08 Jun On Dealing with Conflict – The Parable of the Shoelace!
“Never cut what you can untie.” – Joseph Joubert
When I first read this quote by Joseph Joubert, a flood of visuals crossed my mind. The one most apt for me was comparing this context with the tying and untying of shoelaces. So let me spend some time unpacking what I would like to call the parable of the shoelace. A parable is a story that is “cast alongside” a truth in order to illustrate that truth. Parables can be thought of as extended analogies or inspired comparisons.
There was a little girl who loved to wear her keds to go out and play. In a hurry to get to her companions, she would sometimes tie her shoelaces improperly. While they would often come undone at play, they ended in a tangled knot when she came back thereafter. The more she struggled with the knot, the knottier the shoelace got. The girl often considered cutting the knot with a pair of scissors. Seeing the little girl struggle, her mother would often come to the rescue and patiently untangle the knot. Seeing the ease with which her mother untied the lace, she once asked her mother for the secret. Her mother’s wise reply was: ‘My child, all you need to do is to look at the knot with different eyes’.
In a business scenario, the knotty shoelace is the conflict.
The cause of conflicts result from unwise choices made around a situation. The struggle in untangling the knot is the inability to look at the situation with ‘different eyes’ and the accusations, blames we tend to trade. The scissors represent the sharp solutions we are often tempted to employ whilst dealing with conflicts. This results in discomfort and the shoe becoming unwearable for lack of a lace. We also run the risk of tripping over the broken lace. On the other hand, if we untie what is happening between us by listening, sharing and trying to understand one another, our tie has a better chance of staying intact… keeping the lace strong and our footing solid.
Conflict always brings with it a modicum of discomfort for those involved. Few managers enjoy uncomfortable conversations with their people. But if you want your company to run smoothly and accomplish anything, you are going to have to go there and embrace discomfort.
One of the most important findings while researching the subject is that when workplace conflicts arise, people will often invent a story in their mind that explains the cause of the conflict, as doing this rewards you with serotonin. But as Karl Popper said: ‘The aim of the argument should not be victory, but progress.’ So the wisest thing to do when grappling with conflict, is to not focus on winning, but instead to listen to the other person’s story and address what he or she thinks is the source of the original conflict.
In my experience, company cultures that work the best are those that normalise discomfort. They are the companies whose leaders spend enormous time ‘collaborating’, or solving the conflict in a way that produces a quality decision, where both parties are committed to the resolution. This approach sees all sides of the conflict examined with equal importance and is most likely to resolve the issue for good.
“Sometimes the simplest solution out of conflict is becoming someone’s friend, instead of saying goodbye forever.” ― Shannon L. Alder
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