In the latest episode of the 'Changing the World' series, University of Leeds Vice-Chancellor Professor Simone Buitendijk and Deputy Director of Communications Fridey Cordingley discuss conflict. 

We all experience conflict in many areas of our lives - and at universities, debate and disagreements are part of the academic experience. Simone and Fridey discuss their personal responses to conflict - and how it's possible to embrace conflict to make sure it ultimately resolves problems in a constructive and collaborative way.

Follow Professor Simone Buitendijk on Twitter here, and follow University of Leeds by clicking here.

To read more voices from the University of Leeds, visit our Medium publication here, and the University's website here.

Hello.

I'm Friday Cordingly, I'm the Deputy Director

of communications.

I'm really pleased to be talking to our vise chancellor,

Simone Bultendijk today, who's recently

written some inspiration and thought provoking blogs.

Today we are discussing conflict.

We see it and experience it in all aspects of our lives.

In her recent blog, Simone argued

that conflict can force people into fixed positions,

making it harder to achieve collaboration

and mutual growth.

But if we learn to deal with tensions and conflict,

we will resolve problems in a more proactive

constructive and collaborative way and all benefit.

In a moment, I'll be in conversation with Simone.

But first, this is someone reading her blog.

Is it OK to disagree learning from the discomfort

of conflict.

Humans may think of themselves as rational creatures,

but when we feel threatened emotions often take over.

How do we ensure that we don't become polarised and paralysed

as a community?

And tension and conflict arise.

I do not love conflict, and my instinctive reaction

to people angrily disagreeing with me is to back off.

Unlike some colleagues and friends,

my initial reflex is not to reciprocate

with physical anger.

I'm not exactly sure why that is.

My past experiences of forcefully trying to win

and not getting anywhere may have contributed.

As my career progressed, I started to realise my attitude

to conflict needed to change.

Not by me becoming more aggressive, but rather

by employing a different approach altogether.

I believe it's only natural that as humans we

enjoy it when others agree with our point of view.

What is not to like?

But clearly, it's unrealistic to expect

a life without disagreements or conflicting interests.

And there's actually a lot of evidence

that different viewpoints and a certain level of tension

are needed for growth, stability and sustainable innovation,

both in the workplace and in personal relationships.

The question then is, how do we deal with those tensions well?

The problem lies with our natural tendency

to either lash out or zone out when you feel threatened.

What happens when we move between withdrawal

and aggression is that we stop listening, connecting

and learning.

We are so busy protecting our own interests

and defending our own position that we can no longer afford

to see nuance and entertain the possibility

that the other party may have a point.

The past to further and further escalation

and alienation, to hardening and more extreme points of view

is subsequently wide open.

I don't think I need to illustrate the principle

with real life examples.

You can find plenty in this morning's newspapers

and even larger quantities among today's tweets.

Unfortunately, as we're busy with intensely disliking

the position of the other, we're wasting time and opportunity

to resolve issues and build robust and sustainable

solutions for all.

If we want to deal more effectively with discomfort

or conflict in our communities, we

need to stop closing off to different opinions.

We need to listen, dare to be vulnerable,

and even be open to the possibility that at times, we

ourselves, are plain wrong.

That's really hard, much harder than instinctively going

into fight or flight mode.

However, if we don't try, we will

miss valuable opportunities to gain insights,

strengthen relationships and sustainably

resolve the knotty problems that make us all unhappy.

Most people in leadership positions

sooner or later have to deal with conflict and anger,

especially in times of large scale change or crisis.

When that happens, we have a choice.

Either we increase the distance between us

and the colleagues that are angry,

or we get closer by trying to connect.

The latter starts by attempting to truly understand

the cause of the anger.

Too often, all we try to do is win the argument,

while forgetting that without openness, honest communication

and an authentic human connection,

we will not persuade the other side to soften their position.

We all have a tendency to believe

that if we clearly and rationally outline

our own position, we will win because of the sheer beauty

of our arguments.

What we forget is that if there's

no connection and no trust, the other side will simply not

be able to believe us because there's too much suspicion

of our motives.

The difficulty with the connecting approach

apart from the fact it can be quite scary in the beginning,

is that it takes time.

