Farewell to arms

Article by Massimo Berlingozzi – “A Farewell to Arms” – December 2020_Formation and Training_HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

The ability to manage conflict situations effectively and in a balanced manner is a valuable skill for those with managerial responsibilities.

Managing employees has always implied the possibility of being confronted with situations of this kind, but for those who follow the world of training it is important to ask themselves whether the current context does not require special attention in this regard. For almost two years now, the world has been experiencing a scenario that will be studied and remembered for a very long time. The framework of uncertainty generated by the pandemic has been compounded by the most recent developments related to the new regulations aimed at regulating the return to work in attendance. This is not the place to go into the merits of these issues but, having to deal with the theme of conflict, one cannot help but reflect on the strong tensions that have been created in many workplaces and the radicalisation of positions unwilling to dialogue with each other.

The ability to manage conflict is a competence and, as such, can be acquired. It is an important goal for those who will have to manage inevitably complex situations in the coming months, and training can provide effective support in this direction.
The first step is to get rid of an ancient legacy, intimately linked to the evolution of our species, which leads us to interpret conflict as a battle where you either win or lose. This view of conflict generates an automatic response of our organism, described by Bradford Cannon in the early 1900s as ‘fight or flight’.The energy produced by such a response plays a fundamental role when survival is at stake, but proves to be completely dysfunctional when it is put into the context of a social dynamic. Getting involved in a ‘win or lose’ challenge excludes the possibility of a conflict transformation oriented towards the continuation of the relationship, because clearly both flight and attack, in their essence, do not aim at this result. The possibility of strategically managing conflict dynamics starts, therefore, from this first element of awareness, which also helps to overcome deeply rooted and predominantly negative beliefs and stereotypes that have always accompanied the topic of conflict.

A second important element of awareness, which diverges even more from common sense, consists in abandoning the illusion of being able to establish with certainty the origin of the conflict, in order to prove who is right and who is wrong. It happens in fact, both in small disputes and in large international disputes, that the protagonists of the conflict do not deny the reality of their disagreement, except to call themselves merely ‘the effect’, because ‘the cause’, the reason why they are forced to quarrel, depends on the other. If the two disputants become entrenched in this position and are unwilling to change their view of the conflict, there can only be a further escalation of the clash.
It is necessary, therefore, to abandon the idea of being able to gain an advantage by establishing the original cause of the conflict because within any ongoing relationship, anyone is always able to draw on a ‘before’ and, when this is not possible, as has really happened in many human affairs, to invent it.

In short, we are faced with a deficit of awareness, due to the difficulty of accepting the undoubtedly complex, and in some ways counter-intuitive, nature of communication. It is precisely in conflict that communication reveals more explicitly than ever its systemic (circular and recursive) nature, which leads one to go beyond the linear cause-and-effect vision to a scenario in which the people involved are united by an inescapable bond of interdependence. The most important aspect in resolving conflicts, in transforming them into a dimension that is perhaps painful but intentionally constructive, is therefore represented by a profound awareness of the relational dynamic that characterises them. To say this is certainly not to underestimate the intrinsic difficulty of the method. For millennia, human beings have resolved their conflicts (and continue to do so) through struggle, physical confrontation, war, accepting to concede space to adversaries only if defeated. Overcoming this scenario is possible, by developing an appropriate competence, but above all by deciding to ‘abandon weapons’ in order to dialogue sustained by a renewed awareness.