| February 28, 2010 | Foxes, Teddy Bears, Turtles, and Sharks Reverend Don Vaughn-Foerster |
This congregation, I have found, is quite an amiable place. However, I am going to talk about conflict -- not because I find much dissension or argument here but because, from time to time, reminders about how people tend to deal with stressful situations can help keep a group on track. Besides, as an interim minister, I'm supposed to do this sort of thing.
So, this morning, I want to talk about five different ways in which disagreements tend to be handled. These ways can be figuratively represented by totems from the natural world. The ones I have in mind are the fox, the teddy bear, the turtle, the shark, and the owl. Some years ago I picked up this menagerie from Richard Shawchuck, at one time a much utilized consultant in church conflict management. The first four animal figures comprise the title of this sermon because they represent our usual approaches to dealing with conflict. These four don't necessarily help us resolve conflict because they tend to be rooted in self-serving behavior. The fifth, the owl, on the other hand, represents an approach grounded in mutual need and mutual intentions. If we are to act like owls, we have to acknowledge that, whatever the problem or the issue, we are all in it together.
Before spelling out what may be foxness, teddy bearness, turtleness, sharkness, and owlness, I need to say something about the processes and dynamics of conflict. Many of you may already know what I am about to say, but, if you do, just chalk up my remarks as a review I have to make to keep my thoughts in order.
First, about conflict itself. We all know what conflict is. It is what happens when two or more parties don't see eye-to-eye, when they come into opposition or collision. It happens in various degrees of intensity in all of our lives almost every day. When our spouse urges us to get up early on Sunday morning and we don’t want to, that is or can become conflict -- small or large, depending on our mix of mutual obstinacy. When someone attacks us verbally or physically, that is conflict. When we think something should be done a certain way and someone else insists that it be done another way, that is conflict. Conflict can be either small or great, the trick is to recognize it when it is small and know how to approach it to keep it from becoming great.
It helps to know the kinds of concerns that give rise to conflict. There are at least three sets of concerns. Since I am speaking in an organized religious context, that's where I will focus my remarks. However, what I have to say applies to human relations across the board from friends and acquaintances to family to town to state to nation and beyond.
First, people can get uptight with one another when they have different purposes and goals. Is this congregation primarily a refuge from the world or a staging area for plunging back into the world? What is this place for? At home, should sleeping late or rising early set the schedule? What is our Day to be? When does it start? Next, we can put each other off over programs or methods, such as how to manage the TV remote or what brand of computer or cell phone to buy or whether a congregation is to be a spontaneous fellowship or a formal church or whether family structure should be democratic or autocratic. There can be differences over values and traditions. In this group, how openly affectionate should we be toward one another? how restrained? Shall we truly welcome people different from us or shall we subtly discourage them from joining us? In general terms, conflict can begin over differences in these three sets of concerns: purposes and goals, programs and methods, and/or values and traditions. People can disagree over what is to be done, how it is to be done, and why it should be done.
In any of these three areas there is often the possibility that everyone is right or everyone is wrong. Usually, such conflict doesn't go away until one side has won -- whether right or wrong. What is often overlooked is that winning is liable to be like trying to catch something that is falling off the table. Too often when we catch it we also knock off something else. The reality is that both winning and losing may have unintended consequences.
Once conflict has begun it will pass through a full cycle of five stages unless effective means of aborting it are found. First, there is the pinch. This pinch can be like the feeling you might get were Dial-a-Prayer to hang up on you. All conflict begins as a mere tension in a relationship. Something someone says or does leaves us nonplused or a bit offended. Frank and respectful discussion at this “pinch” point can resolve much.
But, if the tension is not acknowledged, next comes the role dilemma stage. At this stage we don’t really know what our roles are in the developing conflict. However, things still may be quite manageable, provided persons will talk with one another, define the points of tension, identify the changes that have caused the tension, and use this as new information to arrive at new commitments before the problem gets any worse. This is the stage where issues most need to be clearly identified because, at this stage, there is still some capacity for objectivity and constructive interchange. As an interim minister I find that this is the stage at which most productive work can be done.
But, if a serious effort to deal with the growing conflict is not made here, conflict can move into injustice collecting. This is the first dangerous stage because people begin to do and think things that are hard to reverse. Here, people begin collecting injustices and hurts that, like bombshells, they can hurl at each other down the hall or at business meetings. Blaming begins. Issues are polarized. The other person (not the issue) becomes the problem and reason gives way to anger. Here, it is easy to forget that, if the rumor that statistics show that one person out of every four is nutty and, if the next three persons we see are not nuts, that fourth person may be us.
After a fairly lengthy (but heady) time of injustice collecting, we are ready for confrontation -- the contact -- or fight -- stage. Confrontation may range from clearing the air to outright violence. At this stage, people can -- and do -- lose their heads. They can -- and do -- destroy what they have labored hard to build together. At this stage people tend to think only in black and white. They think they must sever their relationships or attempt to return to the way things used to be (i.e. push the other party back to the old relationship) – no matter what. Yet, there is a better alternative at this stage: they can identify a new set of commitments and expectations. They can use the energy of confrontation as stimulus to grow.
The final stage of conflict development is adjustment. This is where people make the changes that end the confrontation. After well-managed confrontations, expectations are renegotiated and new commitments are made. Poorly managed confrontations result in divorce, domination, or cold war. One important note: unless all parties are committed to the renegotiated outcome, conflict does not go away. It merely goes underground.
Whatever the issue, as conflict develops through these five stages, we are motivated by two major concerns -- concerns that, depending on how we fit them together, make us turtles, teddy bears, foxes, sharks, or owls. One concern is for the relationships of the persons affected by the conflict. What will this hassle do to the quality of relationships between the people involved? Will it lead them to say with Oscar Levant, "Every time I look at you, I get a fierce desire to be lonesome?" Conflict can change the way we look at one another. The other concern is for one’s own personal goals and interests. How will this disagreement affect what we want or have to have in order to maintain our relationships? As relationships are predominant, our efforts go one direction; as our goals and interests loom important, our efforts go another direction. As these two concerns converge, we can move in yet other directions. Knowing how these two concerns relate in us will give us a good idea as to whether we will approach the situation as a turtle, fox, teddy bear, shark, or owl.
To explain, let me use this example: two groups are deadlocked over use of one a room, say the Board Room in the Farmhouse. Your assignment is to assist in breaking the deadlock. Presumably, their being in deadlock means they have arrived at the confrontation stage. That means your own involvement will more than likely be based on how you fit your concern for your relationship with the people involved to your own goals and interests. So, if your concern for both people and outcomes is low, you will not be particularly concerned with how it all works out and are likely to adopt an avoiding style (that of the turtle). A turtle says that "trouble" is Latin for "my day off."
If you have a high concern for relationships but low interest in how the space is used, the accommodating style is most likely and you may turn into a warm, cuddly teddy bear trying to make everyone feel good even though the problem doesn't go away. A teddy bear can be such an optimist about “people loving people” that he or she can even see the bright side of pessimism. For the teddy bear, the glass would remain half full even if the issue broke the glass.
But, if your concern for people is low but your interest in how the building is used is high, you will be sorely tempted to act the shark and insist that the outcome be the one you think best. A shark may agree that anyone can have an opinion, but only those that agree with the shark can have a correct opinion.
On the other hand, if you have only moderate concern for both people and how the room is used, the most natural style would be the compromising one and the process of horse-trading and bargaining would seem a pretty foxy way to go. To be a fox you take people to an ice cream shop and get them double-dip cones -- one dip they like, the other they don't.
But, finally, if you have high concern for people and high concern for how the room is used, you will want to work things out so that both people and issues receive the fullest treatment and support. The collaborating style is the most effective way to get that done. So, like a wise old owl, you may press people to stay with the issue and to stay with each other until a true common ground and a mutually acceptable solution are found. The owl knows that one doesn't necessarily have to think in order to have an opinion, but one does have to think to sort through opinions until common ground is found.
We can approach conflict either as turtles, teddy bears, sharks, foxes, or owls, depending on how we see the situation. Unless we are already locked into being one of these animals (and I'm afraid this is too often the case), we have the possibility of consciously and intentionally choosing one approach over the others. This can be good because there are times when the only sensible thing to do is to be a turtle and let others with the most at stake work things out. And, at times perhaps, the best thing we can do is give teddy bear comfort to our friends who are struggling with each other. And there are times of emergency when someone has to decide quickly what must be done or to command situations in which only one person can or should decide. Then, the common good may depend on how good a shark we can be. In the many situations where the stakes are low enough (or high enough) for both parties to give up something important to keep the peace, being a compromising fox may be just the ticket. And, in those situations where issues are strong and divisive but people truly need each other, an owl-like approach is called for. In such situations, only mutually developed and supported resolutions are any resolutions at all. Although, even here, solutions can fall apart when people often are so intent on their own outcomes that they withhold or distort information, hide their true feelings, or are unwilling to honor commitments halfheartedly agreed to.
For my own part, I believe the style that works best in most situations is the collaborative. Although democratic vote-taking methods tend toward the method of the fox, it is the collaborative owl approach that keeps everyone working together in the most reliable way. But, this is the real world, after all; and all too often there simply isn’t enough time or trust available to do the thing the “right” way.
And that is the reason for my remarks on this subject today. There is a “right” way -- or at least a better, more healing, more productive way -- to resolve our conflicts than by the blind turtling, foxing, teddy bearing, and sharking people usually do. That way is the way of the owl, the way of sharing our information and our results, the way of identifying mutual goals and keeping our friends. If we use this style early -- when the pinching tension starts or when we begin to feel confusion about why tension is growing -- then perhaps we will not get to the injustice gathering or the confrontation stages -- where the work of the owl becomes exceedingly difficult yet exceedingly necessary for both our organizational and personal integrity. The best way usually is to be owls all along.
I do have to admit that I once took a test that asked me what my preferred conflict management approach was. I, of course, replied: the collaborative (the owl). Then, I was asked, “If that doesn’t work, what is your fall-back approach?” – to which I replied: the negotiating (the fox). I was again asked, “If that doesn’t work, what do you do then?” Then, I replied I work to get my own way. Frankly, I think most of us follow that kind of sequence because there is a little bit of shark in all of us.
The hope is that we will listen to one another so thoroughly and reason together so well that we will find mutually agreeable outcomes -- that our thinking will become clear and our passions meld into empathy and shared compassion toward each other. This way no one has a bite taken out of them, nor do they lose votes that they immediately set about to have reconsidered, nor are people or issues ignored. At any rate, I adopt the optimistic view and believe that the more people know about how tensions and stresses develop between them and the more they know about how these things may be approached, the more likely conflict will be the less and the conflict that does develop can be a means to greater mutual understanding and cooperation. After all, to find common ground after a difficult struggle tends to make enemies into friends. This is something I have experienced over the years. Being owls helps everybody "give a hoot."
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