More time than declaring war and parking our tanks on the lawn

or retreating into the trenches.

But once conflict has fully escalated,

it easily appears that we're too busy for careful communication

and figuring out which human emotions and problems caused

the issue to begin with.

Also, in the middle of a heated situation,

we often subconsciously or consciously choose

to feel simple dichotomy of right, (us), and wrong, (them).

Which further enables the high paced restlessness

and intensity full-blown conflict.

We can break the dangerous cycle once we understand we cannot

enjoy the primitive pleasures of always being right that

our conflicts provide us with, while at the same time

nurturing nuance, compassion and self reflection.

Those primitive pleasures are risky for our own happiness

and that of others in our community.

since, if we want them to continue,

we have to become ever more extreme in our positions.

And while keeping the short term conflict alive,

we inevitably lose sight of the fact

that it's a different effort.

And with patience and careful practise,

we will be more likely to reach a long term situation

stability, collaboration and mutual growth.

If we use conflict not to harden our stance,

but to deepen our understanding, to define common goals,

to reach out and to nurture a sense of shared humanity,

we will all gain.

At the very least, we will not waste our valuable time

on senseless feuds with other fragile humans just like us.

Simone, I'm really interested to know

why it was that you wanted to raise the issue of conflict?

Yeah, Thanks Friday for that question.

I think it's because conflict happens

so often in our private lives, our work lives,

and I think if we don't shy away from it

the way we now do and don't get into sort of automatic fight

or flight mode, that we will actually be able to use

it much more constructively.

And that's not easy to do.

And it's certainly taken me time to figure that out,

and I'm sure I still don't always get it right.

But it's a very worthwhile activity

to try and use conflict more constructively.

So I thought to blog about it and start the conversation.

One of the things I've been thinking about ever since I

read your blog, and I've been thinking about this,

is what do we mean by conflict?

And what do you mean by conflict?

Because I suspect it's something that means different things

to different people.

Yeah, that's a really excellent question.

I think too often we think of conflict as something that's

scary, that's threatening to our positions that

needs to be avoided.

And I think if we see conflict as different opinions,

different suggestions for how to solve particular issues.

Yeah, just basically people coming at particular issues

from different perspectives, instead of labelling it as bad.

Then I think we can probably take

a lot of the toxicity out of, especially the initial phases

of conflict.

Because if we get into that fight or flight mode

that we often get into when we see conflict arising,

because we feel threatened by it at a personal level,

then I think we lose opportunities

to learn and to especially come together and find

common solutions.

So maybe there's even something in how we define conflict.

And I think if we could see it as something

that will happen inevitably in any kind of relationship,

whether it's between two people or more people.

And it's just a matter of not being so scared of it,

we would already be in a much better place.

Because I think there is a difference

between conflict and sort of being very, very

much on completely different ends of the spectrum

and feeling very adversarial.

And that's something that I think we should avoid.

Yes.

Because I again, one of the things

I was thinking about in my own life

is where might a disagreement become a conflict in a conflict

situation?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think many people listen to this will think well,

we're in an environment where lots

and lots of different people come together

and there are lots of rightly differences of opinion,

debates, very important, particularly

in a University environment.

And do you think conflict is a particular issue

at the University?

Oh, absolutely.

I think it can be healthy and it can be very unhealthy.

I think especially in academic lives

where we're so aware that often things aren't black and white,

there aren't easy solutions, there

are lots of different ways of coming

at particular knotty problems.

I think we should be able to embrace conflict

as a positive thing, and we should

be able to be aware that it sometimes could even

be necessary to innovate and get to the next stage

of development.

So Yeah, absolutely.

I think conflict in higher education,

in universities, is something that

happens, that should happen, and that we

need to be not so afraid of as we sometimes appear to be.

OK.

Thank you.

And what impact do you think conflict can have

for the well-being of teams?

Well, I think if it spins out of control

and if conflict happens in situations where there's

little trust, there's not a lot of transparency,

that people easily feel threatened because their not

quite sure of the cohesion of the group

and they don't feel safe, then I think conflict

can be incredibly disruptive.

Can actually put groups or entire institutions back,

that can stifle innovation and progress.

So that that's basically the point of my blog.

