The ultimate purpose of managing interpersonal conflict is to grow us emotionally in self-awareness, storytelling, emotional management, and moral and ethical character.
There aren’t any apps, searches, or other fancy technological shortcuts for the development of those traits in us.
Organizational inertia is exacerbated when leaders succumb to the strong forces of temptations.
Temptations for organizational leaders include (but are not limited to) maintaining the status quo, keeping the bureaucracy in place, and making sure that the can gets kicked far enough down the road that any consequences from that act of can kicking won’t sully their future reputation.
Bureaucracy is a temptation.
Maintaining the status quo is a temptation.
Practicing avoiding looking at trendlines is a temptation.
Focusing on the wrong changes at the wrong time (or the right changes at the wrong time) is a temptation.
The struggle for people who have not been designated “organizational leaders” is that there are all kinds of changes that need to be made, processes that need to be upgraded, and solutions that need to be advocated for within organizations.
But tragically, there appear to be no leaders interested in anything other than being tempted into continuing to be the politicians they maybe always were in the first place.
People not designated “organizational leaders” have been inculcated since at least grade school into the idea that being picked, being chosen to make a change, rather than independently choosing to imagine, take a risk on, and advocate for a new paradigm, is the only way that changes can happen.
But with the current level of systemic failure in organizations everywhere around us (from governments to small businesses), and with the dearth of leadership interest or experience evidenced in leaders who were picked, we don’t need more preservation of temptation.
We don’t need more political solutions to leadership temptations.
Instead, the people not designated “organizational leaders,” who are trapped in organizations (and trapped in systems at a higher level) should choose to put on the mantle of statesman—or stateswoman if you prefer.
A statesman chooses themselves (and their allies), raises their hand, says “I will take responsibility and accountability if an initiative fails, and will give away credit generously if it succeeds,” and is not tempted away from the course by bureaucracy, maintaining the status quo, avoidance of trends, or distractions.
A statesman calls the bluff—respectfully, firmly, but clearly—of the resistance.
This bluff calling—in all its varied forms—requires persistence, courage, self-awareness, a high tolerance for risk, and, of course, a strong dose of candor along with clarity of vision and purpose.
We need more people not designated “organizational leaders,” with the courage to choose themselves to be the statesman in their own sphere of influence.
We need fewer people designated as leaders (who behave like politicians) succumbing to temptations in our organizations and systems.
And we need them today.
Do you care?
This is the binary core question that we avoid asking out loud, or ask each other in unclear, murky, nonverbal ways, or just don’t ask at all.
This is the right question to ask before thinking of strategies to engage in the practice of emotional alchemy. The kind of alchemy that transmutes emotional labor into motivation in other people.
Alchemy has long been considered a joke, but in leadership, conflict management, and emotional labor, the placebo effect of emotional alchemy is just beginning to be part of a core conversation about how to motivate others.
But the fact is, no one knows (really) how to extrinsically, or intrinsically, motivate others, render them “unlazy,” or otherwise get them to do the work that matters at the level you would like them to do it.
And any article that proposes to do so, is selling a brand of alchemy all its own.
The person who walks around while the Titanic is sinking, and calmly begins rearranging the deck chairs, organizing the evacuation, and gets everyone off the ship before it sinks becomes, by default, the future captain of the rescue vessel in the North Atlantic.
That person also becomes a new Noah.
Here is a list of 26 icebergs (non-exhaustive, your list (and mileage) may vary) where, as the Titanic ship of state known as global society collides with them and begins to sink, you can be the default captain of the rescue ships later:
There are other ones out there as well. There’s no lack of icebergs. There is, however a lack of people calmly prepared to be captains in future rescue boats.
The work is rarely the most entertaining or compelling, thing.
The result of the work is a lot more compelling—good, bad, ugly, or indifferent.
The process is rarely envied.
The result of the work—the sausage, such as it were—is delicious on the plate, and worthy of being enjoyed. And sometimes, people are envious of the outcome.
The potential to experience emotional pain, public (or private) embarrassment, and even failure is so strong that people seek all kinds of shortcuts to avoid experiencing any of those potential outcomes.
But experiencing those outcomes, many times is the work.
Here is a partial (but not all inclusive) list of actions that compose the work. As in all cases, your mileage (and experiences) may vary:
Patience is work.
Resiliency is work.
Accepting outcomes is work.
Knowing where to put your focus (and why), is work.
Showing up every day, even when you don’t feel like it, is work.
Being responsible when a project, idea, or position you championed doesn’t work, is work.
Ruthlessly eliminating hurry in the short-term, to accomplish larger lifetime goals in the long-term, is work.
Having the courage, clarity, and candor to speak up about what is working and what isn’t, is work.
Engaging with people we don’t personally (or professionally) like without rancor, to accomplish goals greater than ourselves, is work.
Knowing when to quit, what to quit, and how to quit, is work.
Figuring out the right questions to ask, in the right way, to the right people, and then hearing the answers, is work.
Realizing that the work is on the line, but that you as a person are not, is work.
Raising expectations with the idea of fulfilling them, rather than using them as leverage against the other party in a conversation, or conflict, is work.
Seeing the end goal of a project, and realizing that persuasion of other people is the number one thing to accomplish to get there, is work.
Being intentional about your actions, whether in a conflict process, a project process, or a goal oriented process, is work.
Knowing yourself and what you are capable of (and what your limitations are), is work.
Understanding when to stop working, is work.
