The following article was first published in early 2006 as the feature article in Vistage View, an online magazine distributed to over 14,000 Chief Executives worldwide. It has since been republished in several other online periodicals and business libraries.

From Conflict to Opportunity: Resolving Conflict by Communicating with Intent

By Edgar Papke

As the CEO or business owner, you are the role model for conflict resolution in your company, as well as the key influence on how conflict is dealt with in your organizationπs culture. As a result, your employees deal with conflict the way you prefer to deal with it.

Consciously or unconsciously, you determine how conflict gets dealt with in your company. In doing so, you affect one of the key influencers of your organization's culture and its ability to perform. Along with managing change, how conflict gets dealt with in your organization constitutes one of the more important aspects of how you communicate to employees what is appropriate or inappropriate behavior and how you expect them to communicate.

Effective leaders view conflict as neither positive nor negative. Instead, they accept it as a fundamental process of life that arises as a natural consequence of what happens in the environment.

More than anything, great leaders embrace the idea that conflict represents opportunity. In fact, within every conflict in your organization lies the opportunity to deal with an issue, address a lack of performance, or open the door to an expression of ideas that results in creative and innovative thinking. All of these circumstances present opportunities to move to more effective levels of creativity and innovation, which lead to opportunities for increased team and organizational performance.

Conflict creates change and change creates conflict. This is a natural part of relationships, teams, groups, and organizations, and a natural part of our lives.

Conflict and the Business Leader

For the business leader, conflict:

• Is an outgrowth of the diversity that characterizes people's thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and social systems. You have influence and power over whether or not conflict becomes negative, and that influence and power is found in the way you handle conflict.
• Can serve as a source of personal development, generating opportunities to learn from and adapt to the diversities and differences that are natural and healthy characteristics of your team.
• Can bring out alternative ways of thinking and behaving. Conflict can challenge you to manage your life in ways that utilize the differences between people for mutual growth.
• Is a natural consequence of committed, bright, energetic people working together.
• Is typically a reflection of real issues that need to be addressed within the organization to achieve high performance.

Above all, conflict presents a great learning opportunity. In fact, conflict is often necessary for growth and development to occur, resulting in higher levels of performance. Confronting conflict is an essential trait of great leadership, and is indicative of a leader's strength, courage and emotional intelligence.

As uncomfortable as it may feel, the first step to effectively managing conflict is to confront it. All too often, leaders avoid or procrastinate dealing with conflicts, which inevitably leads to additional conflict, coalitions forming among staff, and missed opportunities for reinforcing the need for open and constructive communication.

Avoiding conflict is rarely a good choice for leaders to make. This applies not only to conflicts the leader happens to be personally involved in, but also to those among team and staff members. Avoidance can take the form of diplomatically sidestepping an issue, postponing an issue, or withdrawing from a threatening situation altogether.

Leaders often avoid conflicts if they perceive no opportunity for personal gain or organizational benefit. This falls under the category of "there's nothing in it for me" or "it's not worth my time." Before coming to these conclusions, leaders serve themselves well by carefully assessing the situation and avoiding any potential blind spots.

Conflict Styles

Once a conflict is confronted, people generally engage in two broad categories of behavior—telling and being assertive and listening and being cooperative.

Assertive behavior consists of demonstrating and communicating your point of view. It involves the act of sharing your thoughts and feelings, and expressing your thinking. Cooperative behavior consists of the process of inquiry and listening to the other point of view. It includes behaviors such as productively inquiring, asking questions, and listening to understand the other person's point of view, thoughts and feelings, and specific needs.

It's essential to recognize that assertive and cooperative behaviors are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the amount and intensity of each behavior determines a person's preferred style when engaged in conflict. The ability to balance these also provides a process that allows for the exchange of viewpoints, ideas and each party's truth. Furthermore, this balance of telling and listening leads to the testing of ideas as well as creativity, and encourages the building of one idea upon another.

