Week 5—Comments on Chapter 6, "Conflict"

For this week, I will focus on Chapter 7 "Conflict" as I already briefly mentioned Chapter 6 in last week's post.

Conflict was a very relevant topic for me personally when serving as Assistant Director of the ELA, which I did for four years.

This is because the ELA experienced a great deal of conflict over several years due to differing views on how we should conduct a curricular reform.

While the majority of the instructors supported a particular set of curricular reforms, a minority of senior instructors were against the reforms. Due to feelings of not feeling respected, of accusations that have been made against them, and due to a considerable amount of "groupness" (a sense of "us" vs. "them" that has magnified the importance of the issues), this group has had great difficulty accepting the reform.

So, what can I "take away" from this chapter on Shackleton?

First, we should have "Deal[t] with Anger in Small Doses" better than we did. Legitimate concerns were expressed by the dissenting group early on that were not addressed. Efforts should have been made to have had extensive discussion and debate over these concerns, and perhaps some compromises needed to have been made. Better yet, we needed more of a conflict positive environment in which open discussion might have led to some "win-win" negotiations. Instead, the minority group felt marginalized and disenfranchised which subsequently led to feelings of intense frustration and ultimately aggression.

Secondly, we needed to have "Engage[d] Dissidents." The reform dissidents were essentially ignored. What we needed to have done is brought the dissenting voices and members "into the tent." I have always loved this notion from Shackleton, that he took the members that might pose the greatest threat to his leadership and made them members of his tent. This way he could consult with them and keep them feeling listened to and wanted, and prevent them from joining forces with others. There is an expression in English, "Keep your enemies closer and your enemies closer" which is attributed to the great Chinese military commander Sun Tsu which expresses a similar concept. We needed to have done something like this by better including our dissidents in the reform process so that they could have more of a say and be part of the reform. Not doing so has led to a lot of problems.

My efforts while Assistant Director were to try and "make up" for the past. Giving the opposition an opportunity to express themselves was one approach. We had several open meetings in which opposition views could be presented and discussed. Opposing members were given roles in which they could contribute in ways they were uniquely suited. These efforts were at least partially successful, and much of the division and distrust and anger of the past appeared to have significantly lessened by the end of my term.