Fighting Shame Around How We Respond in Conflict

[Image description: Sky blue background with illustrative flowers in multiple bright colors scattering across. Abstract white faces are transposed on some of the flowers while others have white outlines. In the top right is the CompassPoint logo in white text. Foreground black text reads "Fighting Shame Around How We Respond in Conflict with Kyla Hartsfield and Laura Eberly." ] 

by Kyla Hartsfield and Laura Eberly

When it comes to conflict, are you competitive, accommodating, avoidant, compromising, or collaborative? Which response or style have you been taught is “bad”? In this rich, reflective audio episode, CompassPoint Project Director Kyla Hartsfield and CompassPoint Teacher Team Member Laura Eberly discuss Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann’s “Conflict Styles” framework together, offering personal storytelling and social justice analysis along the way. They unpack how these different approaches to conflict can work for and against us, depending on where our identities are situated within systems of oppression, our positionalities within power dynamics, and what our goals are when working towards liberation collectively. 

[Intro and outro music: “Movement” by HoliznaCC0 via Free Music Archive. Licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal License.]

Enjoyed this episode and want to learn more in a supportive space with peers? Check out our Conflict Resolution workshop: https://bit.ly/cpconflictres

Transcript

(intro music)

Kyla: Hello everyone! My name is Kyla Hartsfield. I use she/her pronouns and I'm a Project Director at CompassPoint. I'm also a community organizer, a daughter, a friend, a lover, as well as a believer in change.

Laura: And I'm Laura Eberly. I use she and her pronouns, and I'm a facilitator and trainer with CompassPoint. I'm also an Episcopal beacon and a community organizer and a queer parent, figuring out how to do radical family.

Kyla: Hi Laura!

Laura: Hey Kyla.

Kyla: I'm so excited to get into conflict styles today. We're gonna talk about what they are and how our relationships to them are shaped by our lives and identities, as well as why understanding them, versus judging and ranking them, is more helpful in setting the stage for generative conflict, because conflict is inevitable. So we should be building our skills on how to work through it better.

I know especially at the places that I have been, um, an employee at, conflict resolution has not always been prioritized for us to work through and with. There hasn't been the effort, space, and time for us to reflect and to work through conflict, and I definitely wanna shift that at places. I feel like it's important, as well as we spend a lot of time judging our conflict styles. And folks that come into our workshops—I can see them as they're coming in with heavy hearts, and when they're choosing and looking at which conflict style they are, how they want to choose whichever conflict style they feel like is better—I mean that's not helpful, especially resolving conflict with other people.

We want to come to conflict honest, we wanna come to conflict showing each other ourselves, and that's actually how we move through being able to step into vulnerability and make that step to go into deeper relationship with folks, because we're being vulnerable with each other.

Laura: Yes, ah—thank you so much for that framing, Kyla, because I think so much of this is about giving people more options and more choices when we go into conflict, right? Like when you're talking about previous organizations you've been at that haven't made space for this or that, don't scaffold it or structure it, I think so much of that comes out as thinking that there is like a “right way” for conflict to happen, and if we can't do it that way, or if it doesn't work for us to do it that way, then we won't do it, right? Like we won't engage it with one another, and so things just fester and boil.

Like so much of the movements that we’re part of, the nonprofit space, the social justice organizations—like these big fights for change—we're engaged in values-based conflict all the time, you know as the mission of what we do. We are in conflict with these big social structures and institutions, and if we can't figure out how to do that generative conflict internally, then it's gonna fracture and radiate out. It's like, how functional are we in doing these big movements for social change together.

Kyla: Exactly. So the conflict styles, they were created and defined by Thomas [and] Kilmann.

Laura: Right, so this is one framework for parsing five different conflict styles, and we go into all of these in great detail in our workshop.

The five styles are avoidant, accommodate, compete, compromise, and collaborate. And each of these styles is basically a different way of balancing how much are you working to meet your own needs and how much are you working to meet the needs of those that you're engaged in conflict with.

So we can, we can think about them sort of spread out on a map where one axis is working to meet your own needs, and the other is working to meet the needs of those you're in conflict with. “Avoidant” does neither, right? It's a zero on both ways. You're not working to meet your own needs, you're not working to meet the needs of those you're in conflict with. “Accommodate” is not working very much on meeting your own needs, it's working primarily on meeting the needs of whoever you're in conflict with. “Compete” is the opposite, “compete” is not working very much to meet the needs of those you're in conflict with, that's working very hard to get your own needs met.

And then compromise and “collaborate” are both in the middle, right, so compromise is where I'm gonna meet a little of my need, a little of your need. No one's coming away with everything that they wanted, but we're gonna meet in the middle. And “collaborate” is at the extremes of both, right? So sort of thinking about what we might call win-win scenarios, where you're getting your needs pretty fully met, I'm getting my needs pretty fully met, and then we're up at the top there in “collaborate.”

