How can you manage conflicts in a thought leadership network?

There are various ways to determine the root cause of a problem. One thing I’ve learned is when seeking to understand causation, is to stay in a seat of curiosity with an high sense of empathy. This will help to turn down the noise assumption create in our heads.

Usually we focus on active listening most of the time. However, active listening alone isn’t sufficient. We need to focus on empathetic listening, which involves understanding the emotional experiences of the other person. Therefore, thought leaders need to master the art of empathetic listening to effectively manage conflicts. This skill entails mirroring the emotions we perceive. As articulated by Jacob M. Engel, a former member of Forbes Councils, in his article titled ‘How Empathic and Active Listening Can Improve Workplace Communication’, empathetic listening necessitates setting aside our biases & ego, by demonstrating that our intent is to comprehend rather than merely respond.

Conflict is often a sign that an institution has grown. You will often see conflict between staff members or staff and admin. Once tribes begin to form slowly, new conflicts will emerge. Study the conflict pattern from the past for conflict resolution in the future. Beware that newer conflicts will come, so solving the root cause of past confits will keep you ahead in solving new ones. Some conflicts will arise just because someone is performing above board, Everyone appreciates the difficulty in solving multiple conflicts at once it may become difficult or outright impossible to get to the bottom of it.

The initial factor to take into account is ensuring that third party is impartial and has no affiliations with any of the conflicting parties. Third party should facilitate conflict resolution by incentivizing collaboration and discouraging rivalry, thereby altering the dynamics of the situation to foster peaceful solutions. Their objective is to mediate with the aim of simplifying the conflict & motivating the conflicting parties to reach a mutually beneficial agreement. Research led by Professor Nir Halevy from Stanford GSB, in collaboration with visiting scholar Eliran Halali from BIU, suggests that “Third parties intervene when they can change ‘lose-lose’ to ‘win-win-win.’ We need to convince third parties that they can also win.”

What this article fails to mention is that if you have genuine thought leadership skills/experience, then sometimes you’ll run into conflict simply because most other people don’t know what you know. In those cases, you can certainly be kind, learn and grow, etc., but you can also stand by your expertise. In the words of the great Kenny Rogers, you’ve got to “know when to hold ‘em.”