Confrontation is Not a Dirty Word

Confrontation is Not a Dirty Word Rhea Blanken, Results Technology, Inc
(Appearing in the Journal of Association Leadership, summer 2008)
3/31/08 1
It’s time to take the negative connotation off the word “confrontation,” and claim
constructive conflict as a sign of organizational health.
Executives expend much effort avoiding confrontation between and among their staffs
and volunteers. Such avoidance is actually detrimental to the organization; executives
should learn to focus and use confrontation to improve the decisions
that an organization’s leaders make.
Confrontation is not a four-letter word. It is, however, one of those words that seem to
evoke negative emotions and responses. Just mentioning the possibility of confrontation
can cause an upset for some people. Today’s movies, television commercials, reality
programs and news shows are filled with artificial and genuine examples of
confrontations. In these instances, avoiding or embracing a confrontation is part of the
drama or comedy, becoming uplifting or depressing, forwarding an idea or thwarting it,
but always affecting the resulting outcomes.
However, when association boards strategize to steer clear of confrontation; or Chief
Staff Officers (CSO) sidestep them in the management of staff; and, line staff work hard
to elude those involving volunteers—consequences ripple throughout the organization
resulting in avoidance, suppression and stagnation of ideas, actions, organizational
growth. The relationships they influence are compromised. Somewhere in the past, the
organizational culture of associations began avoiding confrontations rather than
embracing their positive communication value. Avoidance behaviors began to dominate.
Do we as a society perceive confrontation as conflict? It is not. We watch sports for the
conflict and competition. We view political debates for the confrontation of ideas they
present. We abhor the bullying behavior remembered from our childhood and are
troubled by its 21st
century translation onto the Internet. Conflict and confrontation are
not really synonyms but we do behave and speak as if they are.
The version of confrontation association boards, staff and volunteers must embrace has
protocol and process, procedures and beneficial outcomes. It has an honorable purpose
and a value that has been misplaced and marginalized for the sake of a misdirected desire
to seek consensus, to confront is simply “coming to face, esp. boldly, to bring face to face
with.” While consensus is a governance concept in which the absence of conflict is seen
as the equalizing state for the organization. Where did we get off course thinking
consensus is preferred over the occasional confrontation to investigate “what is
happening”, “what matters” and “what could happen” with our organizations? Are we
ignoring the opportunities confrontation provides in order to maintain a collegial
volunteer culture? They can co-exit. After all, confrontation is a communication model to
be used, not avoided.

3/31/08 2
Thankfully, as Max De Pree said, “There may be no single thing more important in our
efforts to achieve meaningful work and fulfilling relationships than to learn and practice
the art of communication.” Practicing intentional communication with purposeful
language is the bottom line. This article’s intention is to de-bunk that confrontations
should be avoided while proposing straightforward ways to release their grip on us. It is
not designed to demonstrate “how to win” at confrontations but rather to alter how their
occur.
Most of us can recall past confrontations where we were either victor and vanquished—
both had their disappointments and unsatisfactory outcomes. Rather than resisting them
or hoping to prevent them from occurring on a Board agenda or in a staff meeting, let’s
learn to have successful ones.
Exploring confrontations in current and classic business literature reveals many
recommendations for their use and effective communications to practice. These books
(refer to bibliography) unanimously refer to confrontations as a communication form to
be employed not a fight to win or lose. Numerous CEO interviews revealed typical
confrontation scenarios association CSOs, Boards, volunteers and staff regularly face and
either work out or work to avert at all costs. CSOs interviewed all knew in the long run,
trying to avert or ignore confrontations carried to high a cost for their organizations—the
maintaining of a less desired status quo situation. A few familiar ones that surfaced were:
• Board pursuing operational over strategic details, more involved in staff issues
than appropriate.
• Board behaviors inside and out the boardroom —conflicts of interests, hidden
agendas, absences, and not being responsive or timely to staff communications.
• Board selection criteria—must have appreciation of conflict, level of risk,
empathy, big picture thinking, able to problem solve and willing to engage when
there is potential conflict in the board meeting.
• Boards, CSO, volunteers and staff unwilling to either sunset or authentically
transform “sacred cow’ programs, events and communications.
• Board, CSO, volunteers and staff lacking clear understanding of goals to be
achieved; agreements regarding responsibility of effort and timeframes; and
certainty about resources available.
• Board, CSO, volunteers and staff having limited or no ownership for promises
made and their “conditions for satisfaction” are unspoken.
• Staff activities as cross-organizational partnerships lack accountability and
supervision to accomplish what’s been promised on time and within budget.
• Board, CSO, volunteers and staff saying they wanted a nimble, flexible,
innovative organization but reluctant to transform their part.
Proposition
The experiences of our youth: being made wrong by family, teachers and playmates;
relationship disagreements; or being “called on the carpet” by bosses leaves us prejudiced
regarding the resulting cost and benefits of confrontations. When we are rooted in the
fear of loosing our ground or even gaining something unwarranted from the engagement,
and our “survival” appears threatened, we either fight or take flight.

