Lena Andres is a geography and sexuality studies student at Concordia University, originally from Winnipeg in Treaty 1 Territory. They are interested in grief and memorialization practices within community organizing circles, and how the expression of conflict leads to opportunities for deepening relationships and engagement with a restorative justice politic.
4 Lessons in Navigating Conflict
by Lena Andres
On September 11th 2024, SHIFT welcomed speakers Phillipe Koffi, Gabriela Gomez, and Dominic Barter to sit on a panel together about responding to conflict within communities both formal and informal. Our speakers each hold various expertises in mediation, community responses to conflict, and somatics. Our attendees were encouraged to share back their key takeaways from the event, and we thought we’d do the same!
Here are some of the lessons that we are holding close to our hearts following the event:
1. Conflict manifests at three levels, in ways that are interconnected and alive with one another.
At the individual level, conflicts stir up responses from our emotions and nervous systems that can limit our ability to think creatively in a charged moment. At the relational level, unresolved conflicts between friends, family members and collaborators inhibit our ability to advance on shared projects. At the societal or structural level are overarching injustices and social issues that we try to mobilize against.
These three aspects of conflict are intertwined and indivisible, and need to be understood as a “whole” in which all components are well held and invested in towards social transformation. Moving with and through conflict towards systems change can start from anywhere, but inevitably requires engagement with all three levels for transformation to be possible.
2. Navigating conflict is not a skill to develop, but a community heritage we need to rediscover.
When we’re experiencing a threat, we lose relationships with the parts of our brain that are necessary for us to skillfully move through conflict. Meaningfully interacting through conflict requires us to instead tap into the (sometimes blocked) ability to feel and extend empathy: our innate human ability and desire to express care for others, and to ask for it ourselves.
Reacquainting ourselves with this community heritage of conflict resolution provides the opportunity to ask ourselves: what's getting in the way of offering empathy to the person I’m in conflict with, and how can I find it?
Identifying this missing piece is essential to being able to approach conflict with care. When conflict grows to a certain scale, there can be an impulse to violate each others’ space in order to get our voices heard. By cultivating our own abilities to ground ourselves through different somatic practices (like taking a sacred pause, or checking in with our breath) we can be better prepared, listen more intently to one another, and communicate with generosity.
Reflection questions
- What are the ways that you keep your cup full? What feeds your capacity for wonder?
- How does thinking about conflict resolution as part of a community heritage to rediscover help reframe your relationship to conflict? Does this offer a greater opportunity for connection, for flexibility?
3. Conflict signals an opportunity for change: lean in, and allow it to flourish.
Community settings are highly charged environments with passionate people up against systems that are, more often than not, actively working against them. This is inherently conflictual work that is often under-resourced when team conflict inevitably arises; but working with conflict means working with and towards change. Learning to be interested in what conflict is trying to teach us, allowing it to flower and express itself in its entirety by inviting the nitty-gritty conversations within teams helps to build the conditions for conflict to be a transformational and bonding experience, rather than an isolating one.
Reflection questions
- Where have you tried to nip conflict in the bud in the past, what could it look like to allow it to flower in the future?
- Can you imagine this as a transformative rather than painful experience?
4. A fear of conflict helps to maintain the systems we are working to dismantle
If we know in our hearts that the world could be a better place than it currently is, why do we run from conflict that arises in the spaces where we are working to make it more just? A fear of conflict can stem from the internalizing of oppressive systems like colonialism and white supremacy. These systems are sneaky, trying to convince us that the status-quo is the way things must always be. Confronting this provides the opportunity to face-off and assert otherwise, ushering in the chance for alternative ways of being.
By understanding and welcoming conflict as a necessary part of the change making process, we allow ourselves to be agents of social transformation. Rather than passing off the responsibility of managing conflicts to politicians, the “justice system”, or other actors that have no personal stakes in our communities, we ourselves can take on the personal and political task of healing work. Empowering ourselves and those around us to claim the responsibility of conflict resolution builds the agency and power of grassroots movements by reflecting the honest and ever-changing nature of relationships between people and the world around them.
Reflection questions
- How does fear of conflict prohibit you from doing work that you find meaningful? What would it look like for you and your team to integrate discussions about conflict into a regular part of your work? How can you imagine interpersonal accountability as intrinsically related to your political promise of building a better world?
- Where have you tried to nip conflict in the bud in the past, what could it look like to allow it to flower in the future? Can you imagine this as a transformative rather than painful experience?
The reflections from attendees conveyed feelings of inspiration, curiosity, and introspection. We can imagine these feelings as seeds of autonomy being watered as people felt empowered with the reminder that their ability to embrace compassionate conflict is innate to their human experience.
To walk towards conflict instead of running away from it is a mighty task; one that demands our grounded presence, empathy, and ability to see a sometimes uncomfortable experience as something that is meaningful enough to invite and work through.
Re-discovering our community heritage is no easy journey, but it is through the commitment to a willingness to try that we can collectively take on the shared responsibility of navigating the complex waters of conflict in community, with care and justice being centered.
