Conflicts : Why be afraid?

I recently came across a brilliant article by Tammi Leinski entitled - How to Appreciate Workplace Conflict. It's so good I'm almost tempted to copy and paste the whole text here.. but I'll resist and just quote this gem.

"Sure, it’s easy to name the problems with workplace conflict. Like the peel of a ripe banana, the problems are what you see first, in a colour you can’t miss. Bite in and the taste won’t soon leave your memory. Yet if you peel back the outside layer of a conflict, you’ll find the sweet fruit of a vibrant organizational future."

This is so true. As Tammy explains in her article conflict leads to better decisions, to creativity, to learning and to engagement. I would also like to add that it also builds commitment. Expressing more of who we are and what is important to us it is very liberating, and we naturally gravitate towards people and situations were we feel comfortable and free to do this.

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." ..... Albert Einstein.

Conflict is a good thing - it's how we learn and grow. But as Einstein suggests in the quote above, this is too big a mind shift for most people to make; and so we find that even the most enlightened of organisations tend to shy away from welcoming it outright. And yet conflict is the very grist of the organisational mill - without it nothing really significant happens.

We associate conflict with angst but in reality it's only our resistance to it that's painful. Conflict is never the problem, only our defensiveness. Instead of defending our point of view and resisting conflict we could just as easily choose to come together with a shared intent to explore the basis of our differences in order to see the underlying truths. This way we both learn... we get to see the bigger all-inclusive picture... and what we imagined divided us has actually brought us together. As Tammy quite rightly says, we choose how we view conflict. Whether it a gift or a curse is entirely down to us. It is simply a choice.

You may have recognized that anyone who decides to live a remarkable life tends to invite conflict - it sort of goes with the territory. But what's perhaps not so obvious is that these conflicts can be stepping stones for us... our opportunities for greatest gain. Approaching conflict lightly and defenselessly transforms it into greater understanding... a mutual benefit. We get to see a little more clearly, understand a little more deeply.. and not just about the issues at hand, but about our Self.

We might not get the answers we wanted or the outcome we expected, but there's always a mutual and permanent gain, often in a far wider context.

"We find comfort among those who agree with us, growth among those who don't."