3/31/08 3
For associations, the flight model is too often the avoidance of those situations. What can
then result, as Hud found out in Cool Hand Luke, “is a failure to communicate”.
Fortunately, we are not resigned to his fate. If we are willing to create models that
empower us in those difficult moments, solutions appear. When addressing personal,
professional and organizational mistakes made, promises broken, and behaviors gone
awry, our communications are what will move us forward into a more productive
position.
Confrontations are communication events that allow us to learn “what else” is needed to
have a desired result happen and for us to use our breakdowns as organizational
resources, as a natural part of the organizational learning process. In this scenario, even
the worst confrontations from our past become grist for the personal and organizational
development mill. Besides, being involved in periodic confrontations is no surprise.
We can see them coming and try to avoid them. This avoidance is what allows the worst
elements of the status quo to persist unchecked and unchallenged.
It’s Begins When We Confront the World of Language
During my three decades of work with volunteer leaders and professional staff, I have
noticed four specific behaviors governing the actions of dialogues and discussion of staff
and boards.
To accomplish one’s goals and make the choices that fulfill them, we must be bigger than
the psychological drivers governing us. All of us have the desire to: look good; be
comfortable; be safe; and be right. These will never disappear from our consciousness
nor should they. However, the extent to which we create commitments of larger
consequence than the spheres of influence these drives will allow our organizations to
thrive and develop beyond the status quo.
These four behaviors filter which actions are proposed and which commitments are
made, how priorities are set and even when resources are allocated. It is only after the
individuals leading our associations can rise above these four behaviors that real
organizational transformation occurs. Confrontations are merely face-to-face
communication events addressing breaks in promised outcomes. They are neither
negative nor positive, only linguistic passages supporting the actual fulfillment of a
promised action—on time and within budget.
Walter Joyce, founder of the Discourse Project, says our linguistic world is designed to
maintain the status quo, where the existing language, thoughts and meanings are designed
to persistent as is, unchanged. What we consider confrontations to be and how we are
pulled to not act on them is part of that world.
Joyce proposes these “discourses are very old networks of conversation that are ingrained
in our society. They represent the unspoken rules and structures providing us a sense of
predictability, exerting great pressure on our reality. Dislodging and replacing them is not
for the unprepared or faint-of-heart.” Confrontations have to take this into account in all
efforts we design to bring about lasting change in the world. This is why real
organizational change is so elusive. Hence, our resistance to having confrontations helps
keep the discourse of broken agreements and thwarted expectations in place.

