The High Cost of Conflict
Stewart Levine’s 10 principle of new thinking have really
changed the way I view my interactions with people. There was a quote by Horace
Rutledge at the beginning of chapter 15 that was simple, yet very powerful to
me when I read it, “When you look at the world in a narrow way, how narrow it
seems!...But when you look at it in a broad, generous friendly spirit, what
wonderful people you find in it” (2009, p. 46). I would have never thought that
this is how I view things until reading this chapter and then realizing all the
ways in the past that I have used narrow-minded thinking. My understanding of
conflict and confrontation was misinterpreted as well. I used to think that
they were one in the same and this on its own caused problems. My way of
dealing with confrontation is to duck and run. I usually do not deal with any
type of confrontation and since I see conflict as a mode of confrontation, I
usually do not deal very well with conflict. However, thanks to Levine, I believe
this is going to change.
Most recently I found myself in a situation where I could
sense conflict starting to brew. It was at work and it was between two people
who felt they were in charge of the training that I was to receive. I was not
aware of one specific person who was in charge, so I listened to both. I
started noticing right away that there was conflicting information being given.
One person would say do things this way and then the other person would ask why
I did it that way because it was wrong. Then they bad-mouthing started to
happen. I thought I was doing well by not getting involved and not allowing the
conversations to go that way, but then things started turning towards me. I
started hearing, “why don’t you just tell her that I am training you and to butt
out”.
If I was aware of Stewart Levines principles, I could have used principle
one, abundance, and looked at the two of them as a “we” instead of the way I
was looking at them, which was basically me against them. I could have used principle two, creating
partnership, to them and me working together as a team I could have done that
by acknowledging that there was a conflict and then getting them to agree to
help me come to a resolution to solve it.
We could have used principle 3 and
got creative together to build a plan that would have worked for all three of
us. When it came down to it, each person was doing the same job, but they had
completely different ways of going about it. We could have used principle 4,
fostering sustainable collaboration, and looked at this situation as an opportunity
for each of us to learn something from the other. The only way that would work
is by using principle 5 and becoming open. When one of the trainers was
teaching me something, I could have told them openly and honestly what I was
being taught instead of trying to spare the other trainer any retribution. Of
course, how I framed it would have been important. By interacting with both of
them in a way that they both understood and felt comfortable with, we could have
built a long-term collaboration with each other, versus having them become the
enemy. They are both prideful and they both think that their way is the best,
so when the other trainer taught me in a way that was different from the first,
their feelings became involved as they felt as though it was some kind of
judgment on them.
I feel that if I would have approached the situation using
these nine principles, then the conflict might not have ever happened. Approaching
it from a collaboration point of view from the get go would have allowed us to
work together for a solution versus feeling like I was in the middle of a
tug-of-war. I took the, “it’s not me, because I’m new”, hands-off approach to
this dilemma, when really I could have been the one get us working together.
Through this exercise I have really learned change my mind frame in how I
approach conflict.
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