Podcast: Unlearning Fear of Conflict

Research shows that leaders and teams who avoid open conflict meet worse outcomes for all.

Furthermore, researchers Tema Okun & Kenneth Jones identified that fear of (open) conflict is an attribute of White Supremacy Culture which continues to oppress people of all backgrounds.

According to their research, fear of (open) conflict shows up as:

people in power are scared of expressed conflict and try to ignore it or run from it;

when someone raises an issue that causes discomfort, the response is to blame the person for raising the issue rather than to look at the issue which is actually causing the problem;

emphasis or insistence on being polite; setting the rules for how ideas or information or differences of opinion need to be shared in order to be heard (in other words, requiring that people "calm down" if they are angry when anger often contains deep wisdom about where the underlying hurt and harm lies);

equating the raising of difficult issues with being impolite, rude, or out of line; punishing people either overtly or subtly for speaking out about their truth and/or experience;

labeling emotion as "irrational" or anti-intellectual or inferior, which means failing to recognize the importance of emotional intelligence;

pretending or insisting that our point of view is grounded in the "rational" or the intellectual when we are in fact masking our emotions with what appear to be rational or intellectual arguments.

We gathered with our dynamic panel to Unlearn the ways we reinforce our cultural fear of conflict. Meet the panel:

🎙️Karla Monterroso (she/her) is committed to the work of closing the opportunity gap for Black and Latinx people. Karla spends the majority of her time creating coalitions and tools that support power building for Black and Latinx leadership through a variety of industries.

Connect with Karla Monterroso: / karlamonterroso

🎙️ Sara Huang 黃詩惠 (she/her) is the founder and lead facilitator at Bureau Tw!st, which designs and supervises group sessions that create space for difficult conversations, verbalizing and owning discomfort, and growth and transformation.

Check out Sara Huang's offerings: https://linktr.ee/bureautwist

🎙️In 2002, Carol Bowser (she/her) founded Conflict Management Strategies Inc. Since then she has been helping leaders and organizations become "conflict competent," work that she loves.

Visit Carol Bowser's site: https://conflictmanagementstrategies....

🎤❤️‍🔥 And meet your host… 🎙️ Lindsey T. H. Jackson! (she/her)

Lindsey is a creative force in motion. Every year, organizations and outlets like MoPOP, the Washington State GSBA and King5 News call on her to guide thousands of individuals through their shared journeys of Unlearning our culturally patterned biases and traumas. And now, we’re fortunate enough to be one of them!

Today, she’s the CEO creating the future of work with her team at LTHJ Global — leading the organizational Diversity, Equity & Inclusion evolution from the inside out.

❤️‍🔥 www.lthjglobal.com

Register for the next Unlearning: www.lthjglobal.com/unlearning/