3/31/08 4
Considering the design of many Board agendas and the usual time allotted for strategic
thinking and dialogue; the mind-numbing mechanical nature of departmental reporting
occurring in staff meetings; and how the long-established gaps found in volunteer
responsibilities and staff’s accountabilities promote limited conversations of any creative
quality. The status quo discourse is persisting over volunteer and staff leadership’s
unwillingness to confront their costs. I wonder what they believe the pay-off is for
avoidance?
Our Confrontation Models Are in Need of an Overhaul and an Upgrade
During his presentation Using Conflict & Negotiation for Mutual Advantage November
2007 at ASAE/The Center’s In Honor of Women, James Bailey, Ph.D. referred to
childhood memories of parental and teacher confrontation as molders of our adult
responses. Lessons learned early from family and school, later from peers and friends and
finally from co-workers, bosses and clients set us up for the confrontations we try hard to
avoid. We perceive them as negative, and reluctant to embrace them as opportunities for
course-corrections in our lives, careers and values.
Since our responses are the imprinting of those already-learned behaviors to avoid,
accommodate, challenge or resist, isn’t it time to inventory our “already-always”
automatic grade school responses and upgrade them to leadership actions? Bailey went
on to inquire if confrontations and related conflict models are avoidable? His answer was
that negotiating agreements up front make the difference and will help eliminate the
confrontations we currently resist having. He says “disclosure of values” and “discovery
of internal priorities” are key to the formation of great agreements. With those in place,
the breakdowns and problems that often precede confrontations are diminished, thus the
anxiety associated with them.
In The Influencer, its authors remind us, “we are never not influencing.” Therefore we
must ask ourselves, in the face of failure and success, breakdowns and breakthroughs:
• What did I do or not do to make that happen or not happen?
• Which of my values and principles have I allowed others to violate without a challenge?
• Do my actions speak louder than my words and are they consistent with my values?
• Am I aware of who and what has influenced me and how that has affected my actions?
Our awareness of Baily’s assertion regarding childhood confrontation imprinting plus our
answers to those questions above begins to alter our perception of the status-quo
environment where current confrontations live. When we include certainty into our
agreements our communications are elevated to higher levels of accountability. It is in
these moments, we come to appreciate the words we use, when spoken by another, might
have very different meanings. As leaders, we begin to realize how and what we think is
different from another leader yet we tend to sound the same. Confronting our differences
when we sound alike takes practice.

3/31/08 5
This renewed appreciation for our differences is key when making agreements and setting
up ladders of responsibility and cultures of accountability. It is this up-front attention to
details that is needed if we are to design and manage healthy associations. Making this
happen requires alignment and integration of people’s characteristics, empowerment of
diverse decision-making models, and awareness of the internal process we use to select
our priorities.
What have extraordinary associations learned that the rest of us need to emulate? Invest
in your volunteer leadership and staff. Schedule orientations, development opportunities
and leadership activities that go way beyond a policy manual review or a power point HR
instruction. Just because modern man has a large vocabulary, does not mean we are
skilled in thoughtful communication.
Clear Agreements Work—Indirect Ones Do Not
Whether it is Board members, volunteers, the CSO or general staff members, making and
keeping one’s agreements just might be the key to eliminating the need for most
confrontations. Especially the ones where someone didn’t do what was promised on time
and within budget. Even Board breakdowns about the future direction of the organization
come under this language umbrella.
Stephen Covey, Principles-Centered Leadership, advises, “Delegating effectively takes
emotional courage as we allow, to one degree or another, others to make mistakes on our
time, money, and good name. This courage consists of patience, self-control, faith in the
potential of others, and respect for individual differences. Effective delegation must be
two-way: responsibility given, respect received.”1
Warren Bennis, Learning to Lead, proposes, “Whether you are planning a novel or a
corporate reorganization, you need to know where you begin and where you want to end
up. Mountain climbers start climbing from the bottom of the mountain, but they look at
where they want to go and work backward to their starting point. Like a mountain
climber, once you have the summit in view, you can figure out all the ways you might get
there. Then you play with those choices—altering, connecting, compromising, revising
and imaging—finally choosing one or two routes. 2
It is our ill-conceived agreements that demand confrontations. As necessary course
corrections, they ensure our organization’s best path into the future. Embracing the art
and science of confrontations, practicing the creation of clear direct agreements,
delegation and communication, thwarts the headlock the status quo has on our thinking.
In That’s Not What I Meant!, Deborah Tannen warns of the consequences for
indirectness over purposeful communication When making agreements and delegating
roles and responsibilities, that casualness can be deadly. We misunderstand our need for
“saving face”. We act as if “indirectness” in our communications will protect us from
1
Pg 127
2
Pg 153

