provide a safe place for conflict to play out, where no one dies from it. As a wife, I have a new sense of appreciation when my husband brings up something I did that rubbed him the wrong way.
I’m curious to hear your views on conflict.
I remember when I was in my twenties. My sister’s husband, an in-your-face New Yorker, tried to provoke me to see how I would react to conflict. I politely tried not to disagree with him, preferring to side step our differences. He said to me, “You’re not like your father. Your father was a man who addressed conflict head-on.” I thought of my father, already dead for several years by the time I had this conversation with my brother-in-law, as someone who had a volatile temper. I didn’t see his way of handling things as productive or desirable. I couldn’t understand my brother-in-law’s admiration for a trait that I considered to be unpleasant to be around.
Now, many years later, I can see the value of conflict. I’m still not completely comfortable with it but I am able to be with it more. Last week, I was on a three-way call with two colleagues who ended up in a heated, even bitter argument. Inside, a voice was saying, “Please, just stop the yelling.” I kept returning to this new image of conflict as a marker for something new trying to happen between people. It surprised me that being in such an emotionally charged atmosphere, I felt okay afterwards. I would not die from getting too close to conflict.
This reminds me of a quality present in healthy marriages—partners know how to fight, how to handle conflict so that no one “dies.” Spouses in good marriages let conflict arise naturally.
I’m now able to let conflict be a natural course of events as opposed to something to be avoided or suppressed. What doesn’t get expressed doesn’t go away. It just builds up. People need to move through strong emotions. Otherwise we can get stuck—not expressing, not moving on, building up a head of steam over time. As a coach, part of my value is to provide a safe place for conflict to play out, where no one dies from it. As a wife, I have a new sense of appreciation when my husband brings up something I did that rubbed him the wrong way.
I’m curious to hear your views on conflict.
2 Comments:
I've been meaning to comment on this post since you wrote it, but was in the middle of too many things at the time to stop and put my thoughts together, so I'm back.
I'm a #9 (peacemaker) on the enneagram. I abhor conflict. It's actually not so much conflict itself, really ... I've become more comfortable with that over the years. It's the way in which some people express it that I have a problem with. Whenever two or more people are involved in anything, there are going to be diverse opinions and viewpoints, and therefore 'conflict' to some degree, but I think there are so many more respectful and mature ways to surface it and work through it than raising voices, being disparaging, attacking with words, storming off, etc. So, while I've grown more comfortable with the idea of conflict over the years, if I find myself in a situation where people are yelling at each other, arguing, etc., I become really uncomfortable. As I was reading about your experience of being an 'observer' on the call with the two colleagues, I wondered what I would do, and it was pretty clear I would want to hang up, or, if I was feeling particularly 'evolved' that day (which is rare :-), I might try to mediate in some way.
I grew up with my parents arguing a lot. They were no different than other couples in that culture ... I figure maybe that was just a cultural thing ... vent and get it all out. They've been married 50 years now. I know other couples who swear by that 'just get it out' philosophy. If it works for them, I say, great, but a big part of me believes that somehow one of the parties is being wounded in some deeper way in those exchanges that isn't obvious at first. In fact, I'm certain of it.
So, how interesting that I would end up with a lawyer, huh? Lawyers are trained in arguing and conflict at law school. They're trained to win, and they're good at words and working with semantics to make their argument, even if they know they might be twisting some things around. Well, it was certainly a learning experience in our first few months together, to say the least. John is not a litigator, and he's really not a lawyer at heart, but that law-school training was still pretty deep. Over time, though, after recognizing that our 'style' of arguing and resolving disagreements was not productive or effective for us (i.e., didn't create the result we wanted, which was harmony and understanding), we've learned to develop a way to air disagreements and discuss things in a more dialogue-based way, and it makes a huge difference. This was a bigger adjustment for him, I think, but one that he's been really good about making. One of our cornerstones now are what we call weekly 'board meetings' ... usually on Saturday mornings when we wake up early anyway but don't want to get up, we'll talk about anything that's on our minds that we didn't have time to discuss during the week ... could just be mundane logistical stuff, or little slights or disagreements that we don't want to see build up into bigger things. It's good ... really works for us. I guess what I'm really saying is that conflict is inevitable, but there are a million ways to deal with it, and I much prefer the peaceful ways, and being around people who are like-minded that way ... not that you can always avoid the 'hot-heads,' but I do so as much as possible.
Finally, I saw the Dalai Lama live two weeks ago, and his talk was about 'Peace, War & Reconciliation,' so this whole topic has been on my mind. He spoke about how the only way to have a peaceful world is not only through external disarmament of weapons and bombs, but through the 'inner disarmament' in each of our hearts and minds so that we're not being ruled by strong negative emotions that hurt not only other people, but our own health. To that I say a loud 'YES!!!!!!' :-). Life's too short to fight, even if conflict does mean that something new is trying to emerge. That's a good thing, yes, but it's the 21st century and we should be evolved enough by now to give birth to those new changes in more healthy ways. I know I'm an idealist and that it is not always possible in some situations (i.e., terrorism), but it is possible in a lot more of our everyday dealings than we currently see ... in traffic, in lines, in our homes, etc.
Peace :-)
Hi Maria,
Thanks for sharing your experiences with conflict and preferences for dealing with conflict. What comes up for me in reading your comments is the importance of creating a safe way for conflict to emerge. If there is such a thing as "safe conflict" it seems like it would mean that respect for each party is maintained throughout the conflict. This goes to your point about how conflict can result in inflicted wounds (emotional or otherwise) when safety is not provided.
I appreciate your insight that situations can be resolved without conflict, most notably with a structure like your "board meetings" and by "inner disarmament." It strikes me that this requires a certain amount of emotional intelligence for small conflicts and an incredible amount of emotional intelligence for large conflicts (e.g., lots at stake, emotionally charged.) For some situations, especially with dysfunctional groups (I'm thinking of corporate work that I've done), that emotional intelligence just isn't there.
Which leads me to a topic that I've been thinking about recently--meeting people where they are. I'll leave that for a future post (maybe even this week!)
Thanks again for your comments. I always learn something from hearing about your experiences.
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