Jeff did a nice job of reviewing our Leaning Into Healthy Conflict model in last week’s posting while also adding some new insights from author Reggie McNeal about the importance of not avoiding conflict.
To build on Jeff’s posting, I want to remind you of some of the insights we shared with you in LEAD 365. They are integrated into two journeys: the path to low impact and the path to high impact.
The first path starts with an avoidance of disagreements and a strong desire to keep everyone happy. This seems wise at first glance, but because we are all different people with different beliefs, values, perspectives, passions, gifts, and wiring, there will be disagreements and conflict. If we are living authentically and honestly with each other, these disagreements won’t necessarily make our relationships weaker; disagreements can make our relationships stronger.
If I work to avoid these disagreements, I will naturally start to avoid certain conversations with the people I may have conflict with—let’s call this person Charlie, just for the sake of this illustration. Avoiding conversations with Charlie leads to poor communication between us. This means that Charlie and my relationship will slowing become anemic (weak), both in quantity, because we will connect less often, and in quality, because when we do talk it will be only about safe things like the weather, sports, and TV shows.
When my relationship with Charlie—and anyone else I may be subtly avoiding because of possible disagreements—starts to grow weak, I slowly become isolated. We all need love in our world in order to live full, highly productive lives. With my relationships weakening, I start to lack the adequate love I need to feel encouraged by those I trust and also to be challenged by them.
With inadequate love in my life, I will lack the kind of feedback, both informal and formal, that I need to grow as a person. I may even become disconnected with the world and start living in a fantasy world—not seeing the world as it really is. Usually in this case I see a fantasy version of myself that is not accurate to how others see me and how I really show up in the world.
Over time I will become filled with deeply held fears and insecurities, which will likely leave me in an emotionally immature state susceptible to anger and negativity.
This then leads to the final result of all of this: my impact on the world will be very small, or worse yet, very negative. Here’s reminder of the Path to Low Impact you learned in 365:
And here are some questions you might ponder about this:
- Do you know people like this?
- Do you agree with me that this is a likely outcome of avoiding conflict?
- How are you doing at growing the courage and capacity needed to engage difficult conversations in the healthiest of ways? This is what Susan Scott calls “interrogating reality” in her book Fierce Conversations.
My deeply held belief is that a person that will interrogate reality with others in healthy ways will end up with strong and robust relationships that make that person better just by the very nature of them.
Next week I will explore this in more detail when I write about The Path to High Impact.
In the meantime, thanks for being a leader worth following!
Rodg
Image by Devensters. Used under CC BY 2.0 license.
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