Peace at Work Doesn’t Happen by Avoiding Conflict
I recently had the pleasure of joining Barbara Gaughen-Muller on the Peace Podcast to talk about something I care deeply about: what peacebuilding looks like in the places where we work every day.
You can listen to our conversation, Peace in the Workplace, here:
https://peacepodcast.org/catherine-cooley-communication-conflict-coach-and-certified-trainer/
When we hear the word peace, we may imagine harmony, agreement, the absence of conflict, or a quiet walk in the woods. And it is lovely when these happen.
But workplaces frequently present something very different.
People have different perspectives. Priorities compete. Mistakes happen. Deadlines create pressure. Leaders have to make decisions that others may not like. Sometimes there is room for genuine collaboration and negotiation. Sometimes there isn’t, even when a process is presented as collaborative.
So what does peace look like in the middle of all that?
For me, peacebuilding at work isn’t about making every interaction emotionally comfortable. It’s often about how we engage when things aren’t comfortable, and how people experience us in the process.
Can we preserve dignity, respect and care while disagreeing?
Can we listen closely enough to understand what matters to another person when we don’t agree with them? Can we hold the quiet internal space of possibility and care that allows new solutions to emerge during those times?
Can we communicate a difficult or even non-negotiable decision with clarity, respect and care?
Can we stay present when conflict gives us information we’d rather not hear, and recognize that this is precisely when we get to practice peacebuilding?
Conflict contains information
In my work with organizations, I encourage people to become curious about what is underneath disagreement and conflict. I have found it useful to look beneath conflict for the human needs at play and, at the workplace, for organizational needs as well. A key skill for clear and timely resolution is learning to recognize and articulate human and organizational needs, which I refer to as needs literacy.
Imagine a manager who thinks an employee is “resistant to change.” The organization has introduced a new system, and the employee keeps raising objections.
It’s easy to decide that the employee has a bad attitude. But what happens if we slow the conversation down?
Perhaps the manager is concerned about efficiency, consistency and meeting an implementation deadline. Perhaps the employee is attending to different needs. She is worried that the new process will create errors for customers or that there hasn’t been enough training to use it competently.
Now we have something useful: a needs-based conversation that gives us information for finding a workable way forward that meets important, relevant needs.
The disagreement hasn’t disappeared. The organization may still decide to implement the new system. But instead of reducing the conflict to Who is the problem?, we begin asking:
What important information is trying to emerge here?
That shift is central to Nonviolent Communication, developed by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, and to the organizational leadership, team building and empathy work I practice and teach.
Underneath our positions, judgments and reactions are human needs and values: effectiveness, respect, belonging, autonomy, contribution, clarity, trust, safety, fairness, and many others.
Conflict often tells us that something important is at stake.
Empathy doesn’t eliminate accountability. It supports it.
This is one of the places where empathy can be misunderstood in organizations.
Empathy doesn’t mean agreeing with everyone. It doesn’t mean abandoning standards, avoiding difficult feedback, or giving people whatever they ask for so you can present as “nice” or “understanding.”
It means becoming more accurate about what is happening by connecting, without judgment, with the experience of the human beings involved. When practiced skillfully and sincerely, empathy can create both emotional and cognitive connection: care as well as understanding.
I worked with a counseling organization where people already knew a great deal about human behavior. Yet professional knowledge didn’t automatically make workplace relationships easy.
As we worked with empathy and feelings-and-needs literacy, people practiced slowing down their interpretations, listening differently, and understanding what mattered beneath one another’s reactions and choices.
The purpose was to create enough understanding and connection that they could address what wasn’t working more productively and collaboratively. Things that had been withheld had more space to come forward and more skill behind the delivery.
Emotional connection doesn’t replace or interfere with clarity or accountability. Done well and sincerely, it makes them more possible.
Trust changes what people are willing to tell us
In my podcast conversation with Barbara, we also talked about trust and psychological safety. When I experience that you are genuinely interested in what matters to me, I have more reason to trust you. And when there is greater trust, I will likely be more willing to tell you what you actually need to know.
