One of our client companies is a construction company that experienced phenomenal growth over the past five years, starting with a gross in the low six figures and expecting in the current year a gross of $16 million. Don, their young leader, had worked hard to build an effective team, reward good work, and involve everyone in major decision-making. With the slowdown in the economy, however, the business started to experience cash flow problems. New accounts still flocked to Don’s company because of their excellent reputation, but clients paid slower and fought more over seemingly insignificant mistakes.
While Don struggled to borrow money to manage the cash flow, he found himself increasingly drawn into mediating clashes among his team and responding to their complaints. His staff began to fight constantly, usually over some petty matter such as who failed to record something, lost an estimate, forgot to pass along a message, or allowed a member of the crew to leave early. Don would mediate the current quarrel and a temporary cease-fire would ensue. Yet within a few days, another battle erupted over new and trivial issues.
In desperation, Don brought us in to diagnose the problem. He couldn’t understand why his formerly compatible staff seemed to love destructive fights. When we met individually with the parties, the answer quickly came to us.
Why does a temporary peace frequently lead to conflict? Psychologist Kenneth Kaye finds it happens for two reasons:
- Peace isn’t really peace. The true conflict hasn’t been discussed — or perhaps even acknowledged — and everyone knows it-at least at some level. The combatants keep fighting about trivia in hopes of getting to the real issues but when it gets too dangerous they “agree” to back away.
- Alternatively, the peace itself makes them uncomfortable. With the resolution of some i sues, the peace itself raises new questions the collaborators aren’t ready to face, such as, if we’re working this well together, does that mean one of us isn’t needed? Which one?
With Don’s company, everyone was fighting to avoid the real issue: they were terrified because of the company’s cash flow problems and the resulting change in Don’s behavior. Their formerly available and nurturing leader had become distracted and distant. Did that mean that the business was going under? Would they lose their jobs? Was there an even greater problem he was hiding from them?
When you find the group or pair you are mediating mired in a cycle of sustained conflict, you may break the cycle by asking some radical questions: “What are you fighting together to avoid?” Or ask them, “What would you do with all this creative energy if you weren’t stuck in a destructive dispute?”
Or, “What do you think might happen if you did something different in that situation?”
Planting the suggestion that a group is actually working together to achieve a common goal frequently shocks the participants out of their trance of denial. When you ask these questions, the real energy behind the conflict usually emerges. It could be anything from “she would walk all over me” to “we would have to face the possibility of failure” or “we wouldn’t have any more excuses for our poor performance.”
Most constant combatants are aware of these underlying forces, but are not aware that they’ve been fighting to keep the entire group from having to deal with the issue. In many cases, they’re actually protecting the noncombatants.
With Don’s construction business, for example, the distracting disputes saved him from facing his deepest fears about losing the business he had worked so hard to build, and also helped him save face by relieving him from talking to his team about the extent of the business’s financial problems. What he
didn’t realize was his staff suffered from a fear of the unknown that was more debilitating than facing the true numbers. Oddly, the solution to the continuing conflict wasn’t to help the disputants work better together, but involved instead a series of frank discussions with the entire team to let them
know the current financial status and the various options. Once Don was willing to let go of his “big daddy with everything under control” facade and involve his staff in the difficult problems he needed to face, they surprised him with their own creative solutions to the current crisis.