3/31/08 6
failures, rejections or refusal. Rather, our commitments need to go “on the record” and
not be dealt with indirectly either in action or word. Indirectness in communication, in
making and accepting agreements, contributes to the eventually need to confront some
conflicting circumstance. Indirect casual agreements create the negative circumstance we
have too often called confrontations.
Rather, indirectness is a breach of integrity that most certainly will lead to the need for
confrontation. We have all done it—asked an indirect question to save face with the real
one still hidden in the background and never asked. Not a good set up for honoring
agreements. First it’s the obvious ones—deadlines are missed; meetings not beginning or
ending on time; resources are not shared as needed; and performance reviews and
evaluations are delayed or left incomplete. Then it escalates— inappropriate use of
resources (money, influence, time, reputation, relationships, etc) and the disregard of
roles, responsibilities as the final breakdown of agreements. Warning: where even you
are casual, you will be become its causality.
“Within a culture of win, not lose, in order to maintain control, avoid embarrassment and
stay rational and in control…In order to avoid embarrassment and discomfort, we may
avoid or abdicate responsibility, not discuss the situation and gossip to others about the
situation.3
” This is the scenario Roger Martin reports in the Responsibility Virus. All that
just to save face, for what? Avoiding the giving of one’s word and keeping it!
Our organizations need us (volunteer leaders and staff) to do better. Often we do but
more practice is needed in both making appropriate agreements and keeping them if we
are ever going to shift to valuing the course-corrections confrontations can provide.
Again, the consequence of casual agreements and indirect communications points to the
need for a confrontation to clean up the mess. Why not create clean agreements,
communicated directly from the start?
Luckily in Deadline Busting, Drs. Laurie and Jeffrey Ford, offer practices we can all
follow. Since people too often say Yes but do No, knowing which is which is critical.
Working through these eleven questions on the front-end of volunteer and staff planning
just might allow for fewer breakdowns and the need for confrontations on the back end!
They offer several clues and cues:
1. Are you being too optimistic about the skills, resources, and time needed and not
realizing it?
2. Do we account for procrastination? It comes in many flavors—slow starter; immediate
starter but gets interrupted often; late to begin effort and many more.
3. Will the work get planned in “vague time” without actual scheduling time for results?
4. Do we account for unplanned stuff to alter the schedule/plan? It always does.
5. Do you have the right stuff—resources, skills, information, support and people?
6. Do people know (or bother to find out) what is actually supposed to be delivered?
7. Do we even realize some people will decide not to do what is promised? Some
deliberately so.
3
Pg 229

