I have been talking with my OnConflictPodcast partner Julia Menard about the dimensions of conflict leadership. These are the dimensions of understanding and action that empower one to lead an organization to greater competence in conflict. Below, I outline eight dimensions of conflict leadership as I understand them. There are, no doubt, other ways to slice the apple.
1. Responsibility
A leader needs to acknowledge that, like every other member of the organization, her influence on any conflict she’s part of is not benign. She has her own individual and unique way of contributing to it, and needs to be accountable to feedback from others to reduce any of her detrimental influence and increase her constructive influence. This is a required foundation of conflict leadership.
More profoundly, she must take responsibility for conflicts that exist amongst the people she oversees, no matter how many dozens or hundreds there may be. She must ask herself how her actions, policies, and leadership style are affecting the creation, sustaining, and resolution of conflicts and disputes. How is the established culture contributing to problems and how can it be constructively changed and evolved?
2. Systems approach
Leaders need to appreciate that much in the human realm of organizations is invisible. When a dispute flares up it is often a symptom of an underlying conflict or dynamic. The manifesting dispute is an opportunity to look beneath the surface at what is really going on.
Organizations are complex cultural systems that resist change. When you take measures to change them, there will likely be unintended consequences. It is best to take an experimental attitude knowing that any changes are likely to require course correction as they are instituted. Greater competence in conflict requires system change.
3. Difficult conversations and negotiation (by the leader)
System change and cultural evolution will require personal growth and new competencies amongst personnel who will need encouragement and support. Some individuals will resist or even sabotage new initiatives. Conflict leadership calls for important conversations to take place, and some of them will be difficult. A leader may also be required to negotiate with peers and bosses in order to advance greater organizational competence with conflict.
4. Policy/Rules
Clear guidance through policy helps groups to act consistently and more coherently. Policy is necessary, but it’s not sufficient for the required transformation. The human interactive system is too complex to be managed entirely by rules.
5. Education and training
Teaching personnel on multiple levels is part of system change and cultural evolution. People need a vision and rationale for changes. Tutoring in administrative aspects of new policies may be called for. Effective communication and dispute resolution skills are not passed on genetically. They need to be learned and practiced.
6. Coaching, mediation, and facilitation (third party intervention in a particular conflict)
As well as focusing on system change and cultural evolution, leaders will sometimes need to be ‘in the trenches’ themselves involved in responses to specific conflicts. These call for wise combinations of coaching, mediation, and facilitation. A leader needs to be able to conduct these processes with some basic proficiency. Perhaps more importantly, he must know how to find and access capable resources both inside the organization and externally when needed.
7. Team/group dynamics
This dimension of conflict leadership action and understanding includes know-how in group facilitation and some understanding of what teams need in order to be healthy and perform well. In Blog #91, I write about four requirements for team health: an inspiring vision, clear structures, trusting relationships, and explicit power dynamics. Regarding power dynamics, they are often healthy when they can be openly talked about, and problematic if there are negative consequences for questioning them.
8. Reflective practice and continuous improvement
No matter where you begin, if you systematically review the effects of your actions and accordingly adjust your behaviour, you will make progress. Even after significant systemic and cultural change, the work doesn’t end. There is always room for further improvement. Society itself changes its expectations regarding conflict competence and seems to continually (if not slowly) raise expectations. Organizations need to keep up. Ideally, your organization can lead by experimenting its way forward to greater competence in conflict.
I look forward to expanding on each of these eight dimensions of conflict leadership in future blogs.
