Conflict is inevitable among a group of people living or working with each other. (There is probably no need to say that)!
Here I will consider conflict in our team and how it affects the energy available to do work. Of course energy can come from the resolution of conflict and this can be a very positive thing. It can thus be looked at (by a perceptive leader and/or supervisor) as an opportunity for growth and development.
However it can also be very destructive – particularly if it is not recognised for what it is.
Conflict appears to galvanise us far more than cooperation ever does. For example, in a country going to war, every element of the state apparatus is mobilised to assist, and huge amounts of money and human resources are invested in the war effort.
This willingness of everyone to pull together can be easily understood, because the goal is to defeat an enemy which (rightly or wrongly) is thought to be a threat to our culture, livelihood, etc.
Not so easy to understand, however, is the general day-to-day attractiveness of conflict (disconnection) over cooperation (integration), which I also refer to here, and/or the reasons we find people hurting each other attractive to watch. Whether it is serious headline crime that is reported in gory detail with great enthusiasm, through fiction in books, films, TV series, documentaries about people who are suffering, violent video games, or media that plant themselves in war zones, we appear to be almost addicted to watching people hurt each other and/or watching people suffer.
It may be because of our need for excitement (mentioned later) but I intuit that it is deeper than that. Perhaps it is linked to our attractiveness to what is taboo and what we’d normally not encounter in our day-to-day lives; or a deep unresolved rage that we keep the lid on because to express it openly would not be in keeping with what society expects of us.
Whatever it is, I would say anyone who ever has worked as part of a team will recognise this galvanising, and sometimes destructive quality that conflict has.
It is important for leaders not to be drawn into the excitement of conflict and add to it.
That is, while conflict is an inevitable reality that needs to be acknowledged on an ongoing basis I believe that it can be given too much oxygen by leadership.
Not all conflict can be worked through, dealt with and finally resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Sometimes it needs to be parked. Indeed the energy used to resolve conflict between two people who are unwilling to be reflective could often be used to further the well-being of those who seek our assistance.
The emotionally-well-enough staff member will be willing to park issues and hold difficult emotions until an appropriate forum (i.e. supervision) is available to move towards mature and responsible resolution.
It is true that the legal profession gains a lot from ongoing conflict that can sometimes be endemic in teams large and small – but much can be solved without recourse to external assistance too if a spirit of good-will is the dominant ethos in the organisation.
Now the purpose of engaging in conflict is usually to get one’s needs met. (I refer to a previous post in the Chapter on Systems Theory in Section Three). These needs might, of course, be unconscious and contain an element of dysfunction or even neurosis.
Underneath conflict there is often an element of suffering; the depth of which is dependent on the nature and/or intensity of the conflict, and how deeply the issues challenge our core values. Suffering, in turn, is virtually always accompanied by a charged emotional state which is usually dominated by emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety, envy, insecurity, etc.
In our work we are in constant contact with members of families that often exhibit high levels of anger, fear, anxiety and similar emotions. How trauma finds its way into teams was discussed in a previous post and that is relevant here.
It is our responsibility to accommodate these emotions (including, very often, the chaos we spoke about in a previous Chapter), make sense of them, reframe them if appropriate, absorb some of the more irrational outbursts, and listen carefully for wisdom that might be usable as change nodes [1] which might not be that easy to spot.
(More on this in the Chapter on Leadership in Section Five when we discuss Power).
Also, good enough leadership involves not allowing the conflict that we deal with every day among the people we are helping to be mirrored in the day to day encounters within our team. This mirroring, or parallel process, is quite common among organisations that work with distressed families – we only have to look at how competitiveness, never ending rows, turf wars, power struggles, and a multitude of time and energy wasting issues abound in organisations, both statutory and voluntary.
[1]. Node is a term borrowed from computer and/or communications networks. From our point of view it is a place where things happen together, or merge. So a change node can be viewed as a potential opportunity for either proposing a different view or framing a problem from a different perspective. A technical description is available here.