Those are kind of the five styles. Um, so maybe we can talk a little bit about what they each look like in action. So “avoid” is maybe the clearest about what that looks like in action, right. You, (laughs) you do not have the conflict. The parties, um, don't engage one another, they don't address the issue, other folks might be able to tell that something's up, but nobody's gonna explicitly name what's going on. And we're not gonna, we're not gonna address it at this time.

What “accommodate” can look like is, um, ceding your own position, right, and we might see this where the relationship is really important. We might see this where, um, you care more about helping someone to save face, or you care more about a long-term relationship with this person than about getting your way on this particular thing. And you can also see “accommodate” in contexts where, like, if we all agree to do “accommodate,” I can trust that my needs are gonna get met when it's really, really important to me, and when—because you'll be accommodating towards me as well, right. Um, I think this can be a little bit foreign for folks in like mainstream white dominant US culture, but there are whole cultures that use “accommodate,” right, as the primary style of conflict mediation, or as like a default.

“Compete”—I don't think I need to explain to any organizer, social justice educator[?], nonprofit employee listening to this. “Compete” is what we do when we're trying to get legislation passed. “Compete” is what we do when somebody's life is on the line. “Compete” is what we do when we feel there are absolute moral wrongs that we can't stand, right? Um, and we will put our bodies and ourselves on the line to get what we're trying to get and won’t take, um, the other person getting or the other party getting their way in it in any way.

Compromise, I think we all do all the time, like internally, right. Anything that you're not gonna get all the way that you wanna get. I think we do lots of this in our most intimate relationships often, right? Um, even on small things—like okay, you do dishes and I'll do laundry, right? This is, this is a compromise. Nobody wants to be doing chores Saturday afternoon, but this is where we're gonna be, and it'll get done faster if we both do it together. Um, and then “collaborate” is, uh, are those situations often, I think, where we can like break out of boxes of expectations of me getting my needs met must mean that you don't get yours, or vice versa. And we can figure out more creative, collaborative approaches that may not be what's readily handed to us.

Kyla: I was gonna say, what I would add is, like, compromise is like a quick “collaborate.” Like I think a lot of times we have the dream of collaboration, but we don't have the time for collaboration, and we choose compromise very often. Um, as well as my favorite example of “accommodate” is when someone who has more power accommodates the person who has less power. That's my favorite, every single time, to shift the power dynamics going on, um, in the situation.

Laura: Mhm hmm. I love that. Compromise is where we fail at the dream of “collaborate.” We have the dream of “collaborate,” but if we don't have the time, we don't have the resource, we don't own the stakes, we settle for compromise, yes. Yeah, and we can talk a lot more about the, um, identity lenses on all of this around power and privilege, yeah. Talking about “accommodate” as a rich space for allyship, right? Um, one of the things that some of my anti-racist white mentors have trained me in as a white person is to aim for defaulting to “accommodate” if I'm in conflict with BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] folks, right. Um, if I get so rigorously trained by white supremacy culture to be in compete mode as like my birthright as a white person from a certain class background of privilege, um, then I need to do some retraining of that instinctive reaction, and if I can aim for “accommodate” first, and that's gonna land me in a lot more generative relationships and conflict than how I was raised to do.

Can you, um, tell us a couple stories about sort of your journey through these styles, to give folks some illustration?

Kyla: Yes, I definitely can, thank you so much for asking. For me, conflict has always been something that was like visibly in front of me. So I was raised as the only child, and my parent leaned more towards emotional closeness versus physical closeness, at least in front of me, which is like they always were talking things out. Conflict was arriving and like working through at any time. It could be at the dinner table, it could be on a road trip, it could be after church, um, as well as it could be sat down and we did something. We went to a birthday party and it's picked back up later. So I grew up thinking that (laughs) everyone was ready to tackle conflict.

And as I got older, I came to terms that a lot of people did not grow up in the same environment and had a lot of reasons to be avoidant. And the tension between someone who is ready to take on conflict at any moment versus someone who is avoidant, is something I felt a lot. It was something I was really frustrated with until I learned number one, there's a time and a place for everything. Some people don't wanna come to dinner and work out a conflict that they had with me without proper warning, like I'm just bringing this up casually after appetizers. Which reminded me that conflict is between two people, like it's not just me working through it with one person, it's me in a journey with another person, and how am I giving space and setting the stage for us to both come as our full selves, regardless of our conflict style.

