A New Year’s Resolution for Conflict Resolution: Seeing Conflict for the Helpful Tool It Can Be

Conflict has a bad reputation.  It disrupts our equanimity, throws us off balance, and threatens our peace and quiet.  And so we develop ways to avoid it, pretend it isn’t there, and do whatever we can to quietly hope it just goes away on its own.  And sometimes it does.  But most times it does not.  

Ignoring conflict often leads to problems growing bigger, more dangerous, and increasing the difficulty to find solutions to those problems.  As the conflict grows larger, our own discomfort continues to grow, leading us to be increasingly wary and avoidant.  It is a vicious cycle.

Now that we are in a new year, we are given an opportunity to set resolutions to do things differently than we have in the years before.  Among our resolutions to hit the gym and eat better, may I suggest that we strive to develop a healthier attitude towards conflict, as well.  While we may never enjoy discord, if we approach it more openly, we can see another side of conflict: a tool to help us improve situations, to change and grow for the better.

Conflict is a sign that something is not working.  In the workplace, conflict can rear its head for many reasons.  Perhaps there is poor communication between employees, or a policy that is having unintended negative consequences.  Perhaps a lack of transparency is causing misunderstandings and problems.  Maybe conflict has shown up because there is a mismatch between employee talents and skills and work assignments.  

In each of these scenarios, as in all workplace conflict situations, the conflict is a symptom of a larger problem.  If you look at it like this, conflict becomes the ultimate diagnostic tool.  Rather than ignoring it, by engaging directly with the conflict, we can develop a deeper understanding of the issues at hand.  Every conflict contains the seeds of its resolution; once we see the problems, we can work to fix what is not working.  Conflict can become an ally in our quest for productive workplaces rather than an enemy.

Luckily, we already have a way to help us renegotiate our relationships with conflict.  Mediation is a process designed to help engage directly with the conflict in order to understand what the problems are so we can work towards finding the best solutions.  As such, mediation is an ideal tool to help us develop a healthy relationship with conflict in order to fix what is not working and help us improve.  As we set our intentions to make 2016 the best, most productive year yet, let’s challenge ourselves to see the opportunities in conflict and rely on mediation to help us improve.