Doing any, and all, of these things in public, doesn’t make for a compelling or entertaining process to view from the outside.
And in a post-Industrial society, that values entertainment above all else, knowing what’s truly compelling, and talking, writing, and entertaining about that, is work.
Increasingly, it may be part of the only work that matters.
Leading people through conflict requires an emotional exchange between leaders and followers.
The leader gives inspiration, charisma, respect, and provides role modeling of a vision of the future, to her followers.
The follower gives encouragement, support, obedience, respect, and provides a feeling of self-worth through the act of deciding to follow, to the leader.
Often though in a conflict, both followers and leaders expect a one-way monologue rather than a two-way dialogue.
Leaders want the led to be quiet and follow without question.
Followers want leaders to listen or else be replaced by another leader who will.
The trouble with both desires (based in emotions not reason), played out in public, is that one side must bend to the whims and desires of the other, for goals to be accomplished, for visions to be realized and for emotional exchanges to be deemed worthwhile.
The true measure of leadership through conflict, is rising above selfish and self-serving human desires and role modeling that behavior (which wins respect) for followers.
If the process of resolving a conflict doesn’t interest you too much…
If you just want to “be done with it’ already…
If you “just don’t care how it stops” just that it’s over…
If you have “no dog in this fight”…
If you are “just a disinterested observer”…
Then in reality you are a spectator and your behavior of standing around (metaphorically) observing the conflict and its results, and not adding to either getting to resolution, reconciliation, or management of the conflict at hand, is causing more harm than good.
We don’t need more gawkers at car wrecks.
We’ve got enough of those already.
We need more people willing to stop by the side of the road of a conflict and help to get the parties to their best selves.
Or, at the least, be willing to dial 911 as they fly by on their way to other, more pressing issues.
It is important to note that strategy in managing people in conflicts is still considered by many to be a talent, rather than an attainable skill.
In a conflict, thinking about how to manage it effectively requires exercising all the same planning and engagement that engaging in the conflict in and of itself does.
However, the pushback against this type of thinking most often comes in the form of the complaints that “strategy is too hard” or that “people are unpredictable.”
Individual people may be unpredictable, but general human behavior is predictable, and outcomes from such behavior are even more predictable depending upon which conflict management behavior it is that a party chooses.
Good, effective strategy, that produces satisfactory outcomes requires intentionality.
To plan strategically, understanding three points intuitively begins the process:
There is strategy involved in attaining the skills of humility, self-awareness, responsibility, and even empathy.
Almost as much strategy as is involved in letting things “just go,” not paying attention, focusing on issues in the conflict that don’t matter, and not understanding the nature of the conflict (and the other party) that you’re in the arena with.
Strategy to manage and resolve conflicts is a skill that can be learned. Almost in the same way—and at the same level—that extending and not resolving conflict is a skill that is learned.
There is a lot of mental infrastructure from the Industrial Revolution still laying around.
And most of that infrastructure can be seen on display in organizations:
Employees who are at the bottom of an organizational chart, believing that they are the foundation on which the organization rests, yet feeling as though they are treated as basement dwellers.
Managers and supervisors who are squeezed in the middle, believing that they are the glue that keeps the top of the organization from flying away, and keeps the bottom of the organization in line. Yet the reality is that they are asked to care about something that they did not initially build, and asked to give positive lip service to ideas that they know will have a low chance of success.
Upper management and executives who are at the top of the organizational chart, believing that they deserve the status that they have. And that preserving that status is the only thing that matters. Yet feeling as though they are in a constant battle with forces (i.e. governmental regulations, organizational ennui, etc.) that the people in the organizational chart below them could never possibly understand.
Work matters in the 21st century, because of two reasons:
The first reason is that as the jobs that used be done by humans migrate more and more toward the computer, the mobile phone, and to whatever hardware innovation comes next (probably the cloud, virtual reality, and A.I.) the only question worth answering is: Can a computer do your job?
When the “yes” answers to that question outstrip the “no” answers, the Industrial Revolution based infrastructure of our assumptions, ideas, and even opinions, about work will change. If they don’t, if we bitterly cling to past notions, continually hag-ridden by reimagining a past to which we cannot return, we will fail to take advantage of the positive parts of our remaining mental maps for a future we cannot fully predict.
The second reason is that as individuals and companies become human centered rather than technology centered, the only things that matter are the Long Tail, emotional intelligence, leadership ability, courage, and resilience. Organizations of the past century said that those traits weren’t that important in light of where your job was placed on an organizational chart. But that is no longer true.
The work that matters will be that which values these traits above all else. And there are some fields (the human services most of all) that are poised to take advantage of this shift in what is valuable in the future, from what was valued in the past.
The infrastructure that needs to be torn down the most is in the minds of employees, managers, executives and others.
The true tragedy is that the demolition work is plentiful, but the workers are few.
For the innovative peacebuilder, the truly important switch must happen in how thinking about products and services cross the chasm.
Most of the time, processes (such as mediation, negotiation, or dispute resolution) are confused with products.
A process is, in essence, a service.
Sure, there are sometimes opportunities to grow a process past a service and into a product, but this is rare.
The idea that content focused around “how-to” can be a product, is supported by the digital reality we live in now. With digital platforms, developing digital components for processes we already think of as services, should become second nature.
But for many it hasn’t.
At least not yet.
There are four ways to cross the chasm in thinking, from a strong consideration and focus on services, to a strong consideration and focus on products.
Philosophy first, tactics second, and courage always to change how peacebuilding happens in our digital world.