Conflict and groups
Jun. 11th, 2007 03:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonSomething I wrote today in response to a discussion about destructive conflict within groups, thought I'd share it here.
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A couple of off-the-cuff thoughts about conflict and groups:
1. Interpersonal conflicts are often a sign of structural problems. In other words, patterns of conflict often indicate deeper organizational problems -- unclear boundaries, a lack of clear expectations or accountability, a lack of sufficient expertise or resources, a lack of clear process or failure to follow agreed-upon processes, and so on. Identifying these patterns honestly, and bringing them up to the light in an intentional way can help avoid many conflicts, and help take a lot of the destructive power out of conflicts when they do happen.
2. That said, people will come into some kind of conflict sooner or later, and some of those conflicts are messy, ugly, nasty, mean, or at least just so hard that they can't be easily solved, if they can be solved at all. How many lovely utopian communities, powerful, successful groups (magical or otherwise) and whole communities have been completely wrecked by a relationship gone bad? An uncountable number, for sure. But human relationships sometimes go bad, it will always happen, and some of those relationships will go *REALLY* bad. That's part of being human. I'm not sure we will ever evolve beyond that kind of thing, but even if someday we did, we're sure not there now, no matter how much personal work we do.
3. Power, relationships, money...these are all nearly-universal hot buttons, and almost any group will have to deal with all of these. Sooner or later, one or more of them will come up and things will really hit the fan.
4. So what do you do? You hope for the best, and plan for the worst. Ideally, you have clear processes about conflict resolution, and you have abundant local resources to help you resolve conflicts when they do occur. AND, you have organizational structures, processes and intentions around what to do WHEN (and not "if") there is some irreconcilable interpersonal conflict. Because it will happen, sooner or later.
If the group (or the camp, or the organization, or whatever) is important, you have to plan for what happens in the worst-case. Nobody can be irreplaceable, nobody can be assumed to be right (and nobody can be assumed to be wrong, scapegoating is as destructive as putting people on pedestals), and contingency plans should include brainstorming together all of the scenarios everyone can think of, and at least thinking through what the group will do if it happens.
5. Planning ahead is good. Personally, I'm not a natural planner, I'm more of a seat of the pants kind of person (double-Pisces, no Virgo whatsoever), but I've seen what happens when people plan well, and also when they don't plan well, or don't plan at all, and it's given me a great appreciation for careful planning and solid process. Good intentions are all well and good, but sometimes to manifest best possible outcome, you have to have planned ahead for the worst. This is essential for any group which hopes to last. It is especially important for any group which handles money, and it is critically important for any group which handles other people's money.
6. We hope that people will choose to treat each other well. We hope that people will behave well, and responsibly, and take ownership of their own stuff, and so on. And we can expect one another, on a personal, ethical and professional level, to do so, to hold each other to high standards.
But you know, nobody's perfect, nor ever will be. We all screw up, and we all get overwhelmed, or triggered, and in every group, sooner or later, there's going to be a mess. We all get into disagreements, sometimes huge ones, that are big and ugly and complex and have many sides and no obvious right answer.
Because we're human.
It doesn't mean we let each other off the hook, or excuse bad behavior, or don't push people to own their own crap and take responsibility and treat each other well and kindly. But it does mean that we have to expect that sometimes people will screw up, or even just...disagree Sometimes things will go bad, sometimes bad things will happen to good people, or good people will do bad things, or however else we want to frame it.
And having compassion for ourselves, and for each other, being kind without coddling weakness, means that group planning really needs to include a good, hard look at all the "what-ifs" -- so that one small melt-down, or one big blow-up, or any of the other many, many scenarios that are CERTAIN to happen, sooner or later, won't cause everything to fall completely to pieces, and bring far more bad drama and bad energy into many more lives than has to happen.
Even towers get hit by lightning and fall. Nothing lasts forever. But a house of cards is going to fall a lot sooner than one built of brick or stone or wood. I don't believe we can be other than human, nor should we expect ourselves, or others , to live according to superhuman standards. But we can draw up plans to build pretty good, solid houses (or tree-houses, or rammed-earth or cob or whatever). They may not hold against that 8.0 earthquake, or the direct path of a mega-tornado, but they'll stand in a thunderstorm, or maybe even a hurricane.
