Collaboration and conflict are part of work every day. But what are they? And are they what we think?
Unthinking Collaboration And Conflict
Work is endless problem solving. A breakdown in communication, a budget problem, a dissatisfied customer, burned out staff. We’re forever in some current state, aiming for some future state, and acting to close the gap.
Collaboration and conflict are part of work – and become part of daily problem solving. That’s reasonable, but it’s not the whole picture. Collaboration and conflict can be both problems and systems. Their natures have characteristics of both, and that means we might have to do different things with them.
Problems1Systems thinking distinguishes between types of problems. Type I are simple, well-defined, clear solutions. Type II are complicated but still solvable with sufficient expertise. There are more moving parts but the problem is still bounded, and still determinative with the right technical knowledge. Type III, also called complex or wicked problems, have no definitive formulation and no stopping rule – no point at which you can say “this is solved, we’re done” because solutions actually change the problem. To me, Type III problems are systems – but I’ll refer to them as a type of problem because that’s the convention. generally have certain characteristics – a defined (or definable) unknown, discoverable solutions, one right answer (or a small set), stable relationships among elements. They’re generally bounded with edges you can identify. And they feel like they’re “out there,” apart from us, where we work on them to fix them – like a pipe you unclog, settings you correct, a policy you update, a project you bring back on schedule. Technical knowledge is generally sufficient to solve them and they’re like solving for X in algebra – apply the right method in the right way, and solve it.
Systems are different. They have interdependent parts in constant interaction. Patterns of interaction – often from different parts of an organization, or between an organization and its customers, partners, supply chains, regulators, lenders, and more. Properties of systems emerge over time, coming, going, and transforming in ways which are hard to predict. We often see some properties as problems – think of presenting problem or symptom – which can become a unit of analysis and action. But conditions easily change even as you engage them, even because you’re engaging them, which can frustrate progress. Systems can are also challenging because you can’t really stand outside them to work on them. You have to engage them from the inside, as a participant – hopefully with colleagues doing the same.
Both events and systems2I’ll use “event” because it’s more in keeping with systems literature than “problem,” and also because not all events are problems. approaches to collaboration and conflict approaches are legitimate. Both inform handling. One’s not right or wrong, better or worse than the other. Seeing and knowing what to do about both is where better handling begins.
Let’s look at collaboration and conflict as both events and systems.
What does collaboration look like? You see people building on each other’s ideas, reconciling differences, reaching agreement. People working well together feels good and we call it collaboration. But what about quick agreement – is that collaboration, groupthink, or perhaps avoidance? Is open disagreement a sign of healthy collaboration or conflict? Are coordination and cooperation the same as collaboration, part of it, or different?
Based on your line of work, you might describe collaboration differently than a friend in a different line of work: Joint work toward a shared goal (general), interdependence and coordination (management), information sharing and integration (cognitive science), joint sense-making (organizational theory), cooperation under conditions of mixed motives (economics and game theory), as relationship and communication (heath care), identity (sociology, organizational culture), and more.
Even collaboration and conflict scholars and practitioners define collaboration as a practice, process, relationship, approach, feature, and outcome.
What the origin of the word help us? Collaboration comes from the Latin collaborare, meaning to work together. Col comes from the Latin com, meaning with or together. And labor comes from laborare, Latin for “to work” or “to toil.” For me, that’s working together – and we can do something with that.
Work is highly interdependent and requires working together. A product launch requires marketing, engineering, sales, and operations to work together. A hiring decision involves a recruiter, hiring manager, interviewers, and HR. Very little work is completed by a single person acting alone. What each person does changes what’s possible for everyone else. Working together is a must-have, not a nice-to-have, and this helps us define collaboration as coordinated interdependence, and conflict as contested interdependence.
Coordinated interdependence means people who could act otherwise choose to align actions to achieve a shared end or objective. It’s a conscious, intentional act of working with. Differences, disagreement, expressions of strong emotion – none of it means coordinated interdependence has ended, so long as participants retain the intent to shape what happens together. So long as they maintain their commitment to working with each other.