I think we need to put conflict in a different kind

of environment to use it positively.

So if we work on the University environment institution wide,

but of course, also in people smaller groups where they work,

where there is that trust in each other and also

trust in each other's good intentions.

Where there is transparency, where there is a potential

to make mistakes as we're trying new things,

and without that immediately being

viewed as wrong and people feeling

threatened in their positions.

If in those kinds of situations of high trust and conflict

arises, I think we can use it constructively.

We can open our minds to the conflicting opinions.

We can try to be introspective and wonder

whether this other person or other group

actually may have a point that we just haven't seen before.

And then I think we can use conflict

in really creative positive ways.

So I think it should be part of a University culture,

of a culture within groups, and we should see it

as part of the kind of values that we

want to embrace that you and I spoke

about in a previous podcast Friday.

So I think how we deal with conflict

and what happens when it arises, is

very much dependent on the kind of community that we are.

And I'm really interested as well

in some of your personal experiences

about conflict, which you talk about a little bit

in your blog.

You say your response to conflict

has changed over time from responding angrily,

and you also referenced responding by retreating

as well to adopting a calmer approach.

Can you tell me a bit more about those experiences

and how that affected your approach

and how you feel about things?

Yeah, thank you for asking that.

I still remember a large scale meeting

early on in my research career when

I was sitting around the table, around the project I

was leading with a whole bunch of clinicians.

And I felt that some of the pushback that they were giving

me as a relatively junior researcher

was really not fair, they were really wrong.

And I felt irritated and I showed it.

And one of the leads of that group,

an older professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, the lady

said to me, Simone, you have to be aware

that every time you show anger you're actually

losing something.

And it's best to just not show anger,

even if you feel you're right.

Because when you're angry, you also

lose control of the situation.

And that for me was a complete light bulb moment,

because I felt so self-righteous and it's possible,

I don't remember the exact topic we

discussed, that I was absolutely right

and they were absolutely wrong.

But what he was pointing out, this older professor,

was that me showing my anger just was not a good idea

and didn't help bringing parties together.

So I really, really used his admonition

and tried not to do that.

But then I noticed, probably in hindsight years and years

later, that going to the other extreme,

and not showing anything and just

going into that more like flight mode

almost and not speaking up when people were angry with me

and that was conflict budding, that that

wasn't helping either.

Because I think if you're either angry or you think,

Oh, I'm just going to get out of this situation

because it feels too scary, you're

unable to listen at that point.

You're losing control of the situation,

you're unable to be introspective.

And you lose lots of opportunities

that that conflict actually give you.

But it took me a long while.

And I think the reason it took me a while is that I first

needed to be more secure in my job

and in my career to be able to open up to angry voices

or people just disagreeing with me in ways

that I found threatening.

And if you don't immediately go into that flight or fight mode,

then conflict and disagreements become a lot less scary.

So it's like it's really like a vicious cycle.

The more scary you find them, the more likely

we are to either aggressively retaliate or completely

opt out.

And then you're left with nothing,

really can't get together.

And especially for long term relationships,

that can be really detrimental.

When it's a short term thing when

you just never having to see each other again,

it's not so bad.

But most of the relationships we have

with each other in academia with external partners,

we hope that they will last.

So finding a way to deal with what appears to be conflict,

I think is actually a crucial skill when

you're part of a group and especially

as you're growing as a leader.

I think that's really interesting Simone,

and I'm reminded of the conversation

we had about listening as well, because I think some

of the things we talked about there really,

really resonate in how we might respond to conflict.

So thank you.

And I think you also talked a bit on your blog

about winning arguments or winning discussions or conflict

situations.

And I think that's really interesting,

because if there is possibly a view that if you

go into a meeting, there's a conflict situation.

Your position is I want to win, in inverted commas,

this argument, if that doesn't happen,

then there's a sense of failure there.

How do you deal with that?

How do we overcome that?

I think what's really important that we realise that maybe

winning is argument shouldn't be our ultimate goal.

And I think it's that same sense of short term versus long term

perspective.

Because I think winning an argument

is only good if you have a very short term perspective.

It's just about the here and now, you

want to come out victorious because there's

some kind of thing that you're going to gain from doing that.

