Q&A: Conflict Management in Business Through Partnering

You’ve been working in conflict management for 10 years – you must have something that really works for people?

What I’ve noticed in my work is that everyone needs something special to help them engage with the differences between the people they work with. Whether they’re the head of a blue chip business or civic organisation, the manager of a production line or under 9’s football team, an African community leader or global politician. Or simply someone who wants to achieve their passions but doesn’t know how. And they encounter these differences every day of their lives.

Is what you’re offering them the latest conflict management in business model and aren’t people suffering from ‘business-model fatigue’?

That’s a very good question. The tools and techniques we work with at Questions of Difference work for a variety of organisations in many contexts, but they are not a business model. We work with something called Partnering. It’s a way of working between people that makes a difference differently. It’s not a business model, it’s more of an ethos that urges people and organisations to co-operate for mutual benefit.

Now we’re getting to the nitty gritty. Just how does Partnering urge people to
co-operate for mutual benefit?

By challenging assumptions, by raising affirmatively disruptive questions and by embracing conflict.

By embracing conflict? Surely, people are more concerned with avoiding conflict

For many people, dealing with conflict is about ending it once and for all. Some people call it conflict resolution. Stop the war. Save our jobs. Ban hunting with hounds. As we can see, none of this kind of conflict is ever truly resolved. It gets buried, moves underground, changes, re-emerges as something different. What we do is to work with people to make a difference with conflict, to see and understand different points of view, to recognise that conflict is the expression of inevitable differences between people, that there are no black and white, once and forever solutions.

This sounds rather heavy, a bit like the United Nations Security Council sitting in session permanently or being in an employment tribunal that never ends.

On the contrary, when people work with us, they realise they can make a difference very quickly. It usually works like this. People get to see that working with conflict is common sense. So they talk about how to make a difference. Then, they struggle to think about what could be different, partly because embracing conflict takes courage. Then, at first, they struggle to make their actions link up to their thinking. And that gap, between thought and action, is the area in which we work with them.

What happens to people in that gap between what they think they can change and actually achieving it?

It’s natural for many people to say call it impossible, to say that change cannot happen. Some cynicism creeps in. Or people think they can force other people to change. Or they carry on stoically trying to get people to change with methods that don’t really work. Sometimes people then strive to achieve consensus – believing that somehow consensus is both achievable and a desirable state to be in

Surely consensus is a good thing, or else a family, a company, a culture, a country, cannot work effectively....

I think consensus is a very important area to think about if we are to achieve the kinds of outcomes that we are capable of. For many people, making a difference is bringing people towards one way of thinking – a political solution, a community agreement, a united brand. This is what we mean by ‘consensus’. When we reach it, ‘consensus’ is therefore the majority view, often leaving the minority view aside. Many families, communities, companies and cultures think they can live by this. But no sooner than consensus is reached than the reasons for its existence have changed. People are seen to go back on their agreement, breach the contract. Trust is exploded and the forum for understanding why people have changed may be fatally compromised. And here, I’m not talking about the Middle East, I’m talking about why the IT department now has an even worse reputation in the company one week after the company open day than before it. What we do is bring to conversations the tools and techniques that I know can and will create further possibilities – for the IT team and its departmental colleagues, for the relationships we have with our friends and communities.

And these tools and techniques are affirmatively disruptive questions?

Yes, they’re conversations directed by powerful questions that guide the conversation in a certain direction – towards a positive outcome, whatever that may be.

So, you’re saying that if you can grab people while they’re in this mode of needing change to happen, but confused about how to achieve it, you can turn them towards different possibilities merely by asking questions?

Yes. This is where the disruptive element comes in. Even looking at it from its most negative point of view, if people are in this state maybe where they have chosen to give up the ‘fight’ – hopelessness, cynicism - or ‘fight’ within accepted but ineffective boundaries – strike action, protest marches – or have turned to ‘fight’ in ways that are socially unacceptable – from bullying to any sort of violence you can think of – this is exactly where the ethos of Partnering and tools such as affirmatively disruptive questions can make a difference.