3 Things on Conflict
Photo by marianne bos on Unsplash
3 Things on Conflict
Nowadays, conflict is heightened. Take a moment and ask yourself: what is that doing to your well-being? Just when you think everything is going smoothly - things become "baffling." There are 3 essences on conflict, but first a story...
A few years ago I was coaching involved with a leadership training that had gone bad, or so it seemed.
This training took place in a town located in a large metropolitan area in the Midwest. The trainer and her co-trainer were invited in to facilitate a workshop to a small group of school district leaders, most of whom were leaders in their buildings (teacher leaders, administration, etc). Their workshop went perfectly. They facilitated interesting activities, like modeling, hands-on, reflection, film, and many other approaches. Just when all was going well, they told me that something seemed to go wrong.
They said to me that when they looked at the faces of their participants, their participants seemed strikingly distant: looking off to the side, eyes rolling, tight lips. Basically, their participants were in conflict - they were experiencing incongruence. It wasn’t their activities, because these were science-backed, and field-based pedagogies. But what was it!??
After the workshop ended, they told me specifically that their learners seemed unsettled with how to change their practices and all their old thinking. But the training was on helping them, the participants themselves, figure out how they could be more ethical (participants self-determined their own how). So the trainers were confused and said to me “This is baffling!”
They were told by the school district decision-makers decided to cancel the remaining training because the participants were confused.
As a coach, I know the problem simply a matter of internal conflict. Their workshop participants lacked confidence in "the how". The how is something that is inside of them, not outside. In analysis their workshop seminar is rooted in a classic truism...living in the future destroys the moment.
Their participants weren’t ready for the message because of their inability to be in the moment. They were experiencing internal conflict. An internal conflict most importantly rooted in themselves.
Conflict, in work or elsewhere, comes down to 3 things that I share with the leaders I coach and the students I teach. Ask oneself:
What are your thoughts about others’ responses? How do these thoughts make you feel? Maybe ask yourself this vice versa. So if you feel baffled - ask yourself what thoughts are causing you to feel baffled.
How can you think better thoughts or focus on better feelings? Are these emotions serving you? No matter what the work - it could be personal or professional - consider the thoughts.
How could you reframe your thoughts and emotions so that you create a better outcome regardless of what happens outside of you? In this story, the trainers were baffled because their participants were unsettled. How could they have changed their thoughts about what their audience was thinking?
I don't advocate being pollyannaish, but it’s important to live your best life so that you can serve others. If you're under constant self-criticism, it hampers your ability to become a better version of yourself so that you can serve your community. This puts you in fight-or-flight.
Don’t allow your "flight-or-fight" mind to control you - that only leads to stagnant thinking. Be empowered, use your mind to rise, and see opportunities of conflict to evolve.