The Role of Conflict in Community

hey uh I'm sirness and this is a video on a topic that comes up a lot for me which is what is the role of conflict in

a community so I want to use some metaphors for this the main one is that community conflict and community I see

is like a forest fire so these days we assume that forest fires are bad things they burn down homes they cause rampant destruction like you don't want a forest fire right actually which two about the

environments is forest fires or natural things they clear away old brush and dead leaves that new things can grow if you stop a forest fire from happening the subsequent ones will be much bigger

or the forest will actually start to die that these clearings are necessary for the ecosystem and I see conflict is the same way in community we don't want to avoid conflict we want to be able to

process it well when it happens so I'll talk a little bit about what's the bowl of conflict and what can you as a leader or what can the leader of your community do if conflict comes up to process it

well so first thing if you stop the forest fire and there's kind of two ways to do this either people can demand that

others like show themselves like really well like hey you know right now it feels like you're not owning your experience or it feels like you're not speaking very kindly to me I'd like you

to be a little bit more evolved in this so you can kind of try to put a kiss people can put constraints on each other's communication like oh hey I don't wait to show up that unfiltered

and then the person feels like oh well now I don't know what parts of me I can show up as so I'll just kind of suppress this that's one way the other is that the leader themself shuts down

the conflict they take unilateral control they become the government they're like this is not who we are as a group or like hey I'm going to need the two of you to settle down a bit and this is often an unconscious thing like as a

leader I've so often shut down conflict without even realizing it by being like whoa it seems like there's a lot here in the group let's just take a breath together and that's often a great thing especially if you only have a limited

period of time but it can allow for this this buildup of undergrowth and and like dead crackling tensions that are happening

and so I have other reactions as a leader that could be like wow it seems like there's a lot of tension in the group I'd love to hear from both sides of this like what are you experiencing like let's actually have the people that

are experiencing like you know discomfort going go over here and the people that really like what's going on go over here and let's like talk a little bit between the groups so you can move in between whatever you can you can

even do it as a visual spectrum as a leader the more that you accept what's going on the more the group will as well and conflict is one of the things that

as a leader I most often find myself trying to push away so another thing about this one of the things that kills a forest or a community fastest is

talking behind people's backs if there's conflict and people don't feel comfortable to bring it openly and fully they're gonna start talking behind other people's backs and that has the community as a whole feel very unsafe

it's kind of like if you have a little fire and it spits sparks in a bunch of different directions then you have all these little fires that are burning and they're not joining up together and so like after one goes out one is still raging through and just the force keeps

burning and burning and burning until there's nothing left so if it seems like there's crosstalk happening if you hear somebody talking about somebody else and they're not then bringing that that

truth they're like wow like I'm super annoyed at Sally for like speaking over me at that meeting and they're talking about that to you they're talking to someone else and you're like have you talked to Sally about this and they go

no I don't want to do that that is a bad sign and it's good then as a leader what you can do is encourage people like hey I'd love to hold space for you to go and talk to Sally about this because I think

that might be a really powerful clearing and I'm worried that if it doesn't happen then we're gonna get all sorts of talking behind people's backs and people not feeling safe with each other

leaders make the fire a controlled fire you don't either stop it or keep it from spreading out of hand and every community will have its own level of tolerable heat

the last piece of this is if an arsonist lives in your woods you better taste them out so if there's someone that keeps setting forest fires again and again that's probably not a good thing

for your community so if you as a community leader don't know how much fire your community can stand or you're not willing to take steps with your own

fire or your own water then that can also cause the community to fall apart the means by which conflict is processed can be a it's a reflection of the community's values it actually can be

really transformational and powerful for a community discover how you process conflict when something comes up in the group it's an opportunity to refine your identity as a group when conflict

happens to be come together and do we talk about it together what's the time limit that we do that what's the language that we use who takes control over the discussion what do people do afterwards

this is it's an incredible opportunity to actually have people feel safe in that and conflict is always going to happen you can't know the boundaries of

a group until you go over them it's basically like if you if you tried to in advance say like okay this is like I

don't have a good metaphor for this and it feels super awkward right now I but the idea of it yeah is like until you overstep something you can't know where that where that boundary is until you

upset someone you don't know what's going to upset them because everybody has different limits every community has different limits you don't know if somebody's gonna go into trauma because

you scream and then you have to kind of handle that like as a community do we allow screaming and where's our boundary on that rather than feeling bad for oh crap I shouldn't have allowed that

person to scream it's like no this is a means by which we evolve who we are so a good leader uses conflict to his or her advantage first she or Came normalizes

it like okay conflicts coming up this is a normal thing in communities then he or she defines for him or herself for themselves how the ideal community how

the community that they want will be then as a leader you embody that in yourself and that sets the example and format for how the group can do the same

so this really requires some thinking if conflict comes up like how do you want forest fires to operate within your community unless this is a group of

small children the best way to do this is not for the leader to hear out issues will resolve all of them personally because then your group becomes dependent on you to solve everything and that's both exhausting for you and

disempowering for the group so set a standard by which the group can process their own tensions if somebody comes to news like hey I'm super pissed off that this thing happens you could be like wow I hear that you're really pissed off

like what would you like to happen instead who would you have to talk to what could we do differently as a group cool I'm gonna I'm gonna punch with you I'm gonna stand behind you on it I'm not

gonna fix it for you I had someone come to me recently that a leader in our in our community and lead for one of our courses and asked for this person not to

be on staff and the former staff member was really upset about this and he was like this is not fair and you know I'm pissed off and like as the community as a leader in the community to me you

should you should fix this like are you just gonna let this go on I was like hey you know we have these standards for how we process conflict like you can go to

the person and have a conversation you can ask for a mediator but no I'm not gonna fix this for you and a reality in this situation is this community leader

has the power here like he is the course lead he has discretion to decide who is or is not on staff so if you want something to happen you're probably gonna have to go to him so also as a

community leader you you speak truth to power or to lack of power and you help people recognize where they are in a spectrum of power and where there where there's possibility to grow and so they encourage them I'm like hey I think that

what you're saying has real truth to it and you have a valid perspective and are you willing to do something about it and if not what's that like like who do you want to be in this conflict what do you

want your ideal outcome to be what do you do if you don't get what what you want so I helped him Co explore that and I said I've got ten minutes to discuss this and I set a timer and when it went off I said okay I have to go and I got

off the video comm so as a leader you can have boundaries and that's a good thing to know if going into into conflict um yeah

most things in a community come down to a couple main questions do I belong do all parts of me belong am i wanted am i

physically or emotionally safe and our other safe by the standards that I hold so if there's conflict in your group just think about those questions and consider them like how much do those feel true in the group

how much can people feel like they belong how much they feel like they can bring themselves do they feel safe do they feel like their values are represented and hold conversations about

that transparency is the best way to resolve conflict most of the time if people don't feel like they belong or they don't feel safe that's because they feel like something is hidden okay I

hope this is helpful and that you have lots of productive and beautiful conflict