That matters enormously in organizations. An employee sees a problem with a project but worries about challenging the person leading it. A teacher is struggling with a new process but doesn’t want to appear incompetent. A senior leader disagrees with the CEO but has learned that disagreement may carry real social or career costs. A team member realizes that a deadline is unrealistic but waits until the project is already in trouble to say so.
The question isn’t only whether people are allowed to speak. It’s whether the conditions around them make honest communication possible enough, better yet, welcome enough, so that they actually speak up.
When people can surface differences earlier, an organization gains access to information that otherwise stays hidden. That can improve not only relationships, but problem-solving and decision-making.
What happens when we slow conflict down and apply empathy?
I’ve seen transformation through mediation.
People often arrive carrying anger, frustration and resentment. You see it in the tension on their faces, eye avoidance and their crossed arms. Each person has a story about what happened and, understandably, why the other person’s behavior is the problem.
Step 1. We slow things down. This is my favorite conflict tool: calming and regulating ourselves before adding more words. Research shows that acute stress can impair important executive functions, including working memory and cognitive flexibility, and can affect social cognition and empathy, although the effects on empathy vary by person and context. Calming our level of activation can create better conditions for listening, perspective-taking, thoughtful problem-solving and connection.
And there is an important reciprocity here: regulation can support connection, and connection can support regulation.
Step 2. What actually happened? Not what people interpreted, but what a movie camera could have “heard and seen” transpire.
Step 3. What feelings arose, in me and in them? What were the helpful emotional intelligence signals going on that we can harvest?
Step 4. What matters? What most mattered to me that those feelings were pointing toward? What might have mattered to the other person?
Something can begin to shift when people understand their own and the other person’s humanity, how they were feeling about how their needs were met or unmet in that situation. I call this two-step process of listening for feelings and needs “precision empathy.”
The solutions that emerge from this place of new understanding can be surprisingly creative and generous, even when people started off very antagonistic towards each other. It is very gratifying to witness. These are some of my favorite moments of my mediation and team relationship repair work.
Again, not because the challenges have all been fixed or erased, but because people experience that they are, finally, “gotten.” Their interests are now understood and cared about, and some degree of goodwill has been extended in an effort to work out the best solution for everyone, given the resources and circumstances.
Peace is something we practice
I think organizations are one of the places where we can practice peace every day.
Peacebuilding happens in the meeting where someone risks saying, “I see this differently.” It happens when a leader receives difficult feedback without immediately defending, when we become curious about the concern underneath someone’s resistance, and when we communicate a firm boundary or unpopular decision without threats or stripping another person of dignity.
And it happens when we stop treating conflict as evidence that peace has failed.
Conflict is inevitable and often helpful wherever human beings are trying to accomplish something together. The question is what we do with it.
Can we use conflict to understand more clearly what matters, communicate more truthfully, and find the next step that serves both the people involved and the larger purpose of the organization?
That, to me, is the daily practice of peace.
I recently explored some of these ideas with Barbara Gaughen-Muller on the Peace Podcast. I invite you to listen to our conversation, “Peace in the Workplace,” here:
https://peacepodcast.org/catherine-cooley-communication-conflict-coach-and-certified-trainer/
What Do You Think?
I’d love to hear what this brings up for you.
What happens with conflict in your workplace? Are differences welcomed and explored, or are there things people learn not to say?
What helps you stay curious and connected when you strongly disagree? What makes that difficult?
Feel free to reply and share what you’re discovering.
Would Some Support Be Helpful?
Sometimes a conflict or difficult conversation can bring clarity to something that has felt stuck, strained, or hard to navigate.
If you’re experiencing stress or conflict in an important work or personal relationship, I invite you to a complimentary 50-minute Breakthrough Conversation.
If you’re interested in strengthening empathy, collaboration, communication, and trust across a team or organization, you can schedule a complimentary Breakthrough Conversation for Organizations.
We’ll explore what would be most useful to you.
Peace and warm regards,
Catherine Cooley
Peaceabl.
Photo by Vitaly Gariev, on Unsplash
