Rocky Balboa Wasn’t Afraid of Conflict: And You Shouldn’t Be Either

If you want to learn to swim, you have to get in the water. If you want to learn how to drive, you have to get in the car. If you want to learn how to fight, you have to get into the ring. Really. No matter how uncomfortable it may be, you cannot learn to fight unless you get into the ring.

The same can be said of learning to deal with conflict. You can’t learn how to deal with it if you never enter the conflict ring. And that is why most people never deal with conflict. Let alone deal with conflict productively. They avoid it completely; in a desperate hope it will just go away. Guess what? It never goes away on its own.

Some leaders prefer to employ the “why can’t everyone just get along” strategy. Or what I call the “kiss and makeup” method of dealing with conflict. But when conflict is buried, or glossed over, it always comes back. Not sometimes, but always.

If you are a leader, I have a news flash for you. One of the most important jobs you have is to recognize, identify, and resolve conflict in your organization. But don’t expect it to be open and obvious. Openly hostile conflict is easy to spot. You have to look for the less obvious signs. Conflict that is under the surface. Conflict that is insidious. Conflict that slowly robs an organization of its full potential. Conflict that can sometimes destroy an organization.

One of the surest signs of hidden conflict is when you are in a meeting and one of your subordinates says, “let’s take this offline”. Offline is where conflict goes to die. Offline is where conflict gets buried, never to be talked about again. But never to be talked about only avoids the underlying problem.

When this happens, stop the meeting right then and there. Tell your team there is no such thing as offline. Tell them as far as you are concerned everything is “online” from now on. Dig in. Find out what the issue is between your subordinates.

The main reason your subordinates bury conflict is because they think you will disapprove of it. They think you want an organization that is conflict-free. So let me ask you this. Do you? Do you want a conflict-free company? If you do, you are making a big mistake.

First of all, a conflict-free organization is a pipe dream. No organization on the planet is conflict-free. You are fooling yourself if you believe yours is. Second, conflict, if it is productively managed, is the foundation of all progress in human history. It can be the foundation of all progress in your company. Or it can be the death of it.?Make sure they understand that conflict is not a bad thing.

In fact, tell them that not only do you encourage open and productive conflict, but you also expect and demand it. That means if someone simply can’t or won’t deal openly with conflict, then it is time to invite them to work for another company.