Written by: Janet M. Harvey, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Are you similar to most leaders who witness the stressful conflict in the workplace and then get stressed out trying to figure out what to do about it? Conflict is one example of interference with workplace performance that leaders navigate daily. Leaders at every level, from the frontline to the boardroom, need help to deal with the messiness of relationships and social connections in our VUCA world. Unfortunately, seeking quick relief from the tension often amplifies the problem because the action relies on incomplete information. The alternative is to negotiate to get something useful or stay stuck and get nothing, or worse yet, make faulty decisions.
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” – – Albert Einstein
Developing the mindset and skill set for leaders to get comfortable in discomfort has a gap. Organizations won’t attract talented employees when they can’t create an environment where people can bring out their whole selves. Those they retain will shrink back from contributing to their full potential. Leaders must engage in social connection. And when we are emotionally stressed, connecting with ourselves is hard enough, let alone having any extra internal resources to be with others in a grounded way. Conflict festers and, over time, becomes destructive leadership and acceptable incivility that’s not visible yet, negatively impacting both retention and attraction. Just glance at Glassdoor to see how easy it is to damage the company’s reputation in the minds of prospective personnel.
The key to navigating any tension is to hold a little longer in that uncomfortable state until you see a recombination of both sides by practicing curiosity and looking more closely at what motivates the rise of the tension. Leaders can see that many more than one right and worthy answer exists for every problem. Examining through the lens of either one of the tensions gives a much more giant playground from which to determine what solutions could be.
The critical concept for leaders answers this question: “How does someone learn to tolerate the tension of presence?” We all know what it means to let things go and trust the unknown.
We also know how to build on what we know. There is a line between the two states of being: the tension of presence. When I started working with this idea, I explored each dilemma as a polarity and then as a paradox, which was utterly unsatisfying. This kind of dualistic thinking, getting caught in the ping pong game between two states of being, didn’t work to generate new solutions. Instead, leaders described feeling a pendulum swing back and forth. Trying to reconcile between building on the known and trusting the unknown was wasting a lot of time and not clarifying how to stop the swinging.
The diagram below introduces a set of everyday tensions that our research with over 250 leaders revealed. The presence of tension tolerated for a little bit longer became a way to see how to foster freedom, turning what appeared to be damaging as a resource to see what change to invite and, through that, generate a more desirable state, e.g., a breakthrough idea rather than the breakdown of paralyzing conflict.
When you put Breakthrough and Conflict on opposite ends of a line, you know that sometimes conflict is healthy. It suggests that the thing we’ve been doing doesn’t serve anymore, and we’re all feeling the tension of it. We’re ready to go to Breakthrough to move over there. But suppose I go to breakthrough too fast without reflecting on what breakthrough contributes and serves. I might do something reckless, perhaps impulsive and damaging. We don’t want to spend time only on breakthroughs without thinking through the influence and impact of new choices, including those unintended, because we didn’t include all the affected audiences of the decision.
We also don’t want to spend all our time in conflict. There’ssome ratio between the two that works. When we can stand somewhere between them, feel both of them, and stay alert to what’s happening right before us, we will make better decisions. As we shift our mindset, we think about resources differently. Ultimately, a more deliberate decision-making process occurs that mitigates many things that cause expensive rework and emotional frustration for all involved.
3 Ideas for the Tension of Presence: Breakthrough <–> Conflict
It’s vital to remember that people don’t come to work wanting to create conflict and have a bad day. As human beings, we want to feel like we belong and enjoy our time in the workplace. Responsibility to create an enjoyable workplace climate begins with each leader. When a leader chooses to pause when they’re annoyed or frustrated or maybe even about to say something they’re going to regret later, a mindset shift that remembers every person has experience and presence beyond any situation allows curiosity to bubble up. When leaders remember, employees didn’t come to work to create workplace conflict, there’s more internal resilience to get curious about generates the attitude observed. Besides mitigating the conflict, engagement can strengthen the relationship’s trust and feelings of belonging.
Step number two is much more about how a leader ensures that conflict doesn’t happen in the first place. This step focuses on respect, giving it to get it in return. Pause for a moment to recall the last time you were in a conversation when somebody was not very nice to you, and you could feel your stress rising and your sense of conflict arising in your awareness. Imagine if that person could have heard you say, ‘Can you pause for a minute? Let’s have a conversation about what’s going on here.’ Now that takes courage for leaders, and you can probably do it. Imagine your employees don’t know how to do that and won’t if leaders aren’t modeling this capacity to bring harmony. Every leader has the job of focusing on the relationship first. Find out what’s going on for people before concluding that the person(s) is somehow the cause of the conflict.
And then the third idea for you is this. When leaders embody a mindset that everybody in the workplace has everything necessary to be at their best all the time, we listen differently. As we listen, we hear opportunities to move from a “telling” style of leading into one that is much more about shared responsibility, empowerment, being genuinely curious, and remembering, "I bet this person in front of me has an idea to resolve this conflict on their own." Leaders don’t have to do it for them. Exercising discernment requires showing up and asking, “What do you see as a possible resolution for this conflict?”
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Janet M. Harvey, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Janet M. Harvey is CEO of inviteCHANGE, a coaching and human development organization that shapes a world where people love their life’s work. Janet is a visionary leader in the global professional coaching industry with an International Coaching Federation Master Certification. Janet is an accredited educator who has engaged adults, teams, and global enterprises for nearly 30 years to invite change that sustains well-being and excellence. Janet uses her executive and entrepreneurial experience to cultivate leaders in sustainable excellence through Generative Wholeness™, a signature generative coaching and learning process for people and systems. Janet has served as a global board leader for ICF, as a director.
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