3/31/08 7
8. Are we aware that others will not ask for help but obviously needed to? Is it safe for
them to ask?
9. Who are the ones that never say No? It is part of the “I-can-do-everything” mindset of
some organizational cultures that needs to be retired.
10. Who acts like deadlines don’t matter? Why does the culture, volunteer and staff,
tolerate that? Would they rather suffer than confront the situation?
11. How do you know which people have unspoken differing interpretations of the
effort’s priority and value?4
Workability Is Confrontation’s Best Friend
What do great PR people know? Get out ahead of the issue before it is uncontrollable. Be
in action not reaction. Create a self-grading system to increase organizational awareness
of anything out-of-rhythm, look for people out of communication and deadlines missed.
It starts as a low level disturbance but if left unchecked, it becomes a deafening noise.
Pay attention to the timing of the circumstance, the frequency, how it occurs and the
consequences created by it. The idea is to interrupt bad performance and relationship
habits before they harm the organization’s values and results. Being casual about minor
disruptions only gives permission for huge breakdowns to occur.
In Principles-Centered Leadership, Stephen Covey talks about compassionate
confrontation—acknowledging error, mistakes and the need for us to make “course
corrections” in a context of genuine care, concern, and warmth, make it safe to risk. 5
He also advises us to pay attention to chronic conflict—the relationship between
organizational control over self-supervision. It occurs on the continuum between the
perception of maintaining the over-all integrity and direction of a project and its
continuity within the organization and self as demonstrated by autonomy. It is rarely an
either-or-situation.
He warns us to note our language models. He advises us to care enough about ourselves
and others involved in our project to confront what is between failure and success. Since
it appears that the alternatives to authentic confrontation are: belittling of others with no
resolution to the dilemma; criticizing others; never uncovering the root cause of the
breakdown; betraying confidences; gossiping about the others involved; and wasting
resources and reputation—confrontation begins to look quite appealing.
Paying attention to agreement breakdowns and addressing them sooner rather than later
takes being proactive to circumstances—being willing and able to respond. It is the root
of responsibility. This is a practice in leadership action and expression. During any
confrontational event, watch out for “Yeah Buts”. It is a clue that failed promises and
missed expectations, at the genesis of the confrontation, may not be fully revealed. There
is still a misunderstanding about what is expected and what actually happened.
4
Pg 12-20
5
Pg 108

3/31/08 8
When we view it in that way, ignoring and resisting confrontations make less and less
sense. As a breach of contract (perceived or actual), acting to resolve the situation and get
back on track seems obvious. Solutions are reached when the parties involved are
sufficiently motivated and enabled to act on the breach. Properly handled, problems are
resolved, the mistakes-made teach vital lessons that solidify future relationships.
This is exactly what Max De Pre, Leadership is an Art, is talking about when he says,
“communication both educates and liberates…To do work, we must learn (be educated)
what we expect of each other, where it fits, and what is the common vision. Then we are
freed up (liberated) to do our work better and fulfill our roles, responsibilities and
goals.”6
Confrontations are both educational and liberating for all involved. They are
desirable transition moments in an organization’s intention to step out of the status quo
and into tomorrow’s possibilities.
CSO Recommendations
• Staff and Boards may be at odds over desires for low risk and predictability vs.
innovation and flexibility. Respect volunteers as short term change agents and
manage your staff for the long term.
• Have BOD orientations. They are investments in leadership, keeping the
organization’s story of results and development alive. Model commitment to
continuous improvement through open communication.
• Be mindful of the volunteer refugees who are frustrated elsewhere in life and come
to volunteerism for attention and fulfillment, needing to prove self worth and
value.
• Educate and orient staff and volunteer leaders to have an understanding and
appreciation of association management as a professional career.
• Be willing to seek council from peers along the confrontation path.
• Define, in advance, your outcome(s) for success and what you want the
relationship to be at the end for the confrontation.
• Get to know yourself better in order to be an instrument of change, know your
ego’s needs vs. those of your BOD and staff.
• Ask the tough questions before the job is started or the initiative is launched. While
asking certain questions may seem risky, not asking them is riskier. Ask questions
that invoke, evoke and provoke authentic and necessary responses.
• Be clear what you are asking for and what promises you are asking others to keep.
• The more self-aware one is of what you and others are promising the less
confrontations occur.
• Make public the “Conditions of Satisfaction”, set criteria for ownership and outline
responsibility.
• Develop your emotional intelligence. Gain self-understanding for what causes
negative emotions, behaviors and attitudes. They constrain and misdirect
productivity, results and relationships.
• Trust allows for mistakes to be made and lessons to be learned, working together
for a solution.
• Everyone has something valuable to add when operating from partnership,
6
Pg 93-94

