BUILDING WITH CONSTRUCTIVE CONFLICT

"Innovation requires harnessing the positive tension of constructive conflict."

A man named DeGraff in Psychology Today wrote this: the idea that constructive conflict produces innovative solutions, hybrids born from opposing ideas, is an old one. Ancient Chinese Taoist philosophy characterizes universal forces as yin and yang, seemingly antagonistic energies that are interconnected. Similarly, the 18th-century German philosopher Hegel saw history progressing as an ever-advancing dialectic of thesis and antithesis, ultimately resulting in a synthesis of something altogether new. In both Taoism and Hegelianism, constructive conflict is considered natural and inevitable.

Tom Glocer who was once the CEO at Reuters encouraged respectful disagreement, and the culture of quiet dissent started to give way to a more vocal form of constructive conflict. He added elements to both the board and executive team meetings that encouraged meaningful dissent in the strategic planning process. Meetings began to drag on into the night, but with an open mind, the team was finding the root cause of their challenges and discovering new market opportunities. A shared vision that they all owned began to emerge, but the strategy and timeline given to investors would need to be adjusted to allow the time they needed to achieve it.

In my experience we tend to lean back or crash forward when encountering conflict. The goal in the former is to avoid contact in any way - the hope being that the conflict will find another place to roost. In the latter we take the conflict on in a do or die scenario - see it as an assault - and smash the walnut with a sledgehammer. Neither is particularly useful or helpful when dealing with the social condition. In one we squeak along living in hope everything will work out, regardless if we participate or not, and in the other we eventually arrive at a pyrrhic victory with voices muted, participation and collaboration successfully eliminated - happy in the knowledge that we've 'won'. For now.

But there is another way and it starts with understanding that conflict isn't all good or all bad. If we are able to stay in the conflict when the friction subsides we may find ourselves in a new, exciting and very different territory - in a new place to learn, a new place to create. To get there it requires active listening and critical thinking.

Active listening is about being present and remaining curious. It is being open to another's idea(s), not traveling from judgment to conclusion but rather from trust to compassion. How we look at time is entrenched from years of accepting that time works in the way we understand it - or near enough - that it is understood in much the same way by everyone. It's not and is worth remembering when inside a conflict.

In 2008 a group of scientists, concerned about the planet, got together and decided they needed to think differently about sustainability - they felt they were making decisions in a vacuum. Through positive tension and constructive conflict they created something called Nexus Thinking. Each point in a triangle represents a different sector, in this case - food, energy and water. They decided that they wouldn't make a decision in their own discipline without first profoundly considering the impact it would have on the other two. It changed the way they looked at time and by redefining time it gave them the time to think differently. And in this case the thinking was for the betterment of the planet. Recently at the Rural Talks to Rural Conference in Blyth Theodore Flamand from Manitoulin Island said when a decision is about to be made on the Reserve two things happen first: the question, what will the impact be on the flora and fauna? If negative - then a re-think is required. And then, what do the Elders think about the decision?

I think the issue that has us leaning back or crashing forward as the only way to deal with conflict is connected to the time when we stopped being curious. There was a study that suggested that at 5 years of age 98% of us are creative geniuses. By the time we get to 25 there are 2% in the genius category. What happened? We go from a constant inquiry, a wonder of the world, to a place that's all about fear of failure, of being wrong. We go into hiding, or we become aggressive which is another form of hiding. We fall into default thinking. Phrases like: I've seen this before and it doesn't end well or my experience tells me you are wrong or this is taking too long - it's time to decide, become the response. We settle. We ignore. We just want it all to be over. But I think we're missing 98% of what else is possible. Staying in the conflict doesn't mean pain is eliminated, that doubt is removed, that certainty is secured. Change is difficult, collaboration messy, time-consuming. But the stop-learning attitudes are often so ingrained they are impossible to recognize, tricky to analyze, especially when in the tension of conflict. But leaning into that tension, listening to another as she talks, not seeing the activity as something to win or lose, not shutting down and fighting or running off at the first sign of conflict, may lead us back to a place of creative genius - a place that is ours together, a place that we all share. And maybe if we are able to do that then maybe we'll discover "innovation requires harnessing the positive tension of constructive conflict."