Working through disagreement and tension

Being able to successfully engage city staff comes down to building relationships that can support tough conversations on complex issues. You’ve engaged the partnering organization in meaningful conversations that span from leadership to the frontlines. But you didn’t stop there, because you know the project team seeks whole-system transformation. So you’ve gone a step further to identify and engage key players across the system in meaningful conversations. With all your efforts spent building and maintaining connections across a diverse array of staff, you’ve developed the kinds of relationships that can weather the disagreement and tension that is 100% guaranteed whenever people with diverse perspectives tackle complex challenges. On top of that, you may find that you’re entering into organizations that have internal conflict completely unrelated to your project. It can be tough to know how to handle either type of situation. Below we’ve offered some practical tips for:

• Navigating organizational conflict

• Navigating difficult conversations

Navigating organizational conflict

Strategies:

• Don’t shy away from what makes you different than the people you are trying to engage.

  • They are sharing their world with you. Share your world with them. Show and tell them the tools of your trade and the location of your work, especially if those are the very things that you think could alienate them.

• Always be telling staff who you’ve engaged with previously and who you’re engaging with next.

  • You’ll recognize this as the bookend element within general considerations. When there is internal conflict, this goes far to offer transparency as well as communicate your neutrality and interest in honoring everyone’s perspective.

• Long-standing conflict is often perpetuated by a zero-sum mentality. Resist acknowledging this mentality.

  • You’ll likely notice that people in the organization describe their collaborative challenges in terms of win-lose. You acknowledge that mentality when you hold back information on who you’ve talked to for fear of angering one group against another or losing trust from one if they find out you’re also talking to someone they’re in conflict with. You’ll inadvertently appear to be taking some sort of side even if staff can’t figure out which. What’s really interesting is taking sides won’t even help you build trust with the side you’ve taken! By siding with them, you’ll be seen as one-sided and therefore there’s potential that in the future you might be on the other side. When you show you’re neutral, you build trust and you are showing that this project can provide wins across conflicting perspectives.

• Don’t inherit relationships. Build your own.

  • PERIOD!

• Pay attention to language.

  • When people correct your use of a word, acknowledge it and ask them why. Make note of this intel; you can take it back to the team and consider how to adapt.

• Affirm shared insights with “Ok”, not “right”.

  • When staff talk to you about other staff, especially in a negative or critical way, acknowledge their perspective with “ok”, “I see,” “got it,” “understood.” Steer clear of saying “right.” Though seemingly trivial, you don’t want to indicate agreement and threaten your neutrality. Show empathy instead by affirming what you hear and you’ll build rapport while staying neutral.

Navigating difficult conversations

Strategies:

• Detach.detach.detach.

  • What is your minimum viable product? Fight for only that. You’re modeling the kind of behavior that you want staff to adopt when they collaborate amongst themselves.

• There’s tension in the air. Stop and ask yourself and your team why.

  • Is this an organizational readiness issue or an issue of the organization not understanding the approach of your work? Find the root of the tension before you try to address it. To find out, focus on clarifying the approach to the work and reaching agreement on that. Then re-assess where everyone is at. If issues remain, then there’s reason to think tension exists because of the content of your work rather than its approach.

• When staff become alarmed or fearful or critical, this is your signal that useful information is there for you to learn. Ask why.

  • Everyone has a running narrative of their work and what it means to them. Fears related to turf or ownership can seem like annoyances to a fearless team of innovators when in fact these are signals that you can learn more about the reality of the work. The more you understand the daily realities, the better you can design for constraints.

• When staff share concerns with you, validate.

  • Sometimes, an opportunity to talk through a concern (an empathetic, frank conversation about constraints and realities) is remedy enough even if what’s causing the concern can’t be changed.

    • Sample script

    • “Here’s what I got from that, can I check with you to make sure I understood you right?”

    • “I’d like to dig a little deeper so I can gain an appreciation for what this means to you. You say you’re concerned with [problem], what issue is that causing you or what do you think would happen if we continued with that?”

    • “I’m hearing you say that you’re interested in [their goal]. And what I’m trying to accomplish is [project goal]. Let’s see if there’s another way for us to work that won’t affect your work.”