I think also, with my identities, my visible identities of being Black, fat, a woman, as well as being really forward with my conflict, has made me be called aggressive multiple times, and something I really internalized for a long time. And I kind of fell, um, more avoidant because I'm like, I don't want to come off aggressively, I don't want to hurt people. And I really had to think about, like, what were the messages that were being told about Black fat women and (laughs) people who are excited and passionate and ready to work through things as well as, like, […] think about, like, am I aggressive? What does this mean? Which is, like, I'm actually not (laughs) aggressive at all, um, and very gentle a lot of times.

And I love to vocalize the oppressions in the room. And if that makes folks feel uncomfortable, that's where change has happened, through uncomfortableness. Um, and I really had to think about […] whether I wanted to accept being villainized and, like, fight that, of like “oh, I'm constantly being villainized,” or did I want to trust in my relationships with my community of folks to continue to learn who I actually am. And I choose to trust my relationships with community, every time. And for us to work through that as I continue to vocalize what's wrong and what I have conflict with because this is how we get closer to each other, by us feeling able to vocalize and trusting with another person that you can vocalize what's wrong. If folks want to talk about more, you can definitely email me. And I kind of wanna get into why some resolution styles are more preferred than others, and I'm interested in, like, what do you think about that, Laura?

Laura: Yeah, so why are some more preferred than others. Well, one you've spoken to—there's a couple different kinds of preference, right. So I think we each have our […] unique individual preference, which probably comes from some combination of like nature, nurture; who you are as a human, how you're acculturated, um, how you're raised, the community that you come from. And then also what you said about how society shapes us by its responses to expectations for us based on our visible characteristics and how we come across, and then there's the preference of society writ large: what gets valued in our organizations, what kind of style gets you promoted, and what kind of conflict style gets you told that you're difficult or weak, um, or somehow lacking. And then, raising gender dimensions, totally impacting also who gets to perform those preferred conflict styles and in what way. Um, and so you can you know, like, the easy gender one is who gets seen as assertive or bossy. People who are seen as assertive and people who are seen as bossy are probably both operating in a “compete” style conflict, but gender is determining how that's valued and not.

And so this is a layer of how women, trans, non-binary, queer folk, BIPOC, people who are English language learners, right, people who aren't citizens, um, anybody who's read as other than the default dominant hetero cis white man, get put in this catch-22 bind, right? Where the behaviours of “accommodate” are more acceptable and appropriate for you, and “accommodate” is not how you get where you wanna get in our world. And so, um, you get into this kind of can't-win situation where you get punished for whatever conflict style you utilize, and often also have to get really, um, fluent in these different styles, right? For how to maneuver and how to turn one on and turn one off and codeswitch. And how to use them appropriately in different contexts for basic survival purposes, as well as to move forward goals for yourself and for your people and for your community and for your organization.

And so that's a piece of why I think it's so important for us to break down false rankings around the styles. Because if we give people more permission to actually use the skills that they have, and the practices they've developed in all of these places, and not shame or guilt around—the ways that you've learned how to navigate conflict are probably really important and probably hold a lot of wisdom. If we can unlock and allow people to use that and move with it, um, I think that we can all benefit from that. I think we can all feel like personally liberated in our own capacity to respond to conflict situations, but also that that feeds our movements doing, doing more successfully together.

Kyla: Yeah, I definitely agree. I think, I'm also thinking about the ways I've been pushed to be more “accommodate” or “avoid” because of product needed to be done, because of capital, because of like what we're producing is more important than the problem at hand, and how I've, yeah, I've experienced not having the benefits that I've deserved. I've experienced not having the salary that I've deserved and had lack, versus using a conflict style that was necessary for me to actually shift the organization and how we think about labor and like, thinking about the person actually separated from the labor. And that's just, like, one way I’ve seen […] like, ranking resolution styles being harmful by, like, really when “avoid” and “accommodate” is at the top. People are not getting what they deserve and what they need as workers, um, and how that is helping the top leadership, but hurting everyone else underneath.

And I think other ways that ranking resolution styles—and also wanna stop and say “ranking” not on like a sheet of paper, but ranking culture-wise in your workplace, like the unspoken of “you will get farther” or “you will get more clout or social capital” (laughs) if you lean towards this conflict style.

One, I feel like conflict a lot of times is never actually resolved, so people lean into these conflict styles that are not their—um, that are not their own, and they choose not to be honest, and then they actually hold resentment, and the conflict is not resolved and it's rumbling underneath and it's affecting other workers, it's affecting everyone else, they can feel it. And there's gonna be another blow up, there's gonna be another torch point for the conflict and it's actually not resolved, which is harmful, which can cause, um, relationships to be broken, people to lose their jobs, lose their stream of income, lose, lose, lose. Which is really toxic for the person.