Shaping what happens together has technical meanings worth noting. Agency and authorship are what intentional participation and deliberate engagement are made of. Agency is the capacity to act intentionally. To choose your response rather than just have one. To act intentionally rather than allow a response to carry you into action. Authorship is the willingness to write your part in what happens next, and be accountable for it, rather than be written by someone or something else. This makes collaboration, conflict prevention, and conflict resoluion co-authorship – a collective act of choosing what to respond to and how, to author what happens next.
Conflict generally feels worse than collaboration feels good. Disagreement, debate, difference, dissension, tension, friction – we don’t like them and we want them to stop. There’s a strong physiological and psychological impulse to reduce social tension – which is a problem solving move. Nearly everything I see in professional development content advises steps to reduce uncomfortableness and restore some pre-conflict condition. But we should be careful using our discomfort as a way to decide what to do.
We know that honest-to-goodness collaboration can contain uncomfortable moments – tension, disagreements, debates, arguments. Labeling those moments as conflict risks misclassifying them – and misclassifying them risks taking the wrong actions.
If the feeling of conflict isn’t a reliable guide to defining and handling conflict, what about behavior? It’s easy to spot – we engage, battle, withdraw, and escalate. But using behavior is as problematic as using feelings because both can underdetermine motive, intention, meaning and strategy. They signal something’s going on – but don’t tell you what.
If you went looking for a definition of conflict you could use – a working definition – you might be stumped. Definitions commonly use one or more related terms (difference, disagreement, etc.), which results in question-begging definitions. And depending on your education and line of work, certain definitions take the lead position. We have interference (social psychology), perceived incompatibility (organizational behavior), incompatible positions and interests (negotiation), strategic contest (political science), competing incentives (economics), a contest over rights and duties (law), intrapersonal phenomena (psychology), basic human needs (some conflict resolution theory) – and more.
Conflict scholars and practitioners add complexity with these generally accepted elements – two or more parties, constraints on parties, real or perceived incompatibilities, something of value at risk or at stake, and one or more parties resorting to unilateral action to preserve or advance their preferred outcome. Phew.
Here’s where it gets very interesting and a bit complicated – just like work.
There’s a deep strain of thinking among conflict scholars and practitioners that conflict as a phenomena is neutral, value-free, and that what one does with conflict is where value judgments come in. Hmm…. that’s not unreasonable – but how reasonable is it? What happens is that scholars embed a value-laden act (acting to prevail over someone) inside value-free conditions (constraints, incompatibilities, stakes) – and that doesn’t compute. Not for me, anyway. It sends my mind in a definitional loop I can’t escape. Will etymology save me? (Bet you never wondered that before.)
Conflict comes from the Latin com- (together) and fligere (to strike), which produce confligere, to strike together. The irony is that striking something together can produce light and heat – both of which can help or hurt, depending. Can work conflict be good and bad? It can. Depending on what? Let’s see – and let’s pick up the idea of contested interdependence.
Get ready for more complexity.
I like contested interdependence because it means one or more parties is contesting – challenging, fighting, rejecting – the interdependence which characterizes work and work relationships. It suggests that parties struggle within a relationship of mutual dependency. They need each other even as they struggle – or the contest would dissolve – which tells us conflicts can be about the terms of that dependency – who gets what, who decides, on whose terms work continues or stops. All good, until…
Conflict is thought to have stages – latent, emerging, manifest, receding3Notice the inherent systems framing of thinking conflict has stages. Contested interdependence describes a manifest conflict by definition – one in which one or more parties acts to prevail over one or more others4Such actions still constitute a manifest conflict, even if parties try to hide or veil them. Beyond that, application of the definition is less clear and needs more care. Emerging, receding, and latent phases suggest contestation might occur by degrees – rising, falling, and resting. Whether “degrees of contestation” qualify as conflict can be an academic debate – unless you do what we’ll do and think about what handling means for each.
Conflict resolution comes with its own complexities. A simple but useful framework is that parties might settle a conflict by use of interest, rights, or power-based approaches.5Ury, William with Jeanne M. Brett and Stephen B. Goldberg. Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Costs of Conflict.
Interest-based means parties appeal to joint and several interests. Rights-based means parties resort to rights such as policy, procedure, regulation, law, and sometimes moral or natural law. Power-based means parties resort to formal or informal sources of power to prevail.
