It is comparatively easy to help organisations to learn when they are facing a crisis. What is less easy is to enable them to learn continually. This requires moving learning from being perceived as a mandatory requirement to being embraced as a requirement for individual and collective growth, a requirement for life.
It is a huge conundrum for a leadership culture that has been trained to value quick wins, power, profit and prestige. The culture must shift to a heart-centred leadership that puts love for the living world first. Navigating that shift is the defining challenge of our time.
Learning cultures have the capacity to agree to everything – that does not mean they must agree with everything. Change flows and when everything is seen. Once difficult perspectives are aired and respected they lose their grip on the agenda and learning grows.
Great organisational cultures have the aptitude to integrate conflict and collaboration. Both are needed together. Collaboration without conflict leads to conformity and a lack of creativity. Conflict without collaboration leads to disrespect and alienation.
The conflict coach doesn’t just enable disputants to settle their issues, rather the conflict coach supports the organisation so that it learns from its conflicts and so that the organisational culture becomes more effective in resolving similar disputes in the future.
Every difficult behaviour you experience represents a skill you can learn. By rejecting people who engage in difficult behaviour you risk losing a valuable opportunity to learn from them.