But you don't really care that you're jeopardising

the long term relationship.

So if you don't care about long term, I think trying to win

is not so bad.

I'm not sure why you should, but I

think the fallout is not so dramatic if the relationship

needs to continue, winning may feel good at the time being,

at the time and at the moment, but may actually not

be so great going forward.

So the short term may lose, win the short term battle,

but you're not going to lose the war.

And you're certainly not going to build a relationship that

will last as a peaceful collaborative way of working.

Because people who lose, they will trust you

less the next time you get into a conflict situation.

And chances that things will erupt even quicker, of course,

will get higher.

Plus, they may come in more prepared next time,

so you may not be able to win as easily.

So you can just see the escalation sort

of being built in.

So I think we should all move away from wanting to win.

And that, of course, also has to do with the ability

to actually look at your own position

differently and not think so much in black and white.

Because if you're absolutely right

and the other person is absolutely wrong, then

of course you want to win because you

don't want to acknowledge that you may not

be absolutely right.

But I think the question is really

what do you want to achieve in the long run?

And you want to collaborate, you want to work together

on higher goals, or are you just enjoying the conflict and what

it gives you as a person?

And I think the more insecure people are,

the more they need that sense that they're right

and the other's wrong.

But I just don't think that for a group, for an institution,

for external goals that are more worthy than just

trying to get some satisfaction out of a short lived conflict.

For the longer term goals, we shouldn't

think about winning and losing.

I think that whole concept puts us in the wrong frame of mind

when we're looking at differences of opinion.

Do you think it's possible to ever remove conflict

from the workplace?

No, and I don't think we should.

And if we treat conflict with less suspicion

and if we don't see it as a bad thing

and if we don't want to always win,

I think conflict can actually be rather a good thing.

Then we could even invite conflicting opinions

and conflict into our everyday lives.

But if conflict, if we equate it to all-out war,

and if we make it something dangerous to ourselves,

then of course we should avoid it at all cost.

And then maybe we should try to get a workplace

without conflict.

So maybe it's even the definition of conflict

that we need to think about.

Yeah.

It's quite an word, isn't it, conflict.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think quite a personal thing as well,

because what's acceptable for me may be

threatening to somebody else.

And I'm thinking, how do we, how do managers deal with that?

How do we manage that difference of view

in the workplace about what we'll tolerate?

Yeah, that's a really great question.

And it's also, of course, a cultural element there.

What can be completely acceptable in Dutch culture,

where we're quite sort of open with each other when we're not

agreeing, could be seen as incredibly threatening

behaviour for Japanese or Chinese or UK colleagues.

Because people would see it as more insulting

and in the Netherlands it's totally OK to say,

I don't agree with you.

So I think we need to be extremely

aware of how we choose our words and of how to make sure

that the people that we're talking to

don't feel threatened and that they don't feel that we

are violating their dignity.

And so I think that's really important.

And another element, I think, is the power imbalance.

I think people in a more powerful position

need to be much more careful with how they phrase

their differences of opinion, and how

they invite people in the less powerful position

to express themselves.

Because when you're in the position of power,

you come across as much more threatening.

If you say exactly the same things that

you're saying when you're in an inferior position,

in terms of the power balance.

So I feel that as a leader, as you grow in an organisation

and you become more influential, you need to become more

and more careful of how you deal with your own opinions

and your awareness of how you may come across and to others.

So maybe thinking of conflict as something

that we should only allow in a very, very

carefully constructed way.

And maybe avoiding conflict.

So come back to what I said earlier, and think

about more like differences of opinion would be the way to go.

I think if the leader starts feeling threatened, that really

is a recipe for disaster.

Because then either they're not listening anymore

when they should be, or they easily become and just

appear aggressive.

And that also erodes the trust and erodes the relationship.

OK.

Yeah, thank you.

I've heard talk of productive tension.

What's that mean to you?

Yeah, I think productive tension is actually

a great way of looking at it.

What I've learned over the years in a position of leadership

is that I actually need to invite people to challenge me.

Because it is scary to say no, I don't agree with you,

when you're saying that to a person who

holds a lot of power.