Library shelves are full of treatment of conflict resolution methods which we won’t attempt here. For definitional purposes, know that each approach treats agency and authorship in different and important ways. Generally, interest-based approaches preserve own’s own and other parties agency, and attempt to co-author a solution. That’s one thing win-win means.
Rights and power-based approaches tend to see parties limit others’ agency and sole-author what happens next. Taking unilateral action is generally intended to preserve one’s own agency and authorship and constrain the agency and authorship of one or more others. That’s one of the things win-lose means.
Organizations and employees tend to prefer interest-based approaches to rights- or power-based approaches. Working with is a lot more pleasant and generally more effective than working against. But pleasantness and more effective aren’t always the right measures. Depending on the situation, we might need light too bright and heat too hot. It depends on whether the means are warranted, and why.
Conflict can be legitimate or illegitimate depending on how actions will be judged, and that generally points to an organization’s governing variables – the formal policies and procedures which codify employment, health, environment, safety and other law and regulation6Governing variables might include organizational culture, but we’ll have to save that.
If I work against a colleague using means sanctioned by governing variables, that conflict should be legitimate – according to governing variables. If you violated employment right of mine and I contest it, this is a generally accepted place for rights-based approaches.
The picture is murkier when it comes to power-based approaches. If I work against a colleague using organizational politics as a means to an end, is that sanctioned by governing variables? Probably not officially – but unofficially? And if it’s not sanctioned, does the conflict become illegitimate?
Power-based approaches to conflict paint a large gray area to move around in – an area we’ll examine more closely in other content. But thinking about whose agency and authorship is enabled or constrained, and why, in any collaboration or conflict is a deeper and possibly more informed way to size up the situation.
Rethinking Collaboration And Conflict
If you rethink collaboration and conflict as having characteristics of events, systems, or both, a few things become clear.
First, collaboration and conflict aren’t opposites. They’re not two states we see at work, one desirable and the other undesirable. They’re two ways of handling interdependence – a foundational condition of most work. What each of us does changes what’s possible for others.
Second, a common view is that agreement = collaboration and disagreement = conflict. But disagreement isn’t the boundary between collaboration and conflict, nor are differences. Agency and authorship are closer to the boundary. A useful question is, are we trying to author what happens next, together? Has one or more of us begun authoring what happens next for themselves? If so, is that justified?7Sometimes it is.
Finally, the event-system distinction tells us handling is important because how you handle either becomes part of something which happens next. Events as problems are bounded – but not necessarily contained. (One solution to a budget overrun is to reallocate funds, but that affects someone somewhere.) A technical solution might be appropriate – but could be insufficient. (Ever try to ensure the most basic IT security practices across an organization?) And we know that by engaging a system you become part of the conditions under which interdependence continues – or doesn’t. So handling might not end with the thing handled. There are downstream consequences to anticipate.
Seeing collaboration and conflict as events and systems makes them more readable – and that’s where handling them better begins.
Test Drive Definitions
Here are some things to try, to test drive ideas in this blog:
- Adopt a definition of collaboration or conflict – any definition, it doesn’t matter. But write it down so you can work with it.
- When talking with colleagues, think about how it applies. You might share it with them, might not. But see what it explains and helps you understand, and what it leaves unexplained, what’s iffy about it. What difference does it make to see something as an event or as a system?
- If you share it with colleagues, listen for different points of view. The goal is to externalize your thinking and open it up – not to write a definition for the organization. Saying things like, “What if…” or “I was wondering…” should generate useful conversation. Can you tell if a colleague sees collaboration or conflict as and event or system?
- Note how you see agency and authorship fitting in. See if you can tell how a definition promotes them – and co-authorship – in collaboration situations. If it’s a conflict, do you see how agency and authorship are constrained? Can both be preserved? Is something necessarily sacrificed? Document your thoughts, questions, answers, etc. to stabilize the shift from not asking these questions to answering them. It’s an exercise in unthinking assumptions and biases to rethinking important conditions and situations you act in – and how you might act differently.
A test drive isn’t a test. There’s no passing or failing, only trying and noticing. Sometimes you’ll have an ahh-ha! moment. Sometimes you’ll raise more questions than you answer. Both are the point – for better understanding your orientation to work collaboration and conflict, and for choosing what you do with your agency and authorship.