June Frontline Festival: Conflict Edition

This month’s Frontline Festival is all about conflict and conflict resolution. I am grateful to all the wonderful contributors for sharing their insights on this important topic. If you have written a post on conflict, feel free to add a link to it in the comments section.

Root Causes of Conflict

I like this post from Jesse Lyn Stoner of Seapoint Center because she examines conflict from a systems perspective, showing how we can miss the opportunity to clarify and resolve the deeper, underlying issues if we just assume conflict between two people is a personality conflict. 5 Tips to Ensure Your Values Unify Your Team, Not Divide It

Conflict Begins With You

Lolly Daskal of Lead From Within offers a trilogy of posts that examine the root causes of conflict.

Every conflict starts with SELF. and as a leader from within, you must self manage and self regulate.

As a leader, you are comparing yourself to others that makes you feel less than self so it causes CONFLICT. Leadership Beyond Compare

 As a leader do you give yourself permission to honor yourself so you don’t feel depleted and you are more incline to handle conflict because you are NOT feeling stretched emotionally. Honor Yourself

As a leader do you have blind spots of self and they are causing conflict and you don’t even realize what you are projecting onto others. Strangers Unto Yourself. She continues, “SO in my coaching with leaders around the world and my facilitation on the subject of “conflict resolution” is always taking stock of SELF and looking in the mirror. The best leaders look within first for conflict resolution.”

The Positive Side of Conflict

Joy and Tom Guthrie of Vizwerxs share the conflict pic on the left. I have had the delight of working with them on art for my next keynote. A great creative duo.

Henna Inam of Transformational Leadership shares 5 Steps to Embrace Conflict. My favorite line, “Every conflict has within it the opportunity for positive change – the transformation of the problem through the transformation of those engaged in the conflict.”

John Hunter, of Curious Cat shares I wish more people objected to bad ideas, even if doing so risks conflict. Far too often we are so fearful of the potential downsides of addressing issues that might be contentious that we avoid those issues and just accept the damage they cause. This is not wise. This sub-optimizes overall performance to minimize conflict. We need to be able to address contentious issues effectively even if that means dealing with conflict.

Joan Kofodimos of Teleos Consulting Learn to Love Conflict. I particularly like her list of “prescriptive beliefs about what should be true.”

Terri Klass of Terri Klass Consulting explains the difference between toxic and productive conflict in her post, What’s a Leader to Do About Confict?

Lisa Kohn of Chatsworth Consulting Group presents Conflict is good – five ways to make it even better! on The Thoughtful LeadersÔ Blog where she presents a few simple, but not so easy, steps to take that can help make conflict more effective and productive.

Conflict Management Tips and Tools

Blair Glaser of Blair Glaser shares her witty yet poignant view of manage conflicts in relationships in her post How to Have the Same Fight Over and Over

Jennifer V. Miller of The People Equation reminds us of the snowball effects of snappy remarks in The Snowball Effect: When Small Workplace Offenses Grow Out of Control

Matt McWilliams of Matt McWiliams offers practical advice for managing conflict with dominant and controlling types in his post, Conflict and the High D.

Sridhar Laxman of Lucid Minds Coaching shares his views on dealing with difficult co workers. My favorite tip, “Fight fire with water, resolve to stay calm while your coworker fumes.”

Linda Fisher Thornton of Leading in Context shares How to Not Lead Through Conflict. A practical list for leaders managing in high-conflict arenas.

Greg Richardson of The Strategic Monk, reminds us of the folly of arguing to just to win in his post, Argument vs. Persuasion: Winning Vs. Winning Over.

Tanveer Naseer of Tanveer Naseer draws on an exceptional customer service experience for tips on how to diffuse conflict in his post 4 Keys to Successfully Resolving Conflicts in the Workplace

New to the Festival, John Stoker, of Dialogue Works shares his post Managing Conflict With Ease. He extends lessons learned in childhood to provide practical advice for grown-ups.

Conflict, Fear and Frustration

Bob Winchester, Culture Ninja, shares Handling Conflict in the Workplace. What I love most about his post is that he goes back and edits it and let’s us see his mind shift. Well played.

“I’ve learned a lesson since I first wrote this that requires me to make an edit here. Sometimes, it isn’t that people don’t care. It may just appear that they don’t care. Maybe they had a bad day or maybe they don’t care about the same issues that you do. Either way, people are complex. They care about some things and care less about others; that doesn’t make them bad. I have to be careful in making judgments like that, because they do more harm than good.”

Greg Marcus, of Idolbuster takes on the angle of personal organizational conflict in his post, 3 Options if Your Values Conflict With Company Culture. He reminds of our important choices.

Frank Sonnenberg Online describes the role fear holds in conflict situations in his post, Fear the Silent Killer.

Coming Next:

July’s Festival is all about Teams and Teamwork. Submissions due July 12th. I’m working on the topic calendar for the remainder of the year. Please comment with suggestions on future Frontline Festival topics.

Previous Frontline Festivals: