Collaboration and conflict are part of work every day. They’re part of life every day. But what are they? And are they what we think?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Unthinking Collaboration And Conflict<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Work is endless problem solving. A breakdown in communication, a budget problem, a dissatisfied customer, burned out staff. Problems crop up in work that’s going well. We\u2019re forever in some current state, aiming for some future state, and acting to close the gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Collaboration and conflict are part of this – more problems to be solved. That communication breakdown caused conflict. Collaboration slipped and caused that dissatisfied customer. Collaboration, conflict, and problem solving are so much a part of work that we fuse them. See them as one – all in a day’s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But they’re not one. There’s an important difference between them that matters when we set out to solve a problem, collaborate, or handle a conflict. Collaboration and conflict are systems, not problems to be solved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems have distinct characteristics – a defined (or definable) unknown, discoverable solutions, one right answer (or a small set), stable relationships among elements. Technical knowledge is generally sufficient to find and apply solutions. Solutions are determinative – apply the right method to the right conditions and the answer necessarily follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Problems are also bounded. They have edges. Problems feel like they’re “out there,” apart from us, where we fix them. You know you were in a problem when you solved it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A clogged pipe can be unclogged. Device settings can be corrected. If policy isn’t followed because people are unaware – information makes them aware. If a budget is over by a certain amount – funds can be moved to close the gap. If a project is behind schedule – additional resources gets it back on track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We want collaboration and conflict to work this way, but they don’t. They’re interaction systems <\/em>with all the characteristics of any system – interdependence, feedback loops, emergence, an environment, adaptation – all of which work by different rules than problems. You can’t step outside them to work on them – you work on them from within. You’re part of them. Systems don’t sit still while you work in them – actions you take change them, and they might change the actions you take next. There is no one right way to “solve” them, and no one right answer. Systems have boundaries but exist in an environment which interacts through the boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take a problem like tardiness, work quality, or communication – then think of it as a system. As recurring incidents which form patterns. Where do the incidents start? What generates them? Where do we start working on them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seeing collaboration and conflict as problems or systems determines what we do about them. And what we do determines how well we do. Let’s take a closer look at both, separately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Collaboration<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n What does collaboration look like? You see people building on each other’s ideas, reconciling differences, reaching agreement. People working well together feels good and we call it collaboration. But what about quick agreement – is that collaboration, groupthink, or perhaps avoidance? Is open disagreement a sign of healthy collaboration or conflict? Are coordination and cooperation the same as collaboration, part of it, or different?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Based on your line of work, you might describe collaboration differently than a friend in a different line of work: Joint work toward a shared goal (general), interdependence and coordination (management), information sharing and integration (cognitive science), joint sense-making (organizational theory), cooperation under conditions of mixed motives (economics and game theory), as relationship and communication (heath care), identity (sociology, organizational culture), and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even collaboration and conflict scholars and practitioners define collaboration as a practice, process, relationship, approach, feature, and outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What the origin of the word help us? Collaboration<\/em> comes from the Latin collaborare, meaning to work together. Col <\/em>comes from the Latin com<\/em>, meaning with or together. And labor<\/em> comes from laborare<\/em>, Latin for “to work” or “to toil.” For me, that’s working together<\/em>, and we can do something with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Work is highly interdependent and requires working together. A product launch requires marketing, engineering, sales, and operations to work together. A hiring decision involves a recruiter, hiring manager, interviewers, and HR. No single person has everything needed to get work done – and that’s the underlying condition. Work can’t be completed by any single person acting alone, and what each person does changes what’s possible for everyone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interdependence requires working together. It’s a must-have, not a nice-to-have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This helps us define collaboration and conflict. Collaboration is coordinated interdependence<\/em>, and conflict is contested interdependence<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coordinated interdependence means people who could act otherwise choose to align actions to achieve a shared end or objective. It’s a conscious, intentional act of working with<\/em>. Differences, disagreement, expressions of strong emotion – none of it means coordinated interdependence has ended, so long as participants retain the intent to shape what happens together. So long as they maintain their commitment to working with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shaping what happens together has technical meanings worth noting. Agency<\/em> and authorship <\/em>are what intentional participation and deliberate engagement are made of. Agency is the capacity to act intentionally. To choose your response rather than just have one. To act rather than react. Authorship is the willingness to write your part in what happens next, and be accountable for it, rather than be written by someone or something else. This makes collaboration, conflict prevention, and conflict resoluion co-authorship <\/em>– a collective act of choosing what to respond to and how, to author what happens next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Conflict<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Conflict generally feels worse than collaboration feels good. Disagreement, debate, difference, dissension, tension, friction – we don’t like them and we want them to stop. There’s a strong physiological and psychological impulse to reduce social tension – which is a problem solving move. Nearly everything I see in professional development content advises steps to reduce uncomfortableness and restore some pre-conflict condition. But we should be careful using our discomfort as a way to decide what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We know that honest-to-goodness collaboration can contain uncomfortable moments – tension, disagreements, debates, arguments. Labeling those moments as conflict risks misclassifying them – and misclassifying them risks taking the wrong actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the feeling of conflict<\/em> isn’t a reliable guide to defining and handling conflict, what about behavior<\/em>? It’s easy to spot – we engage, battle, withdraw, and escalate. But using behavior is as problematic as using feelings because both suggest something deeper. Neither tells us about motive or intent, larger strategic thinking and decisions, or detailed plans. They signal something’s going <\/em>on – but we infer rather than investigate what that might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you went looking for a definition of conflict you could use – a working definition – you might have been stumped. Definitions commonly use one or more related terms (difference, disagreement, etc.), which results in question-begging definitions. And depending on your education and line of work, certain definitions take the lead position. We have interference (social psychology), perceived incompatibility (organizational behavior), incompatible positions and interests (negotiation), strategic contest (political science), competing incentives (economics), a contest over rights and duties (law), intrapersonal phenomena (psychology), basic human needs (some conflict resolution theory) – and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conflict scholars and practitioners add complexity with these generally accepted elements – two or more parties, constraints on parties, real or perceived incompatibilities, something of value at risk or at stake, and one or more parties resorting to unilateral action will preserve or advance their preferred outcome. Phew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s where it gets very interesting and a bit complicated – just like work!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conflict scholars and practitioners say that conflict as a phenomena is neutral, value-free, and that what one does with conflict is where value judgments come in. Hmm\u2026. that’s not unreasonable. But how reasonable is it? What happens is that scholars embed a value-laden act (acting to prevail over someone) inside value-free conditions (constraints, incompatibilities, stakes) – and that doesn’t compute. Not for me, anyway. It sends my mind in a definitional loop I can’t escape. Will etymology save me? (Bet you never wondered that before.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conflict<\/em> comes from the Latin com- (together) and fligere (to strike), which produce confligere, to strike together. The irony is that striking something together can produce light and heat – both of which can help or hurt, depending. Can work conflict be good and bad? It can. Depending on what? Let’s see – and let’s pick up the idea of contested interdependence<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Contested interdependence isn’t conflict yet. It is true that parties struggle within<\/em> a relationship of mutual dependency – they need each other even as they struggle, or the contest would dissolve. It’s true they struggle about the terms<\/em> of that dependency – who gets what, who decides, on whose terms work continues or stops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But contested interdependence<\/em> best describes a state or condition which can become conflict – or not – because parties have a choice. They can choose to use interest, rights, or power-based approaches to resolution.[mfn]Ury, William with Jeanne M. Brett and Stephen B. Goldberg. Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Costs of Conflict.<\/em>[\/mfn]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interest-based means parties preserve their own and each other’s agency, and attempt to co-author a solution. Rights and power-based mean parties sole-<\/em>author what happens next. If we take unilateral action, we preserve separate agency and authorship and<\/em> attempt to block or constrain the agency and authorship of someone else. One or more parties use rights and power-based approaches to prevail. To win so someone else loses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Organizations and those of us who work in them generally prefer interest-based approaches to rights- or power-based approaches. Working with <\/em>is a lot more pleasant than working against<\/em>– but pleasantness isn’t the right measure. Sometimes we need light a bit too bright, and heat a bit too hot. It depends on the situation – on whether the means are warranted, and why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conflict can be legitimate<\/em> or illegitimate<\/em> depending on an organization’s governing variables – on the formal policies and procedures which codify employment, health, environment, safety and other law and regulation. (Governing variables might include organizational culture, but we’ll have to save that.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I contest interdependence – if I work against a colleague or supervisor – using means sanctioned by governing variables, that conflict is legitimate. If you violated some employment right of mine, aren’t I supposed to contest it? There is a place for rights-based approaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The picture is murkier when it comes to power-based approaches. If I contest interdependence – if I work against a colleague or supervisor – using organizational politics as a means to an end\u2026.. Is that sanctioned by governing variables. Probably not officially – but unofficially? And if it’s not sanctioned, does the conflict become illegitimate? If organizational politics constrain a anyone’s agency and authorship without legitimate cause, that’s worth examining – regardless of whether it’s officially sanctioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Power-based approaches to conflict paint a large gray area to move around in. Sometimes things need struck together. Sometimes we need light and heat. Whether we’re blinded or burned depends on circumstances which are most clear at the edges, and less clear in the middle. Thinking about whose agency and authorship is enabled or constrained, and why, can help you decide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rethinking Collaboration And Conflict<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you unthink<\/em> collaboration and conflict as problems and rethink them as systems, a few things become clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They’re not bounded – you can’t step outside them to fix them. You’re inside them, part of them, shaping them even as they shape you. What you do changes the system, and the system changes what you do next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They’re not determinative – there’s no formula, no one right answer, no technical knowledge sufficient to solve them. To coordinated or contest interdependence isn’t to solve a problem as much as author what comes next – which becomes the condition for all that follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And they’re not neutral – agency and authorship are always at stake. In collaboration, conflict prevention, and interest-based conflict resolution, they’re exercised jointly. In rights and power-based conflict, they’re exercised against each other. How you participate determines whose agency and authorship are enabled or constrained, and that has consequences at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seeing collaboration and conflict as systems doesn’t make them easier. It makes them readable. And readable is where handling them better begins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Test Drive Definitions<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are some things to try, to test drive ideas in this blog:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A test drive isn’t a test. There’s no passing or failing, only trying and noticing. Sometimes you’ll have an ahh-ha! moment. Sometimes you’ll raise more questions than your answer. Both are the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The stance this series invites is different from the problem-solving, technique mindset most professional development offers. The goal isn’t to apply a technique correctly. It’s to better understand your relationship to work collaboration and conflict – so that you know what you’re doing with technique, and why, not just how. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Collaboration and conflict are part of work every day. They’re part of life every day. But what are they? 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