Conscious Conflict and Maintaining Community at Work
90-minute Workshops
Day 2
Session Code: S4-AWhen: March 28, 2023
Level: Intermediate
Track: Critical Employment Practices
Presenter: Adrianna Flax, adriannaflax.com
Description
As an organization, how we manage conflict directly impacts the health and psychological safety of our workplace communities. We have choices in how we manage conflict. We can leave conflict unresolved; take action that forces someone to part ways with a group or community; or we can take action that keeps everyone in community.
This session begins with a deep look into microaggressions, an often-unseen harm that causes conflict within our organizations, then proceeds with understanding conflict styles that we may be experiencing, and then introduces the concept of Conscious Conflict (CC) — an approach for conflict resolution that provides a new model for addressing harms in a way that promotes trust and inclusion.
An underlying premise of CC is that everyone is as capable of committing harm as they are of experiencing harm. Harms, like microaggressions, erode trust and impact job performance and satisfaction. Traditional anti-harassment policies and procedures often fail to provide a constructive way to address these kinds of harms.
CC provides a new approach for addressing harms, disrupting these DEI derailers, and building trust. CC keeps the community intact, creates opportunity for healing, and builds institutional knowledge — transforming conflict resolution into a conflict revolution.
Learning Outcomes:
• Understand belonging, workplace community, and the role of psychological safety
• Anticipate conflicts that break trust, cause harms, or allow microaggressions to go unaddressed
• Develop the language of Conscious Conflict, learning to call-in and receive a call-in, and practice disruption using real-world scenarios