Canton on Emergency Management: November 2022

Solution Businesswoman hand stopping the domino wooden effect concept for business. conflict management stock pictures, royalty-free photos & images One of the most important leadership practices required of an emergency manager is the need to inspire a shared vision. Our principal job is bringing disparate agencies and groups together to achieve a common goal. However, each agency or group has its own set of priorities and operating culture that are sometimes at odds with what we’re trying to achieve. This inevitably leads to conflict. Unfortunately, conflict management is a skill often neglected in emergency management curricula.

Conflict is not inherently bad. Indeed, it is an important part of the planning process. We solve problems by being open to alternative approaches and understanding different perspectives. However, when conflict descends into an us-versus-them situation, it can have dire consequences and lead to a complete stalemate.

In her recent book, High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, journalist Amanda Ripley identifies high conflict as “a conflict that becomes self-perpetuating and all-consuming, in which almost everyone ends up worse off.” Such a conflict is generally binary; that is, it forces participants to choose one side or another and cuts off any consideration of alternative courses of action. In many cases, the original cause of the conflict is subsumed by larger emotional issues.

A key point to keep in mind is that both sides claim the moral high ground. In The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy academic and political commentator Thomas Sowell makes this point, showing how disagreement is viewed not only as wrong but morally reprehensible. In one example, he shows how the War on Poverty of the Johnson administration was conceived at a time when poverty in the United States was declining and against the advice of experts who pointed out that the proposed program would increase poverty. When the program was assessed in later years and the experts were proven right, those that spoke out were pilloried as morally bankrupt for not acknowledging the many people who had been provided financial assistance under the program, even though the goal of the program was never achieved.

Ripley notes that there are many factors that exacerbate high conflict. Some are internal, such as confirmation bias and group identities. Others are external, such as humiliation, corruption, and conflict entrepreneurs who seek to benefit from the crisis. This makes diffusing high conflict particularly difficult. The key seems to be understanding what Ripley calls the “understory”, the issue behind the conflict. This means understanding not just the original cause of the conflict but the reason why that cause was important.

After a series of hotel fires in San Francisco, we pulled together a planning team to address how we could improve our response. We realized quickly that we would also need to consider mitigation and recovery issues rather than focusing solely on response. As part of mitigation, our fire marshal offered to conduct on-site fire prevention classes at each residential hotel. This was opposed by local homeless advocacy groups on the basis that residents would not come to hear the classes. Instead, they proposed that they hire one of the residents on a small stipend to encourage attendance and provide pizza at each class as a draw. The city agencies felt this was a ploy to obtain additional funding for advocacy programs, a belief that I shared. However, with hindsight, I believe the real issue was not the funding, which was minor in terms of the money already being provided to the advocacy groups, but rather community visibility, an issue with which the groups were constantly contending. We did resolve the issue amicably, but had we had this understanding at the time it would have saved us a lot of time and effort.

Understanding the understory requires listening to the other side. This is not just giving the appearance of listening but hearing what is being said and feeding it back to the speaker in a way that lets them know they have been heard. It sounds simple but it is decidedly not. It takes training and practice. As I mentioned earlier, this is an area in which many of us have received little or no training. However, the ability to manage conflict and, particularly in the current political environment, to defuse high conflict is an essential skill for emergency managers and one we should be emphasizing.

Canton on Emergency Management

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November 2022

11/29/2022

Conflict Management: A Neglected Skill

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