Archives for March 2022

Change and Conflict

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I was speaking with the President of a non-profit Board recently and she was telling me about some conflict in her organization. This is a pretty common scenario, where board members are leaders, and have to deal with conflict, either amongst board members, or within the ranks of staff, or between board and staff.
 
Conflict in a workplace happens frequently enough and seem to have a change component often. Perhaps you can think of some times in workplaces where tensions were either buried or sublimated.  And then comments like these arose:
 
“Oh he (she/they) is just afraid of change! They don’t like change…”

This is the “old” way.
 
But others: “He/she/they are a bull in a china shop! They want change so quickly…”
 
The more the President and I spoke, the more it became apparent that there had also been a lot of change that had entered their system. She had even started to wonder whether they needed help with “change management” or “conflict management.”
 
Over the years, I have come to see how closely related change and conflict truly are and how easy it is to think it’s an either/or equation. In fact, it’s often more about identifying where people are stuck and what the underlying causes are for the conflict.
 
This awareness of the relationship between conflict and change started when I had the opportunity to teach a course for Royal Roads University, in their Masters of Conflict Analysis and Management. The course was called “Analyzing and Managing Conflict and Change in Organizational Settings” and was for mid-career (and higher) leaders who were taking their Masters in Conflict Management.
 
Before having to gather research and reflection to teach that course, I knew there was some relationship between the field of change management and my own of conflict management, but I had only a dim awareness to start.
 
After teaching the course for two years of experimentation and learning with the other students/leaders in the classroom, I really got how intertwined those two concepts truly are. Change is a contributing factor to conflict – and conflict is a symptom of change. And… there is more to it!
 
From my perspective, to start to work with change and conflict in organizational settings, there needs to be:
 
1) Increased conflict competence with those who are responsible to lead, to navigate the increased turbulence because of the change(s) and to model the way as conflict competent, through the change.
 
2) An awareness of where one is in the change management cycle, for motivation to keep going.
 
3) A vision for what kind of culture is desired to be built instead, to inspire a shared vision.
 
With regard to where one is at in a change management cycle, when I did my research, it seemed most models change consultants used were complicated and ultimately not that practical. A change model I did find powerful, as did the students in the Master’s program, was from a book called It Starts with One – Changing Individuals Changes Organizations by Black & Gregersen.
 
The authors describe three key stages of change and what goes wrong at each stage. They are:

  1. Failure to see
  2. Failure to move
  3. Failure to finish

 
Knowing where you are in that change cycle can help explain where you (or your team, organization or community) are stuck and what the underlying causes for the conflict are. By the time it gets to conflict, there have been a multitude of factors feeding the system.
 
You and others might also find this interview from my podcast relevant to building conflict management systems:
https://www.onconflictpodcast.com/episode-28-jane-morley-the-leaders-role-in-creating-conflict-management-systems/

Chaos and Well-being

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I’ve been reflecting on environmental issues long before they were making headlines.  About 15 years ago, I helped start a local food security group in my neighbourhood, which I wrote a lot about when it was growing. Before that, I organized an environmental conference and would even volunteer for an environmental radio show (as a radio reporter – before the days of podcasts!).

I say this by way of setting a context for my remarks.

Where I am at these days, is thinking about fundamental well-being and its importance.  Why? I can see the future continuing to be chaotic, stressful and degenerative. Doesn’t sound like I live in a happy world, but I do. I work hard to continue to be balanced and as full of well-being as I can manage.

What I can see is that between COVID, the wars in Europe and elsewhere and the continued impacts of climate change, we are stressed as a species.

What I know for sure is we don’t act our best when stressed.

So – ergo – anything we can do to decrease stress and increase fundamental well-being is a priority.

In my books!

What say you?

“Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.” … Natalie Goldberg

Well Being – In Touch with the Real You

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Last year, I spent a whole year thinking about Fundamental Well-being and writing about it in this section. I enjoyed the theme so immensely that this year, I am carrying on with another full year of putting my mind each month to the inquiry of:
 
What does it take to be in fundamental well-being?
 
Recently, I’ve made a connection to authenticity and reflection when I was teaching a course on Leadership at the Justice Institute of BC’s Centre for Leadership. There were 11 courageous people gathered to examine themselves, their definitions and practices around the idea of being a leader.
 
One of the concepts we explored was being authentic. When I first heard the idea of being an authentic leader, I was puzzled. What does it mean to be authentic? In this course, we looked at that.
 
There is often insight in etymology and the word has roots in the Greek word authentes – meaning “one acting on one’s authority” and comes from autos meaning “self.” 
 
So, to be authentic means to look at oneself, to be self-aware. As it is said, the phrase “Know Thyself” was carved into the stone at the entrance of the Greek Apollo’s temple at Delphi.  And when asked to sum up what all the philosophical commandments could be reduced to, Socrates answered: “Know thyself.” He was also reported to have said: “The unexamined life is not worth living” at this trial for impiety.
 
Yet, how to we become more auto-thentic – more self-aware?
 
This is where reflection comes in. Reflection is the pausing/stopping/listening that provides us the silence to source out who we truly are and what we truly want. There’s plenty of distraction in the world. We are after all, human – we get caught up in our endless restlessnesses & dissatisfactions. There are many shows to watch & participate in to keep us in distraction.
 
But what show do I want to choose to watch or participate inw? 
 
Many don’t choose – e simply watch what’s in front of us or play out what’s been programmed into us. No discernment – no choosing.
 
And, there is a type of flow to that: to be run by our conditioning. Being run by our conditioning is not reflection and it is not where true freedom or the real magic resides. What is the engine that powers the steering wheel of our lives then?
 
Our choosing! 
 
It is our choosing to hit the strings and create from the place of our deepest, most authentic desires. What do I want to create & live into? What’s most important to me? We need reflection to allow those inner truths – our more authentic selves – to arise up and to be heard. As they say – the heart speaks in whispers.
 
Of course, as you know, you can’t always get what you want even when you act. But that’s not the purpose of the desire we hear through reflection. Our desire points us to our North Star! Our desire/heart promptings draw us forward!
 
Our heart whispers and true, authentic desires guide us to know ourselves more deeply – to be free flowing BE-INGS in harmony with life herself & to be guided by her.
 
That requires reflection. Reflection is from the Latin reflex – “bent back.”  Reflection allows us to see and hear ourselves more deeply. When that is our way of reflecting, it is a true source of well-being and guidance. It is when we reflect with a distorted mirror, that we move into neurosis, not reflection.
 
And it is in self-awareness, the pursuit of the authentic self, combined with reflection, to hear its voice, that we find access to fundamental well-being. As Sheryl Sandberg tells us:
 
“We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.”