3/31/08 9
Pay attention—do not allow your partners to go out of communication.
• Clarify what generates great BOD and CSO performance. Have public agreements
on what that is, what it looks and sounds like, how it will be measured and the
difference all this makes to the organization’s success.
Conclusion
Your organization is alive with successes achieved and mistakes made. What matters are
the lessons being learned from both. Confronting which is which and why they each
occur keeps your organization vibrant and vital. Knowing the purpose for engaging in the
confrontation—its intention, desired results, outcomes and the difference to be made—
are critical. Confrontations are learning opportunities immediately involved as well as
upgrading opportunities for the organizational cultural. Keeping your organization
flexible, not casual, occurs in the language used to model commitment, delegate roles and
responsibilities, resolve difference, and come face-to-face with breakdowns.
Confrontation is not a dirty word.
Inquiry for Board, CSO, volunteers and staff
1. Moses, Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Abe Lincoln and Martin L. King all lived through
classic confrontations, each learning to model new behaviors. Create your own
“10 Commandments” for ethics, integrity and relationship on the job. Match each
with the necessary behavior to model and specify those to be retired.
2. What is the organizational process for creating and fulfilling agreements? How is
your status of these agreements? How is “partnership” in communication
practiced? What is your process for learning lessons from the mistakes made?
3. Plato said, “A society cultivates whatever is honored there”. Are confrontations
what you, your staff and Board honor? Is avoidance honored more than promises
kept and broken agreements resolved? What performance and relationship
behaviors are honored?
4. If you were inventing a poster to capture confrontation as a value, much like the
HR lithographs for integrity or success, what would be the compelling visual
image and its accompanying text?

3/31/08 10
References
1.Critical Confrontations—Kerry Paterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al
Switzler (2005), McGraw-Hill
2.Deadline Busting, How to be a “Star performer” in Your Organization—Laurie
Ford, PhD & Jeffrey Ford, PhD (2005), iUniverse, Inc.
3.How the Way You Talk Changes the Way You Work—Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow
Lahey ((2001) Jossey-Bass
4.Influencer, The Poser to Change Anything—Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David
Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler (2007) Magraw-Hill
5. Leadership is an Art—Max De Pree (1987) Doubleday
6. Learning to Lead, A Workbook on Becoming a Leader—Warren Bennis, Joan
Goldsmith (1997) Addison-Wesley
7. Managing By Influence—Kenneth Schatz and Linda Schatz (1986), Prentice-Hall,
Inc.
8. Managing Transitions, Making the Most of Change—William Bridges (1991),
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
9. Principled-Centered Leadership—Stephen Covey (1992) Simon & Schuster
10. Six Thinking Hats—Edward DeBono, (1985), Key Porter Books Ltd.
11. Spiral Dynamics, mastering values, leadership and change—Don Edward Beck,
Christopher C. Cowan (1996) Blackwell Publishers
12. That’s Not What I Meant…How Conversations Style makes or Breaks
Relationships—Deborah Tanner, (1986), Ballantine Books
13. The 7-Habilts of Highly Effective People—Stephen Covey, (1990), Simon &
Schuster
14. The Extraordinary CEO—Doug Edie (1999), ASAE
15. The Forgotten Half of Change—Luc De Brabandere (2007) Dearborn Trade
Publishing
16. The Responsibility Virus—Roger Martin (2002), Basic Books
17. Using Conflict & Negotiation for Mutual Advantage, James Bailey, Ph.D.
(2007), speech
CSO Interviews
Michael Benjamin, M.P.H., CAE, Executive Director, FCCLA|
Virgil Carter, Executive Director, ASME
Jackie Eder-Van Hook, MSOD, Transition Management Consulting, Inc.
Susan Gorin, CAE, Executive Director, NASP
Tom Gorski, CAE
David Lorms, CAE, Principal, Core Concept Solutions, LLC
Cynthia Mills, CAE, CMC, President & CEO, TCIA
Rhea Blanken Results Technology, Inc.
Strategic Facilitator, Organizational Innovator and Creativity Guru
She can be reached at rheaz@resultstech.com

Confrontation is Not a Dirty Word

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Tendances

Tendances (19)

En vedette

En vedette (19)

Similaire à Confrontation is Not a Dirty Word

Similaire à Confrontation is Not a Dirty Word (19)

Confrontation is Not a Dirty Word