What are the words that you associate with conflict? In my experience, most people think of words with a negative connotation – words like upheaval, fear, anger, anxiety, danger and alienation.
Yet John F. Kennedy, Al Gore and other leaders have noted that, when written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters – one representing danger and one representing opportunity.
When we experience conflict as a crisis, we tend to focus only on the danger, not realizing that it can be an opportunity as well. What sort of opportunity? Well, if people in conflict can tolerate the tension of being in conflict for long enough to explore constructive options for resolution, it can lead to a better state of being than existed prior to the conflict.
The challenge is how to work with conflict in a positive way when it raises so many negative feelings. When I am in conflict with someone, I feel tense, alienated and anxious. I hate being in conflict, and I seek to resolve it immediately. My instinct is to avoid the conflict (run and hide, metaphorically), or accommodate (give in to make peace), or look for a quick compromise (splitting the baby, as the King Solomon story goes). Other people’s instinct might be to fight and be aggressive – to destroy the person they are in conflict with before they are destroyed.
Because of my training and my experience as a family mediator and collaborative attorney, I know that there is a different, more constructive response to conflict – and that is collaboration. When people in conflict collaborate, they seek to identify and understand the needs and interests of both parties and to find a solution that works for both – no one gives in, no one gets destroyed, no one runs away. So when I find myself in conflict, I take a deep breath and remind myself that conflict is crisis AND opportunity.
