What is Conflict?

Although our experiences of it are often difficult, conflict can be seen as a form of feedback.

It may be signalling that :

• some needs are unmet

• the power and/or trust to care for all the needs involved is not currently within reach

• change is emerging

• our relationships, agreements, understanding of what we are trying to do, ways of sharing power, and social systems, may need to evolve.

Conflicts are often really painful, distressing, frustrating and destructive. Our personal, social and historical experiences of it are mostly intensely negative and traumatic. And so, we want to find a better way of navigating tension, conflict and disagreement, because we know that it can be different...

We believe conflict is a part of life, something that will come up, again and again. How we respond to it shapes whether conflict will tear us apart, or change, evolve and strengthen us. In our experience, if we have the support we need to listen to conflict when it comes our way, it can help us grow - in ourselves, in our relationships with others and in how we work together, in our groups and systems, and in getting clearer on the purpose that we share. We see a lot of conflict as offering an opportunity to evolve and build our collective power.

We have experienced all of this directly within the conflict team: we have found ourselves in a painful conflict, and found support to guide us in hearing each other and letting the conflict change and evolve how we work together. This brought us to a much better place, with better relationships, communication and ways of working.