Welcome to the On Conflict Leadership Institute (OCLI) blog! We are pleased to be your guides and hosts. We are Julia Menard and Gordon White, the Principals and Founders of the On Conflict Leadership Institute and two mediators who have been in practice for decades.
Our intention with this blog is to unleash the inherent creativity in conflict, through helping create more conflict competent cultures. We want to offer you tips, tricks and learnings on how to move through difficult conversations and empower others to do the same. We see conflict as an opportunity for growth of the individual, teams, and the whole culture. The benefits are far-reaching including creativity and innovation and a better place to work!
What do we mean by working in a conflict competent culture?
We have come to believe that education and constant learning is a key part of being conflict competent. Conflict competence refers to how well an organization, team, or individual responds to conflict in all its manifestations. We see the potential of a world where leaders are conflict competent, and that capacity unleashes innovation, creativity and ultimately a more compassionate world.
This Institute is brand new. Part of our journey here was intentional and part was serendipitous. In the last year we found that our online recordings of our Difficult Conversation course surprisingly helpful in recruiting the interest of leaders in advancing their cultures to greater conflict competence. Through debriefing their learning with us they began to talk about how to institute changes to their teams or organizations. They were learning from us but we were also learning from them.
We deepened our own understandings of our own course and came to value highly these debriefing sessions. These and other experiences have provided the beginning material for this blog. We start by expanding excerpts from a couple of the lesions from the new online self directed version of the Difficult Conversations Course. Then we will dive into a sequential exploration of the different steps of the 8-step Difficult Conversation model.
In working with leaders we’ve been developing a sense of the dimensions of understanding, activity and excellence and have created eight dimensions of conflict competent leadership. Following the blog posts of the Difficult Conversations model we will explore these eight dimensions of conflict leadership. (That there are 8-steps to the Difficult Conversations Model and also 8 Dimensions of Conflict Competent Leadership is coincidental, but also providential.)
We welcome you to join us in our journey of exploration, learning, and service!In her acclaimed book Dare to Lead Brene Brown states unequivocally that avoiding “tough conversations, including giving honest productive feedback,” is the number one behaviour getting in our way in organizations around the world.
