“A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.” Jessamyn West – librarian and blogger.
“It is typical of women to fester and ferment over disappointments, slights, annoyances, angers, etc.” Laura Schlessinger – American author on relationships.
“Too often, a problem is allowed to fester until it reaches a crisis point, and the American people are left asking the question: what went wrong and why?” Darrell Issa, Member of the U.S. Congress.
Wall Street Journal, February 2014. “The High Cost of Avoiding Conflict at Work.” Joann S. Lublin
David Dotlich, a leadership and succession coach, has identified eagerness to please as one of the top reasons that executives fail.
Keen to innovate faster, employers increasingly choose bosses astute at dealing with conflict rather than ducking it, says Judith Glaser, an executive coach and author of the new book, Conversational Intelligence.
It’s not that firms want contentious leaders, but those who retreat from confrontation tend to postpone hard decisions and allow problems to fester, according to Ms. Glaser.
And with more businesses relying on teamwork, top managers’ conflict-resolution skills are in greater demand, adds Theodore Dysart, a vice chairman of Heidrick & Struggles International Inc., a major executive-recruitment firm.
Southwest Airlines Co. leaders wanted to shake up what they viewed as a culture of artificial harmony among staffers. The company now promotes middle managers to executive positions partly based on their ability to spark conflict among staffers.
On December 19, 1732 Benjamin Franklin first published Poor Richard’s Almanack. This book was filled with proverbs and advice, and was so popular that it was continuously published for 25 years, selling an average of 10,000 copies per year.
Many of the proverbs and pieces of advice dealt with time, particularly time management. Some of the best known time proverbs from this book include:
Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
Lost Time is never found again.
He that wastes idly a Groat’s worth of his Time per Day, one day with another, wastes the Privilege of using each Day.
If you have time, don’t wait for time.
Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.
Ah, simple Man! When a boy two precious jewels were given thee, Time, and good Advice; one thou hast lost, and the other thrown away.
Dost thou love Life? Then do not squander Time; for that’s the Stuff Life is made of.
Even if an American loses a conflict within a company, after having escalated it once or twice, if he/she strongly believes to be in the right, it is not uncommon for that American to seek an even higher authority – the public at large. When that happens, the person who exposes the conflict is called a “whistleblower.”
Edward Snowden was working for the NSA when he publicly accused them of spying. Snowden said that the reason why he decided to make his accusations public was that he “can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”
In 2014, former State Department official John Tye wrote an editorial in The Washington Post in which he discussed his concerns about his department.
Thomas Drake was an executive in the NSA (National Security Agency) when he began to disagree with the agency’s policies. After several attempts to address his concerns internally, Drake decided to make his complaints public and turned to reporter Siobhan Gorman in 2006.
Conflict: Fight, battle, war; competitive or opposing action of incompatibles; antagonistic state or action as of divergent ideas, interests, or persons; mental struggle resulting from incompatible or opposing needs, drives, wishes, or external or internal demands; the opposition of persons or forces that gives rise to the dramatic action in a drama or fiction. From Latin conflictus act of striking together, from confligere to strike together.
Escalate: To increase in extent, volume, number, amount, intensity, or scope. From escalator.
Resolve: Break up, separate; to reduce by analysis; to deal with successfully, clear up; to find an answer to; to make clear or understandable; to reach a firm decision about; to declare or decide by a formal resolution and vote; to make (as voice parts) progress from dissonance to consonance; to become separated into component parts; From Latin resolvere to unloose, dissolve, release.
Court cases in German can last between 4 and 24 months, some as long as 36 months. A recent law allows the parties in a court case to demand that the court system speed up its proceedings.
German companies promise their employees that internal conflicts will be moderated and resolved within two months. If no resolution is found, the conflict parties have the right to escalate their case to the next level of management.
Americans are willing to accept the resolution to a conflict which does not go in their favor. They may not be happy, but if the process was fair, they will accept the verdict and move on.
Nor will their manager, asked to intervene in order to resolve, hold any kind of grudge against either of the conflict parties. American managers know that they are paid to serve as judge in resolving internal disputes.
Historically, the United States has little experience with revanchism. Revanchism, from French revanche or revenge, is a term used since the 1870s to describe the desire to reverse territorial losses by a country after losing a war.
Revanchist politics rely on the identification of a nation, of a people, with a nation-state. This mobilizes ethnic nationalism, claiming territories outside of the state where members of the ethnic group live.
The American judicial system allows anyone sentenced in a court to appeal that sentence. An appeal is when the accused (and sentenced) can take their case from a lower to a higher court for review.
In the American business context, a team member who believes that the judgement is wrong, or the conflict resolution process was unfair, can ask to have that decision reviewed by next-level management or by a neutral third party within the company, typically the human resources department.
There have been many famous repeals or court decisions in American history. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that separate but equal (the American slogan for segregation of white and black Americans) was no longer constitutional, an act that negated their earlier ruling in 1896.
The first case in the U.S. in which the court system determined that a law was unconstitutional and should be repealed occurred in 1803. It was the case of Marbury v Madison, when the Supreme Court decided that the Judiciary Act of 1789 was conflicted with the Constitution and was therefore null and void.
The case of Betts v Brady ruled that the 6th and 14th Amendments of the constitution guaranteeing a right to legal counsel does not mean that the government has to provide counsel for someone who cannot afford it. Later, the case Gideon v Wainwright overruled this decision, and anyone accused of a crime is entitled to free counsel if he/she can’t afford an attorney.
German managers are trained to hold separate hearings with the conflict parties. The initial goal is to establish the root cause of the problem and to guage the intensity of the conflict. The German approach avoids a hearing involving both parties. Student mediators in German schools are taught the same method.
A hearing with both conflict parties present almost always leads to an escalation of tension. Emotions run high. Accusations and counter-accusations are made, often without any basis in fact. The mediator can quickly lose control of the situation.
That kind of a hearing only giesst Öl ins Feuer, literally pours oil into the fire; provoke another person; to push a difference of opinions into an open conflict.
The German term Herrschaftswissen, roughly translated as domination or control via better information, in the sense of knowledge is power, has a negative connotation. It signifies power of one over another based on the former‘s access to critical information.
German mediators strive to be better informed of all the details concerning a conflict than the conflict parties themselves. This not only prevents manipulation, it is the basis for resolving the problem.