May we choose to build things that last.
Warm hearth,
--Chelidon
-------
A couple of off-the-cuff thoughts about conflict and groups:
1. Interpersonal conflicts are often a sign of structural problems. In other words, patterns of conflict often indicate deeper organizational problems -- unclear boundaries, a lack of clear expectations or accountability, a lack of sufficient expertise or resources, a lack of clear process or failure to follow agreed-upon processes, and so on. Identifying these patterns honestly, and bringing them up to the light in an intentional way can help avoid many conflicts, and help take a lot of the destructive power out of conflicts when they do happen.
2. That said, people will come into some kind of conflict sooner or later, and some of those conflicts are messy, ugly, nasty, mean, or at least just so hard that they can't be easily solved, if they can be solved at all. How many lovely utopian communities, powerful, successful groups (magical or otherwise) and whole communities have been completely wrecked by a relationship gone bad? An uncountable number, for sure. But human relationships sometimes go bad, it will always happen, and some of those relationships will go *REALLY* bad. That's part of being human. I'm not sure we will ever evolve beyond that kind of thing, but even if someday we did, we're sure not there now, no matter how much personal work we do.
3. Power, relationships, money...these are all nearly-universal hot buttons, and almost any group will have to deal with all of these. Sooner or later, one or more of them will come up and things will really hit the fan.
4. So what do you do? You hope for the best, and plan for the worst. Ideally, you have clear processes about conflict resolution, and you have abundant local resources to help you resolve conflicts when they do occur. AND, you have organizational structures, processes and intentions around what to do WHEN (and not "if") there is some irreconcilable interpersonal conflict. Because it will happen, sooner or later.
If the group (or the camp, or the organization, or whatever) is important, you have to plan for what happens in the worst-case. Nobody can be irreplaceable, nobody can be assumed to be right (and nobody can be assumed to be wrong, scapegoating is as destructive as putting people on pedestals), and contingency plans should include brainstorming together all of the scenarios everyone can think of, and at least thinking through what the group will do if it happens.
5. Planning ahead is good. Personally, I'm not a natural planner, I'm more of a seat of the pants kind of person (double-Pisces, no Virgo whatsoever), but I've seen what happens when people plan well, and also when they don't plan well, or don't plan at all, and it's given me a great appreciation for careful planning and solid process. Good intentions are all well and good, but sometimes to manifest best possible outcome, you have to have planned ahead for the worst. This is essential for any group which hopes to last. It is especially important for any group which handles money, and it is critically important for any group which handles other people's money.
6. We hope that people will choose to treat each other well. We hope that people will behave well, and responsibly, and take ownership of their own stuff, and so on. And we can expect one another, on a personal, ethical and professional level, to do so, to hold each other to high standards.
But you know, nobody's perfect, nor ever will be. We all screw up, and we all get overwhelmed, or triggered, and in every group, sooner or later, there's going to be a mess. We all get into disagreements, sometimes huge ones, that are big and ugly and complex and have many sides and no obvious right answer.
Because we're human.
It doesn't mean we let each other off the hook, or excuse bad behavior, or don't push people to own their own crap and take responsibility and treat each other well and kindly. But it does mean that we have to expect that sometimes people will screw up, or even just...disagree Sometimes things will go bad, sometimes bad things will happen to good people, or good people will do bad things, or however else we want to frame it.
And having compassion for ourselves, and for each other, being kind without coddling weakness, means that group planning really needs to include a good, hard look at all the "what-ifs" -- so that one small melt-down, or one big blow-up, or any of the other many, many scenarios that are CERTAIN to happen, sooner or later, won't cause everything to fall completely to pieces, and bring far more bad drama and bad energy into many more lives than has to happen.
Even towers get hit by lightning and fall. Nothing lasts forever. But a house of cards is going to fall a lot sooner than one built of brick or stone or wood. I don't believe we can be other than human, nor should we expect ourselves, or others , to live according to superhuman standards. But we can draw up plans to build pretty good, solid houses (or tree-houses, or rammed-earth or cob or whatever). They may not hold against that 8.0 earthquake, or the direct path of a mega-tornado, but they'll stand in a thunderstorm, or maybe even a hurricane.
May we choose to build things that last.
Warm hearth,
--Chelidon
