Fly out of conflict at work

When we have conflict at work, our focus is narrow and our awareness is limited. What we see are enemies, problems and threats.

We all can relate to that. The longer we work together, the easier it gets to make quick assumptions about what others mean, think or plan to do. Even those we are usually friendly with can turn into potential dangers, depending on real or imagined alliances at the office. The longer a conflict is going on, the more we create scenarios and theories in our heads - often aiming to prove why others are wrong and we are right.

In such a mental state, we are like a low-flying plane that is surrounded by clouds. Our thoughts prevent us from seeing clearly. From this perspective, the only right thing seems to go left and right, avoiding one cloud after the other with sophisticated maneuvers. However, the more clouds coming towards us, that strategy can quickly make us shaky and sick.

We are often not aware that many of the things we take for observations are actually just intuitive constructions produced by our brain that don't really have any empirical basis. But the more such unproven ideas fit into our personal story of a conflict, the more tempted we are to just accept them as facts without further check. In many cases, that leads to a situation where many different people have very detailed, but very different stories of reality they believe in - whereby almost certainly no one is completely true. That makes it quite difficult to find common ground.

Fortunately there is a way out of these dynamics. We can decide to lift our airplane up and fly above our cloudy thinking. The clouds of thoughts will still be there, but they won’t blur our view anymore. The airplane stops shaking, and the pilot is able to see where the whole crew is heading to.

The tricky part is to remember that there is always that option to lift our airplane out of the clouds. When we are in the middle of conflict, we usually forget that we don't have to stay inside the clouds that we created ourselves. Because we take the clouds for reality, however, we don't even consider questioning their existence, but immediately feel the urge to take action against them.

As we know, there is no sense in fighting clouds - or thoughts. Thinking about not thinking something is a vicious circle. What we can do, however, is raising above our thoughts by simply observing them without judgement.

The moment we are able to observe our thoughts attentively and without judgement, our perspective changes. As soon as we observe our thoughts, we realize that we are not our thoughts, but a higher authority - otherwise, who is it that observes our thoughts? It sounds almost too simple, but is is really nothing but observation that does the whole trick. The longer we observe our thoughts without judging, the longer the distance between us and our thoughts becomes - like an airplane that slowly rises up and up, out of the clouds. Until finally, we see clearly again.

In the middle of conflict, that’s not easy of course. But the more we train ourselves to lift our mind to a metalevel of pure observation, the more pleasant our future flights through bad weather will be.

It's only with a clear view that we can have an open, honest and constructive discussion about what is going on and what steps we can take to improve the situation. When we fly above our clouds of thoughts and see the reality around us, we can start thinking about the best flight route instead of being busy with damage control. Every constructive transformation of conflict starts with a clear view of what is going on - including the shortcomings of our own interpretations, ideas and opinions.

Practical tip: Like with anything else, it's hard to train a new skill under extreme circumstances. When we are in the middle of a storm and never flew an airplane before, chances are small that we will handle the situation very well. That is why we could start with small self-observation sessions whenever we feel at ease with ourselves - and then slowly expand our awareness into more and more stressful and conflictive situations. In the long-term, this will help us being soaked into less storms and spend more time enjoying the sunshine of life.