LEADERSHIP: Developing CONFLICT Capacity in Times of Crisis

As trite as it sounds, there are always significant personal growth opportunities that can evolve from every crisis. Leading in a COVID-19 economy requires a higher level of conflict capacity than leading when things are stable. 

There’s never been a better time than the present moment to consciously increase conflict capacity in yourself and your organization.

Why now?  You may be thinking… you have enough challenges to deal with, why is this something I should be concerned about, now?

At the beginning of a crisis, people tend to band together and hyper focus on survival, but once the smoke clears, every sort of conflict comes to the surface. Issues that might have taken years to surface appear seemingly overnight in to a glaring spotlight.

This crisis has been like ripping a bandaid off covered wounds, some long ignored.  Coming to the surface after weeks of home-bound isolation, people are finding work-related and home front issues are melding together into one gigantic life issue.

For the organization, multi-faceted issues are rising to the surface because employees have had time to meditate on their work environments.  Such things as ineffective leadership, poor communication and an owner failing to prepare managers for an orderly advancement or succession. 

This new environment triggers the strongest emotions that lead to aggression or avoidance. There’s no time like the present for some intense, boot-camp style personal growth to expand conflict capacity.

Conflict capacity is the ability to stay with difficult situations without resorting to the three coping mechanisms: Fight, flight or freeze, all normal tendencies during times of high stress and anxiety.  One of the typical leadership challenges during times of crisis, is dealing with anger, learning to cope with everything going wrong and employee discontent.  When we are stretched to our limits, we exhibit impatience, anger, and defensiveness, not the traits we want to exhibit during times of crisis.

The truth about conflict that isn’t taught in the textbooks is this: All conflict is first about your own inner conflict, not just a disagreement with another person. The skill that must be learned to be an effective and positive-reinforcing leader is the ability to manage difficult thoughts and emotions instead of reacting harshly or retreating within oneself and doing nothing. Both are extremes that produce negative outcomes with employees in an already nervous workplace.

Until you as a leader understand your own internal conflict, you will struggle to understand that the root of conflict is always internal misalignment rather than dealing with high-conflict people.

How do you increase conflict capacity within yourself? In order to expand your capacity, you have to first identify your patterns. Next, you must create a plan and build in some mental-processing-space between stimulus and response so you can change your typical or experientially programmed modes of reaction.

Identifying patterns might be emotionally painful, but try not to judge yourself. Instead, interpret your discomfort as becoming more aware of what makes you who you are at your core. You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge, so the first step is an acknowledgement and self-awareness.

For example, aggression. This emotion might be good on the battlefield or football field, but rarely produces any positive results in the workplace, among employees. Several things can trigger aggressiveness including being tired, another person’s defensiveness or being unfairly judged.

So, write down your pattern or triggers that bring aggressiveness to the forefront.  Get your triggers for this type of response on the table so you are aware of what and why you become this way. What is your trigger, and how do you typically react when you lose capacity?

Now that you understand your lead-up pattern, create a plan that will re-route around the response of aggressiveness. For example, if your usual response is to avoid someone, your plan then should be to engage them, doing so with offers to help.  Ask questions that will put them more at ease with you in conversation.  If they criticize you, your plan is to say, “Tell me more,” instead of retreating or defending. Then breathe.  It’s amazing how therapeutic the simple act of breathing can be at reducing stress and anxiety that lead to unwholesome behavioral responses.

The key is to train yourself to get in front of a “painful experience” instead of releasing your pressure valve or triggering your defense mechanism.  This is the moment that you create a space between stimulus and response.  Over time, the space become wider and the more balanced and less explosive your reactions become.

Another way to build space is to buy time. This is not always the best strategy, because it only postpones dealing with a potentially negative situation.  However, if you start to feel the pressure build up and you feel the need to defend or get argumentative, simply say, “I appreciate what you’ve shared, and I want to respond, but I want to be thoughtful about it. I need time too do more research that will be helpful to our team.  Can we schedule time to talk tomorrow?”

Want to get there faster? Then you need to commit to a practice. Identify your nemesis. This is the person who drives you crazy. Seems like we all have one or two of those people in the workplace. Now, instead of avoiding them,  let them become your best teacher. Let them speak their minds on issues that impact the team or the entire organization.  Ask for solutions, recommendations, ideas to resolve the issues.  When the antagonists or constant complainers are put on the line to offer solutions, they will do one of two things… stop complaining and challenging or offer solid, workable solutions that will indeed help the organization.  

For a leader, this process is all about practical exposure therapy instead of bottling up or planing for retaliation. Expose yourself to discomfort and learn to deal with its root causes.  Use your one-to-one engagements with others to experiment to see if you can change your patterns of response, defusing the triggers before a negative event occurs.

In a time of crisis, we need stability, direction, safety and clarity. All of it mental in nature.  Don’t be the source and cause of stress and anxiety for your employees.  Diffuse… don’t light the match!

Once the immediate crisis is over and the dust settles, the spotlight will shine brightly on inadequacies in our personal and professional lives. There’s no better time as a leader than a crisis to increase your conflict capacity.

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