by Gaia | Aug 15, 2020 | How do you remain compassionate in a time of conflict?
“This is from the Dalai Lama:
‘If we have been reborn time after time, it is evident that we have needed many mothers to give birth to us…. the first cause bringing about bodhicitta is the recognition that all beings have been our mother. The love and kindness shown us by our mother in this life would be difficult to repay. She endured many sleepless nights to care for us when we were helpless infants. She fed us and would have willingly sacrificed everything, including her own life, to spare ours.
As we contemplate her example of devoted love, we should consider that each and every being throughout existence has treated us this way. Each dog, cat, fish, fly, and human being has at some point in the beginningless past been our mother and shown us overwhelming love and kindness. Such a thought should bring about our appreciation.
…if all other sentient beings who have been kind to us since beginningless time are suffering, how can we devote ourselves to pursuing merely our own happiness? To seek our own happiness in spite of the suffering others are experiencing is tragically unfortunate. Therefore, it is clear that we must try to free all sentient beings from suffering.’
This level of compassion and awareness makes 99 percent of our conflicts seem as small as dewdrops on a blade of grass – gone as soon as the sun touches them. For the larger conflicts, this vantage point encircles the conflict in noble qualities such as compassion, gratitude, and wisdom. Thus, the stage is set to make progress towards awakening and ease suffering rather than multiplying it as conflict can easily do.”
by Nick S | Aug 14, 2020 | How do you remain compassionate in a time of conflict?
The Tao te Ching says:
“There is no greater misfortune
than underestimating your enemy.
Underestimating your enemy
means thinking that he is evil.
Thus you destroy your three treasures
and become an enemy yourself.
When two great forces oppose each other,
the victory will go
to the one that knows how to yield.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Conflict is the friction necessary for growth. Suzuki Roshi, the Zen master, says that a true teaching is painful because it is highlighting where we are vulnerable. During times of conflict, rather than the traditional approach of seeing it as something negative and a hindrance to wellbeing, awakened beings approach adversity with appreciation and gratitude.
Compassion is a necessary aspect of any successful conflict transformation. The reason is that successful conflict transformation requires both parties to be re-directed towards growth. It is a collective effort, just as a competitive tennis match is both competition and cooperation. Overall, this theme of cooperative adversity is easier said than done, however it is unquestionably an important skill for navigating relationships, vocation, and ultimately life as a whole.
by Alexandra T | Aug 14, 2020 | How do you remain compassionate in a time of conflict?
“It’s impossible to run a successful startup without working with other people, and when you work with other people there’s always some level of conflict. Conflict can be intimidating, anxiety-inducing and exhausting.
I’ve spent a lot of time, as an entrepreneur and as a human, trying to avoid conflict. But the reality is that conflict is an entirely natural part of any human relationship, and if you manage it with caution and empathy, conflict can even make your work better.
According to a number of studies, minority dissent within teams makes everyone reconsider their assumptions and seek new information which leads to better decisions.
In my business, I’ve found that miscommunication is often at the root of conflict. Before we were business partners, the members my team of four were coworkers, friends and college classmates. So we knew each other pretty well before we went into business together.Recommended For You
Sometimes the history we have with each other comes in handy– we know who we are and are comfortable with each other. But other times how well we know each other leads us to make incorrect assumptions which lead to conflict.
Whenever team conflict came up, a mentor of mine used to say, “Everybody tells themselves stories.” What he meant was that when complicated situations occur on and around teams, every member tells themselves a story about the situation. They make assumptions about how their team members are feeling, and they’re often wrong.
I know personally that instead of voicing some of those concerns or asking others how they are feeling and having a dialogue, I often try and avoid confrontation.
But two years into running my startup, I’ve learned that the anxiety and conflict that comes from avoiding confrontation is a million times worse than actual confrontation.
Here are three simple ways to make those conversations their best:
1 – Don’t wait
Issues or tensions never come up at a convenient time. Sometimes their timing makes no sense, but other times it’s directly related to a stressor within your business. In the past, conflict has often arisen when my team needs to make a big decision or change. When we’re in the normal swing of our work, we’re fine. But when we’re treading new waters, we all get stressed and communication can break down.
When you’re in those situations, particularly if you’re on a deadline, the tendency is to want to push conflict resolution off until you can get the work done. But if you don’t address the situation right away, then the work you do get done will suffer. So if there is any conflict within your team, you need to sit down and hash it out immediately. The longer that people have to tell themselves their stories, the more complicated and entrenched problems will become.
2 – Treat people like people
In entrepreneurship it’s easy to blur the line between personal and work time because building a company takes a lot of time and work. So naturally it’s impossible to separate personal stresses from work ones.
It’s been important to me to maintain friendships with my teammates. Knowing what’s going on in their lives helps me to understand where we’re at in our business relationship. When people have bad days at home they blend into bad days at work. And when people have bad days at work they blend into bad days at home.
That’s one reason (the other is just because we’re friends) that we always start and end our business meetings asking each other about their lives. We catch up on who’s getting married and who’s traveling and how we’re all doing. Staying on top of people’s lives helps to know when to alleviate people’s work load.
It’s easy to fall into expectations of teammates that put work at the constant priority. But you have to let people be people and let them have emotions and feelings and accept that those things make them better teammates.
3 – Find a way to come to consensus
You can’t walk away from a conflict without solving it. Not everybody needs to agree on every point, but everybody needs to agree on a way to move forward. In a perfect situation, there’s someone who can mediate the conversation who isn’t involved in the conflict. Sometimes that requires bringing in an outsider who can be neutral.
It’s important to hash everything out and give everyone a chance to speak their mind. But at some point the mediator needs to draw the line and say, “Okay we have all the information, what are we going to do to resolve this situation?”
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