Tammy Lenski

Conflict resolution for business, team, and personal relationships

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Upstream conflict resolution

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By the time we decide to get help with a conflict, or by the time we’re called in to help others, the conflict has often become chronic or acute. Chronic conflict and acute conflict are harder to resolve and more likely to damage personal and workplace relationships. Resolution of chronic or acute conflict is reactive. Upstream conflict resolution is proactive and mitigates acute and chronic conflict’s side effects.

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You’re standing at a river bank and hear a child crying. You look around you, but see no child. Then you’re shocked to see a toddler floating by, struggling to stay afloat. The person next to you jumps into the water to rescue the child. Almost immediately, another toddler floats by, then another and another. You dive in and rescue two of the toddlers. Other bystanders jump into the water too. But the children keep coming.

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© 2020 Tammy Lenski

How to disagree better

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Sound decisions, healthy team dynamics, and resilient personal and professional relationships don’t require or even particularly benefit from an absence of conflict. When there’s conflict and tension, the goal isn’t to abolish it, but to navigate it in ways that prevent damage and inspire deeper consideration of solutions. The goal is to disagree better.

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What does it mean to disagree better?

Healthy, resilient and fulfilling personal and professional relationships have conflict — sometimes a lot of it. How you navigate the conflict and what you do to nourish the relationship in general matter at least as much as, and perhaps more than, the amount or degree of conflict.

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© 2020 Tammy Lenski

Choosing the right conflict resolution tools

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We use tools to do something more effectively and efficiently. But just like physical tools, ill-chosen conflict resolution tools will not yield the results we need. Here are three questions to help choose and use the right conflict resolution tools for the moment.

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© 2020 Tammy Lenski

When conflict is real but not true

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Chronic tension and conflict can provoke reactions that are more about what happened in the past than what’s happening at this very moment. In such instances, the conflict may be quite real but not entirely true.

The Space Between podcast cover 2021
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Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s plane was departing late. This was not unusual; in those days, air travel in Nepal was uncertain.

But that day, high winds were coming. By the time the plane was in the air, those winds had arrived with a vengeance.

As the tiny plane flew to a remote site high in the Himalaya, turbulence tossed it up and down, up and down. Passengers began to scream and cry. Despite trying to steady himself, Rinpoche nevertheless was gripped by the same fear the others were experiencing.

Thankfully, the plane did not crash. But when it was time to return from the Himalaya, Rinpoche found the terror returning as he was crammed into the same small plane. Sweating through his robes, he clutched the armrests in fear during the easy flight.

That terror did not end after he landed, either. For many years he re-experienced the fear, even when traveling on large commercial airliners.

The fear I felt on that return trip…was real, in the sense that I was fully experiencing it. However, as I looked back on each subsequent experience, I had to admit that it wasn’t true. That is, it wasn’t grounded in actual, present circumstances, but instead was triggered by residual memories of a past experience.

TSOKNYI RINPOCHE

We know this experience during chronic tension and conflict, too. We feel real conflict with them…hours, days, even months later, even if the present conversation is completely benign. They walk into the room and there the conflict is again, hovering in the air between us. We feel it viscerally, even if they have not spoken.

Do we respond to the chronic tension based on our residual memories of what happened? Or do we allow the possibility that the present circumstances — our interaction with them right here, right now — may be perfectly fine if we allow it to be?

Tsoknyi Rinpoche uses a simple, four-word mantra to help ground him in the present in moments like this: Real but not true.

Ask yourself again and again if what you’re experiencing is real or true, until mentally and emotionally you can accept your feelings as real but the conditions on which they’re based as possibly not true.

TSOKNYI RINPOCHE

Repetition of the mantra has become a practice for him. It is an acknowledgement of real feelings and also a check-in with himself. “Such momentary pauses can transform your understanding of who you are and what you’re capable of.”

Suggested reading

Fred and Ed: A story about runaway thoughts

Fred the farmer needed to plow his fields. But his tractor was in the shop and the repairs weren’t going to be done in time. Fred noticed that his neighbor, Ed, had finished his plowing decided to ask if he could borrow Ed’s tractor. Fred headed down the lane toward Ed’s house, thinking to himself, “I’m sure he won’t hesitate to lend it to me. Ed’s a good guy.”

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