Based on this assumption, there are four basic styles for engaging in conflict:

1. Competing to win focuses on being firm and uncooperative. You pursue your own concerns, often at the other person's expense. Competing involves using whatever power and resources you have to defend your position and "be right." It is a win/lose proposition. Competing to win may be expedient in some situations. However, it typically results in a lack of creativity and innovation, and often puts emphasis on short-term outcomes at the expense of longer-term goals for relationships and, ultimately, performance.
2. Accommodating to please is unassertive and cooperative. You neglect your own concerns in order to satisfy the concerns of the other person. This style is typical of leaders who fear that assertiveness may jeopardize a relationship or disrupt the harmony of a group.
3. Negotiating for compromise falls in the middle of assertiveness and cooperation. It attempts to find some expedient solution that is mutually acceptable to both sides. Compromise often involves splitting the difference, exchanging concessions or seeking a quick middle-ground solution. While this approach offers an opportunity for short-term resolution, each party may be asked to give up something, resulting in the possibility for resentment and lack of a true solution to the a problem.
4. Collaborative problem solving leverages both aspects of two-way communication and dialogue, and involves both assertive and cooperative behaviors. You attempt to work with the other person to find a solution that satisfies the concerns of both sides. The intended result is to maximize the thoughts and ideas of both parties, creating outcomes that provide for each to gain and satisfy their individual needs. This approach optimizes the ability of both parties to work from a framework of trust, and best leverages the opportunity for creatively working with a shared attitude for creating abundance rather than the unproductive struggle driven by assumptions of scarcity.

Of these four approaches, collaborative problem solving is by far the most effective conflict-resolution mode for business leaders. Collaboration goes beyond compromise. It involves digging into the issue, asking exploring questions, working together to resolve the conflict and striving to optimize the outcome for both sides. This requires the ability to state your position without getting defensive, while being open and receptive to the other person's position.

Communicating With Intent

As a business leader, one of your most powerful tools for resolving conflict is "communicating with intent." In fact, the best leaders strive to build relationships by engaging in intentional conversation, which is defined as "the spoken exchange of thoughts, opinions and feelings to influence people in powerful and effective ways."

The foundation for intentional conversations is your intent, which demonstrates your commitment and ability to place trust in the exchange of thoughts, opinions and feelings with others. It results in a pledge to do something for another person—in other words, to make a promise. As a leader, your ability to make a commitment regarding the purpose and intent of your conversation determines your ability to develop trusting, open and mutually beneficial relationships. It is important to remember that open and honest relationships provide the cornerstone for open dialogue, leading to higher levels of performance.

Communicating with intent involves five basic steps:

• State your intent. Clearly and simply share your intent by stating how you would like the conversation to unfold and your desire for shared, mutually benefiting outcome that will lead to the strengthening of trust and openness. Advocate what you want for the relationship and what your interests are. Remember, a conflict is one event among many that help in defining mutually beneficial, healthy and trusting relationships.
• Share your "truth." Share your thinking, reasoning and feelings with the other person. Express your concerns and fears, and take ownership for your part in the issue. Be accountable for your own thoughts and actions, as well as your role in the relationship. If you don't know what it is, ask.
• Ask for their truth. Test your thinking by asking for information in return. Ask the other person to share their thinking and reasoning and how they are feeling. Seek to understand differences and practice great listening.
• Create a shared truth. Actively explore each other's thinking and strive for shared understanding. Recognize that you have different viewpoints and work to create a shared truth. Doing so provides you with a full picture and reinforces the value of openness and truthful dialogue. It also provides a framework for shared thinking.
• Create commitments. Seek ways to create new commitments that meet each other's interests, needs and desires. Make commitments you can keep, and give each other permission to hold each other accountable. Test your new commitments by exploring your shared outcomes and mutual benefits. Be sure to test the commitments you are making, being honest with yourself with respect to whether you truly intend to keep them. In short, don't make promises that you may not keep. Doing so will put to risk all the hard work, energy and good faith you've dedicated in getting this far, and can significantly make matters even worse.

Human lives are defined by relationships, which are defined by the promises we make to each other (commitments). Commitments can be spoken or unspoken. However, when you bring them into the spoken realm, it provides something tangible to work with. Communicating with intent often involves difficult conversations, but they are conversations well worth having. Remember, trust is best defined as a shared commitment to the truth.

Ultimately, resolving conflict requires understanding that not everyone acts the same way for the same reasons. People can do the same things as you for different reasons, and they can do different things for the same reasons as you. Communicating with intent, so that each side understands the other's "truth," allows you to recognize those differences and use them in a constructive manner that turns conflict into opportunity.

Edgar Papke is a consultant and coach to CEOs and their leadership teams, and is an international award-winning speaker. He is the founder and president of Living Change, Inc., a Denver-based firm dedicated to helping business leaders transform the way they think about and manage change and transition. He is well-known for his authentic style and unique approaches to leading change and transition in complex business environments.

©2006 by Edgar Papke, All Rights reserved