I think about, like, capitalism, us being workers, and how there's points where we actually really care. Those who—those of us who are privileged to have jobs, like what we do, we care about our work, and then when we have multiple conflicts, we have multiple problems. The care becomes less and less, so the work becomes less quality, which is not helpful for the organization, but also I feel like not helpful for me, particularly as a person who likes to achieve, as a person who likes to get better, and a shoutout to all the people who are loving to achieve and to win and to, uh, stretch ourselves—that doesn't help us at all. So yeah, it really makes me think about us—to create more spaces where honesty is safe, and that if we're honest in our conflicts, we won't lose things. We'll actually gain things, um, and will gain more as a individual as well as a collective. And wondering if you have anything to add on how ranking resolution styles is harmful.

Laura: Yeah, I think that's it. And looking for that honesty to begin, like, first with ourselves, right, without shaming or guilting ourselves about whatever we need to do. And we've talked about how, you know, “avoid” and “accommodate” can often be what you need to do for physical, emotional, mental safety. You know if you're locked into conflict with the boss who can fire you, “avoid” may be the totally appropriate response to that, right. And we've talked about how, like, we need to compete when lives are on the line, like, when you're in a city council meeting fighting for just cause for evictions, there's no ground to give. And then compromise and “collaborate” are for like coalitions and playing longer games and building relationships, building communities.

Um, one of the pieces that I've seen come out so beautifully out of the defund the police movements and abolition workers—and I, I heard this first from Critical Resistance and—but I've heard it many places since—is that they, they recognize that they're not gonna get prison abolition now, right? And that they have to work through legislative stuff that takes small steps in the right direction. But they're not gonna do anything, um, that they're gonna have to go back and undo later, right. So nothing that includes more funding for police training or equipment, nothing that includes creations of, new facilities to lock people away. But will they take something that only implements better early release policies for a certain segment of the people who are locked up? Like yes, because that gets some of our people free sooner, and it's a step on the way. So there's just, there's really beautiful nuanced ways in doing compromise that we can still hold values around, but only if we're able to have this as a real conversation.

I would love to hear in closing…there is like so much to say about conflict styles, always—as we do regularly—um, I would love to hear from you in closing about what you think is possible when we have this kind of honesty and agency and choice around conflict styles.

Kyla: Thank you, Laura. Um, I think one thing that is possible is a stronger movement. People have left our movement, people have left their jobs; highly skilled, wonderful people have left and decided on something else because conflict couldn't be resolved. And yeah, our world would be changed if we had enough people involved in our movement to make that shift. Like the people, the power is in the people, so we need more people and not less people. So if we are able to figure out better conflict skills, we are able to, like, continue to build versus losing people. I think also just deeper relationships with individuals and, like, getting to know each other more, where it's like, you might come out—you might come out of it still in relationship, or you might come out of it not still in a relationship, but you do know more about that person. And I believe aspects of us creating more safe spaces is for us to deeply know each other, is for us to understand each other—not like each other—but for us to know each other, um, and to go deeper into conflict.

And, I think, on the tip of safety: when we fight shame around which conflict style and we choose honesty, we're able to unveil the actual, like, abuse and harm that's happening in our spaces, because people, uh—the survivor as well as the person who committed harm—both feel shame and don't say anything to anyone. And I know from my studies that a conflict between two people affects everyone around, even if we don't realize it or set it up. So if we continue to fight that shame and we continue to be honest, not only will we work through our conflicts that are of less intensity, but we're able to build up the, uh, strength to work through our conflicts that are in way more intensity and work through the harm and abuse that people are experiencing […]

I love agency. I love self-determination. I love not thinking of myself as one complete thing that will choose the same thing every time. So also when we stop to put rankings or shame around certain conflict styles, we can start to really see ourselves in which, like, “Oh, ‘avoid’ is necessary for this situation where I can be more safe,” and I actually don't have to choose “compete” when it's not making sense for me to choose “compete,” and what's making sense is for me to choose “avoid.” I don't have to shame myself because I chose “avoid” in this situation or when I want to choose “accommodate,” because I have deep love and deep care for the other person. I don't have to shame myself for making that choice in this conflict style, and I really love that. I love to fight shame and I hope folks who are listening to this will also join in the fight with shame with me and join in, in not ranking conflict resolution styles, and really thinking about, “What are these conflict resolution styles?” "Where do I see myself as well as where can I understand other people?" So we can walk through conflict with each other, and not against each other.

Laura: Hear, hear! If you would like to learn more, because there is so much more to unpack here, about conflict resolution with power and privilege specifically in mind, you can check out our workshop page at compasspoint.orgs/workshops. Thank you all so much for listening.

(outro music)

Resource:

Conflict Resolution with Power and Privilege in Mind (Workshop)