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Don't you love conflict? No? Most of us do our best to avoid conflict. Many times, we work out a compromise to try to satisfy everyone, or we suppress conficts until they blow up. Why do we have such negative feelings around approaching conflict, and what conflict means?
Conflict is not necessarily negative, but our emotions and behaviors around conflict are many times negative, or even destructive. Can we shift our perception of conflict, and view it as a transformative tool, one that can accelate our growth and personal evolution? How would that change your beliefs about conflict, your behavior during conflicts, or your goals of conflict?
Imagine this: You own a business and no one is telling you about the declining quality of the customer service your staff is giving. A customer calls for the second time and has the same negative experience with your staff. In her anger, she decides to go over everyone's head in the company and contact you directly. Now she is yelling at you, and you find yourself trying to resolve her original conflict, as well as the conflict you are having with her.
There are also two other conflicts to handle, the conflict between the customer service representative and this customer, and the overall strutural or training problem in the customer service department that has caused this woman's, and many other customers', conflicts.
Would you view all of these conflict situations as negative, messy, or something to just get rid of, or as a transformative tool to accelerate the growth and evolution of your business, by changing or improving your customer service department or policy? It's all about perception. You can choose to perceive these conflicts as opportunities to grow personally and professionally, and also to better your company.
Same thing with personal conflicts. If you choose to see conflict as a signal that something is blocking your intimacy or energy flow with anyone you have a relationship with, you can thank the conflict for bringing that blockage to light, since no one was talking about it before the conflict arose. Then, you can communicate and discover where each of you would like to be in relating to each other, and deepen your relationship.
Transforming and evolving is exciting to some, scary to others. If you are aware, conflict can provide a push into that process of growth. You can use conflict to your advantage, and learn from it. Go into conflict head on, and see what new heights you can go to as a result.
Published 09/14/09 at Morning Coach. |
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Separate the real from the not real. |
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