In the workplace, you will likely find personalities that seem to go out of there way to engage in conflict, and those that will try to avoid it at all costs.
If you’re the type that tries to avoid conflict – and if you’re a manager or team lead – you will at some point need to face this fear. Some people are able to navigate this better than others, but generally those that struggle with this tendency to avoid conflict have to effort through it in some way and it’s certainly not a comfortable experience.
The ego dynamic at play here can be called “avoiding conflict at all costs” or “comfort at all costs.”
For those of you who don’t have this ego dynamic at the forefront of your inner experience, you may not know the terror that this ego dynamic inflicts on those who are caught in it. This dynamic is near and dear to my heart because this is a core issue I’ve dealt with my entire life.
The difficulty that arises here is that in your ego structure, or ego template, has developed in a way where conflict is unsafe.
This belief is formed from the repeated imprinting of our early environment (family, culture, etc.), especially if that environment was experienced as aggressive, filled with anger, loudness, or having some abuse of power that you experienced as dangerous. Most of us as children are incredibly sensitive, and we are heavily imprinted by experiences that create a fear response in us.
You can see how this can lead to a patterning of trying to be invisible in order to remain safe, so we learn early on to:
· “Be nice.”
· “Don’t rock the boat.”
· “Keep your head down.”
· “Don’t create any conflict.”
So the ego template that forms has a heavy dynamic of deferring power to authority and abandoning our own.
You can typically see this in workplaces and teams as the individuals who prefer to sit on the edges of meetings and have difficulty engaging, because they don’t want their opinions to be challenged (which may lead to conflict) or they don’t want their opinions to seem like they are challenging others (which may also lead to conflict).
A subtle wrinkle to this dynamic is that besides avoiding conflict, the ego will start to believe that it actually does not matter – your contribution doesn’t matter, you opinion doesn’t matter, your presence itself doesn’t matter. And this can come again from the repeated imprinting of our early environment:
· Repeatedly being dismissed.
· Repeatedly having your experience not being validated.
· Repeatedly experiencing others brushing aside your feelings about things.
· Repeatedly being put down if you spoke up or challenged how things were.
Because of this core belief, we end up just going along with stuff that we don’t want to go along with if we were actually acknowledging that what we want is important.
The Cost of Comfort
Obviously, the upside to this ego dynamic is that those who are constricted by this ego dynamic are often well-liked because they are easy to get along with, generally go with the flow, and are viewed as team players.
Our conventional view in our work culture generally looks at “nice people” as a good trait, but the ego pattern of disappearing and withdrawing is actually quite subversive and ultimately keeps us from being fully engaged at work.
The cost of comfort or “non-conflict” can be high, both for the manager, the individual, and the team.
As a manager caught in this dynamic, you may:
· Not address issues directly or at all
· Not feel like you have the “right” to lead and end up being nice to everyone but not necessarily moving the team forward
· Not be able to manage up and influence more senior leaders
As an individual caught in this dynamic, you may:
· Feel like advancement is problematic at more senior levels, when your perspective and opinion is required
· Not be effective at advocating for yourself or others
· Not feel comfortable managing client engagements and inevitable conflicts
· Get caught up in busywork but avoid real, significant initiatives
· Not be able to effectively voice your thoughts and opinions in meetings
The Keys to Unlock the “Avoid Conflict at All Costs” Trap
I want to make it clear that the ego isn’t bad, and I know it’s easy to think of it as something that we need to free ourselves from. But the view I’m presenting here isn’t that the ego is bad – it’s that it limits us from our full capacity.
And because often we so identified with any particular ego dynamic, we have forgotten what it’s like to function and be in contact with our full capacity. In this case, someone who feels like they have to avoid conflict at all costs may very well think of themselves as unable to be a leader, which is a real shame, because we need leaders of all kinds.
So what are the keys to unlocking this ego dynamic?
People try all sorts of strategies to get back this sense of confidence i.e., the ability to speak up, have their opinion matter, be unapologetic about their presence. Toastmasters. Assertiveness workbooks. Mantras. Hypnosis. I did, too.
They help to a certain degree, but the problem is they don’t get to the root of the issue, which is our EGO TEMPLATE. Without fully understanding this, you’ll never really feel in contact with your own real sense of mattering on the deepest, most essential level.
Here’s the structure of the ego template that I help people work with through my coaching practice:
1. Inner Critic layer: Keeps you in check, so in this case it keeps you “being nice.” Don’t challenge, don’t rock the boat, you’re going to get slammed, it’s not safe to speak up – these are all internalized messages we learned from our history.
2. Self-Image layer: This is how you view yourself in relationship to others. It’s automatic (until you start becoming conscious of it) i.e., “I’m a nice person and never rock the boat so I get along with everyone. If I deviate from this, people are going to think I’m an a*****e.”
3. Separation layer: This is the way you leave yourself i.e. you tend to dismiss your own feelings, needs, and wants and prioritize others. In the workplace, it is the tendency to not fight or engage in what you think is right, or most effective.
4. Cost of separation: Self-explanatory, but it’s important to see the cost of leaving your authentic self. In this case, you start living for others instead of for yourself. You start putting other agendas above your own. As a manager, you’re unable to feel capable or comfortable with the fact that you need to address interpersonal and client conflicts.
5. Emotional Pain/Essential Wounding: This layer is about the actual experience of the pain or wounding that caused you to leave your natural sense of mattering. This may have been the repeated painful experience of being put down, criticized, neglected, overridden, etc. Unfortunately, we have to come through this layer of pain to reconnect with a direct knowing of our own value and importance (not in an inflated way, but in a real, truthful way).
6. Core Belief: This is what the ego believes, based on the wounding it experienced i.e. “I don’t matter.” When we are able to come into contact with this and see the falseness of it, then we are free to know the fundamental truth that we each matter, and we matter at an essential level that is independent of what anyone else says.
Addressing this Ego Dynamic as a Manager
And as a manager of someone who might be caught in this “avoid conflict at all costs” dynamic, you’ll see the same characteristics or tendencies if you’re able to spot them in yourself. But likely, you aren’t going to be working with them through the deeper layers of this dynamic.
But…you can help them by helping them disengage from the Inner Critic layer and supporting them in speaking up. You can encourage their voice to be heard. You’ll have to proactively create psychological safety for someone who has this primary ego dynamic because they initially will need permission by the authority figure (which is you!).
And this is something that all managers and leads really need to be aware of because it will always happen, which is that your direct reports will inevitably project their ego template onto you. What I mean by this is that in their ego template, they believe that they cannot speak up or voice their opinions or challenge you because they by default think that you will not value their opinion or will put it down somehow, or that it is not okay to challenge anything you say.
This may not be true at all, but if you assume that they do feel safe because you are in fact okay with conflict, challenge, dialogue, etc., you’ll miss out on their full engagement. The fact is that we generally are all walking around with these ego templates that have very specific parameters of what is okay and what is not okay, and it we want to be effective leaders, we need to unlock everyone’s full potential and loosen the grip that these ego dynamics have on us and our teams.
