You may have seen me share that quote before. I love that it speaks to the conflict avoidance that's incredibly common in libraries, as well as the anxiety that is so often at the root of that behavior.

Conflict is inevitable whenever you get a group of people together. There are going to be times when you deeply disagree with someone else's take on how to approach some issue.

When handled well, this can turn into constructive conflict – we encounter new ideas, focus on understanding all sides of the issue, and come away with a better solution than either of us could have proposed on our own. Learning to handle conflict this way builds psychological safety on your team, as people learn that it's ok to speak up when they have different opinions about team priorities or the best path forward.

Unfortunately, that constructive outcome feels rare in libraries.

The most common reaction I've seen is to try to avoid the conflict. We'll just agree to disagree and move forward however the boss decides is best. That avoids destructive conflict, at least for a while, but doesn't get us to any shared understanding or positive resolution. My experience is that this turns into a Cold War, with different sides resenting one another and separating off into factions or silos. Over the long term, that can do far more damage than one big nasty outburst could have.

Of course there are a lot of reasons people take this approach. Leaders who haven't learned conflict resolution skills may feel a lot of anxiety about the risk of a conflict turning toxic. Recognizing that we're whole people with lives outside of the library, this can be even more challenging for someone who experienced trauma from abusive parents or a past abusive partner. A slightly raised voice can trigger a fight/flight/freeze/fawn response.

And I say that as someone who understands the other side! Sometimes I raise my voice without meaning to when I care about something – from my perspective, I'm just passionate, not at all angry. This happens whether I'm in a conflict situation or excitedly talking with someone who totally agrees. But when it happens in a conflict and I'm not paying attention, I can come across pretty forcefully without meaning to.

There's a whole lot of nuance to navigate here, and a lot of ways for conflict to pop up without anyone being wrong!

And then, we have the destructive conflict that inspires that avoidance. This is when one or both sides is focused on “winning” and placing blame, instead of looking for that constructive shared ground. This can show up as one person raising their voice with the intention of overpowering other voices or outright shouting. This can show up as shifting the focus from the issue we're disagreeing about to the person who's disagreeing, and making personal attacks. This can show up as white- or male- or whatever other category of fragility, as someone focuses more on defending their intent than on repairing a harmful impact.

Destructive conflict destroys the psychological safety you've worked to build on your team, so it makes sense to want to avoid that. The problem is that avoiding it doesn't make the conflict go away.

So how do you get to that constructive resolution?

You already know my answer is coaching, right 😂

This week, I'm going to talk a little bit about how I help library leaders navigate conflict through individual coaching, in order to illustrate some of the things that can come up when coaching a team member through this. And then, in the next issue, I'll talk more about how you can build your capacity to handle these situations with your team members.

Whether the client brings in a conflict that they're mediating between team members or a conflict that they're part of, we often start with separating observable fact from the stories connected to those facts. Our brains are wired to look for patterns, and it can be really hard to avoid assumptions when those patterns pop up.

Of course you don't consciously say that! When you read it put that way, it probably sounds obviously problematic! But your brain primes you to act as if that story were true.

So we start by separating out what actually happened from the connections your brain is making to other people and other situations.

And then we explore what other perspectives might be relevant. In an individual coaching session, this is all speculative, and that's ok. The goal is to open a wider range of possibilities, to help the client get unstuck from the story they've been caught up in, so that they can imagine new ways of moving forward.

And then we explore possible next steps. Depending on the context, that may mean having a conversation to actively listen to the other person's perspective. Or that perspective may not be as important as changing how you communicate moving forward.

For example, let's say that the issue is that staff seem to be resisting doing something you asked them to do. If we explore other perspectives and realize that it could have been a miscommunication instead of willful refusal, then maybe the next step is to communicate that expectation more clearly, explain why it matters, and invite questions or discussion.

This feels pretty innocuous compared to some of the more complex conflicts that can build up over years in many libraries. But how many of those complex conflicts are made up of layer upon layer of small conflicts going unresolved, sandwiched between the ways people then respond to protect themselves from that tension?

In individual coaching, we can dig into your specific context to peel back those layers. One of the benefits of working with an ICF-certified external coach is that we hold all of our coaching conversations confidential. That means it's safe to name names to keep track of what's going on, instead of trying to be vague the way you might in a conversation with peers. This also creates a space where you can feel safe being fully honest about your feelings and frustrations without judgment, but also without getting mired down in just venting.

We explore what's most important to you in finding a path forward, and then build a strategy for next steps that are aligned with your values.

And sometimes those next steps include building new skills for navigating conflict, which I'll talk more about next time!

If you're realizing that you could use some help peeling back those layers of unresolved conflicts and legacy toxicity in your library, let's talk!

​Click here to schedule a free, no obligation conversation about your situation and a possible individual coaching package!