Workplace conflict is a good thing. A very good thing. Your workplace or your business would be sunk without it.

Sure, it’s easy to name the problems with workplace conflict. Like the peel of a ripe banana, the problems are what you see first, in a color you can’t miss. Bite in and the taste won’t soon leave your memory. Yet if you peel back the outside layer of a conflict, you’ll find the sweet fruit of a vibrant organizational future.

Workplace conflict is full of benefits if you allow yourself to see and choose them:

Differences create better decisions. Synergistic organizations know how to capitalize on workplace conflicts so that differences get air time and careful consideration, leading to better thinking and stronger decisions.

Conflict and creativity are yin and yang. Your organization needs both to maintain a balance and each flows to and from the other, complementary and opposing pieces of the whole. Just take a look at some of the greatest art ever made.

Conflict leads to learning. It teaches you more about yourself. It invites you to open yourself to another way of looking at the world, just as your teachers have invited. It even makes you stronger sometimes.

Conflict creates engagement. What’s the one of the first things you learn in creative writing 101? There has to be a conflict to draw in the reader. Conflict piques your curiosity, gets your attention, can even make you feel really alive.

You choose how you view conflict. Why not choose the view that engages people, fosters creativity, and builds synergy? Why not choose the fruit instead of the peel?

Copyright © 2007 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.