Here is a chart of behaviors, all having to do with how conflicts are addressed. From left to right the first four approaches are largely dysfunctional. Third-Party Tactics often represent an organization’s response to unresolved, unmanaged conflict and can be successful if the parties truly agree with the outcome decisions. Finally, Human Contact represents what actually is helpful because it represents people coming together on their own to address conflict as a shared problem.
Here’s a hypothetical scenario. The story of a conflict might begin with tensions that have begun to erupt and become more public. Hidden at first by Passive Agression and various forms of Resistance, the people involved gradually work their way toward Open Combat. Others see the conflict and take sides. Tentative moves toward Human Contact are subverted as the conflict ultimately heats up and spills out into open mischaracterizations and insults. Ugly words are shared in both directions. It’s enough bad stuff that the leaders are pushed to action. Human Resources initiates an investigation, but perhaps that takes a very long time and it only exacerbates the mistrust. By then some participants are sick of it, become withdrawn and maybe even decide to leave. An embarrassing story is shared with the press about working conditions, poor leadership. Some people lawyer up in fear of coming lawsuits.
Nobody in such a story ever really gets to the stage of Human Contact, which is, I believe, the most powerful and immediate way to deal with conflict, though — here’s the kicker — Contact can’t be forced. It must be chosen by the parties in question. It must be approached in good faith, which means peoples’ intentions, words and behaviors toward one another are sincere and fair.
We could talk about why we don’t get to Contact more easily, why people cling to the first four approaches in the chart. We might hypothesize resistance to the real vunerability associated with Contact. We could call out stubborn egotism or “lack of ownership.” We could discuss the whole psychological safety thing. We could blame trauma, as many do. We might explore Shadow based on Jungian analysis. We could explore Shame and Guilt, Judgment and our proclivity to assign and resist Fault. That might get us somewhere. It might not.
I’m inclined to chock it up to the fact that our sense of individual self is made up of conscious and unconscious parts. The unconscious ones are revealed whenever we are sucked into our emotional fantasies about each other. We imagine and we project and those are typically signs of unconsciousness based on our darker beliefs about other people and about ourselves.
It’s still a dilemma, though. Why don’t we choose Human Contact, given how conscious and aware we try to be and often imply we are?
Why do we keep choosing to suffer, hoping others are simply wrong?
I don’t know.
And I find myself simply observing that we are made of water. A pool of water, known as “our sense of self.” On a good day, untroubled, we can see through the water. It’s truly the most beautiful thing, our little patch of gravel, a mountain stream clear and cold. On that good day, we dip a glassful. The stream is undisturbed, unmuddied. Our conflicts, tensions and the choices we make around them seem far away, and we feel good; maybe even empowered or enlightened.
Then we are just ourselves without any story at all.
And I find myself asking again, “What the hell are we doing?”
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