Redefining Your Relationship to Conflict

1. Redefining Your Relationship to Conflict Greg Abell Sound Options Group, LLC www.soundoptionsgroup.com

2. Objectives 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 . . .

3. Activity 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.

4. Ingredients of a Conflict Two or more people interact and perceive incompatible difference or threats Resources Needs Values • behave and respond Choice Point! to escalate or deescalate the conflict

5. “Universal Human Paradigm”Tracy Goss • 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).

6. Your “Winning Strategy”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.

7. Five Conflict-Handling Styles Competing Collaborating Assertive Compromising ASSERTIVENESS Avoiding Accommodating Unassertive Uncooperative Cooperative COOPERATIVENESS

8. What is your current “Winning Strategy” for Conflict? 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

9. One example 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

10. A second 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

11. How do these stories fit? • 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?

12. A new framework for understanding conflict Based on the book: Staying with Conflict: A Strategic Approach to Ongoing Disputes Dr. Bernard Mayer

13. Three models of conflict • Resolution • Cognitive • Emotional • Behavioral • Transformation • Engagement

14. Six faces of conflict Low-impact Conflict Latent Conflict Transient Conflict Representative Conflict Stubborn Conflict Enduring Conflict

15. 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

16. Moral ImaginationJean Paul Lederach • 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)

17. 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)

18. Develop capacity to be with: • Anxiety • Moral ambiguity • Emotional turmoil • Identity confusion • Cognitive dissonance • Intellectual uncertainty

19. Conceptual factors • 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

20. Ethical Factors • Maintaining congruence between values and behavior (in-integrity) • Being authentic (congruence, integrity) • Being accountable • Engaging reflection and reexamination

21. Being “in-integrity” Commitments + Action + Speaking ALL IN ALIGNMENT What are your commitments when engaging conflict?

22. Behavioral Factors • Use power constructively (know and improve your BATNA) • Building and maintaining lines of communication • Negotiating • Use agreement strategically • Attend to the conflict cycle

23. Sustainability Factors • Developing resources • Maintaining energy • Managing emotions • Encapsulating conflict • Attending to safety

24. 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 Keepthem in Perspective Help Sustain People Through Conflict

25. Changing 0ur narrative From: Prevention Management Resolution To: Anticipation Support Engagement

26. Ask a Different Question Instead of asking: “What can we do to resolve or de-escalate this conflict?” Ask: “Howcanwehelppeopleprepare to engagewiththisissueovertime?”

27. “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.”

28. “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 Worry Box:

30. Activity 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?

31. Winning Strategies-revisited 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 . . .