And what happens if you don't invite people

to challenge and to tell you maybe you should look out here,

this may not be the right way, is

that it's very comfortable for a while

because it seems like you're doing everything right

and people are all happy.

But of course, at some point it can come back to haunt you.

Because it turns out that people weren't as happy

and they weren't as comfortable and they were

critical of your leadership.

But no one actually dared to tell you.

So I think constructive dialogue,

constructive criticism, constructive tension needs

to be encouraged and invited.

I think it's also a really good way

of role modelling to enable people to actually voice

their opinions.

And even if you don't agree with what they're proposing,

and even if what they tell you they

don't like about you is not going to change the way

you work, it's very important to know

where people aren't in agreement with what you want to achieve

or aren't happy with the way you're going about it.

Because if you don't know it, you easily

will make mistakes at some point.

So that's something I had to learn,

to feel more comfortable with actively asking for feedback.

And I think it's also a great way

to avoid really, really large scale conflict if we use it

in a negative way.

Because if you ask for feedback early,

you'll get much more nuanced and rich discussions and people

won't feel so adversarial towards you

as they may feel if they are disgruntled

for a long, long time and you don't seem to be listening.

Yeah.

That's interesting isn't it?

Because I think there's also learning

to give that feedback when requested to do so as well.

I think one of the things kind of as we draw to a close,

and I'm really interested to get a little bit of an insight

into the vise chancellors world.

And I think one of the questions I'm keen to ask

is how do you prepare for meetings or situations

where there's likely to be a disagreement that they

may move to conflict?

Oh, it's a brilliant question, Friday.

Yeah, what I'm trying to do is feel really open minded

and realise that I don't want to start feeling threatened.

I don't want to get into that primitive sort

of hot, emotional response, count to ten,

take deep breaths, just absorb the anger and the disagreement

before responding.

And just really think about it as a brilliant opportunity

to learn and to become aware of what's happening.

And another thing I always try to do

is suppress my own inclination to want

to fix things immediately.

To want to get out of the situation with clear solutions.

Because sometimes the disagreement, the conflict,

the tension can't be solved, and maybe not ever, but oftentimes

not in that situation.

To see it more like a data gathering

exercise than that I'm on a mission to fix and make sure

that everybody leaves the room feeling that there's

no longer an issue.

Because most of the issues are so complicated that we

need multiple meetings, we need to have multiple approaches.

And so to get out of the short term reflections, because I

have those of course, also.

I want to make people happy.

I want to say, yes, of course you're right to do this.

And then wave my magic wand and we're all going to be happy.

So to suppress the need to fix things on the spot,

to basically just take my time and to especially not feel

threatened at a personal level and realise that this probably

has nothing to do with me as a person.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I think there's a lot of good advice.

It was all in there.

Thank you.

But it's really hard.

It's really hard and I don't always get it right.

No.

And I think some of that is, is that kind

of a bit of that sort of self talk

that needs to happen as you prepare

and then as you're in the meeting, I guess as well,

isn't it?

Yep.

Now one other thing maybe if I can add that I'm always

asking myself when people are angry,

is what are you afraid of?

I'm sort of asking myself what the person who's angry

is afraid of.

Because most anger stems from fear of something.

And that really helps me become more empathic and more calm

and not feel so threatened at a personal level.

That's a really great tip.

And a really good question.

Thank you.

I think that's about all we have time for today.

Unless there's anything else you want to share with us, Simone.

No, I think we've covered a lot of ground, Friday.

Yeah, it's an evolution, and it's difficult.

And we all struggle with how we can deal with conflict best.

And I think it should be a group effort.

So if this blog makes people think

and if listeners have suggestions for me

I'm really happy to hear them.

Because this is not just one person, one person thing,

you can also change how a whole organisation deals with each

other and grows and learns together.

Right.

Thank you.

It's as ever, and Simone it's been a real pleasure speaking

with you today.

Thank you ever so much for your time, and thanks everyone,

for listening.

Yeah, thanks Friday for asking all those great questions.

Looking forward to talking to you again.

Thank you for listening.

Please look out for further podcasts

on Spotify and other platforms.

Please follow SImone on Twitter @SEBuitendijk

to find her latest blog.

You can also follow the University of Leeds

on Twitter @universityLeeds.