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Healthy and Unhealthy Conflict
April 28, 2003
"The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born."
�"W.R. Inge
HEALTHY AND UNHEALTHY
CONFLICT
Twenty years ago, Robert Townsend, writing in Further Up the Organization:
How to Stop Management from Stifling People and Strangling Productivity
(New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1984), observed that conflict within
an organization is healthy. . .up to a point:
"A good manager doesn't try to eliminate conflict; he tries to keep it
from wasting the energies of his people. Conviction is a flame that must
burn itself out�"in trying an idea or fighting for a chance to try it. If
bottled up inside, it will eat a person's heart away. If you're the boss and
your people fight openly when they think you're wrong�"that's healthy. If
your people fight each other openly in your presence for what they believe in�"that's
healthy. But keep all the conflict eyeball to eyeball."
For ideas on dealing with conflict in early childhood settings, go to the Exchange Article Archives at https://secure.ccie.com/catalog/cciecatalog.php?cPath=50 and type in the keyword "conflict" in the search tool.
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