Human nature teaches us to avoid conflict. Natural law (God) teaches us that conflict is a necessary part of life and can bring us closer to God.
Consider the following study conducted by Boulding in 1964 on conflict.
Boulding brought together managers from across multiple industries—forming them into teams and telling them that their problem-solving techniques would be analyzed. What Boulding didn’t tell these managers, however, was that a “devil’s advocate” or critic would be planted in half of the teams. The critic’s role was to challenge the team’s solutions, and push them to consider additional ideas throughout their problem-solving process.
What Boulding discovered, was that the teams having a devil’s advocate all performed significantly better in their tasks, and produced multiple options for successfully solving a problem.
Then, halfway through the experiment, Boulding allowed each team to expel one member. Every team having a devil’s advocate chose to expel that critic.
Boulding then observed that the quality of those teams’ analysis and problem-solving abilities rapidly declined. Boulding concluded that, ironically, the highest-performing teams ended up eliminating their competitive advantage—because they didn’t like how the critic’s comments made them feel.
Intellectually, it is easy for many of us to buy into the idea that competition and confrontation can indeed cause others to perform better, and can spark creativity within an organization—but on a personal level,we don’t like how conflict feels.
Being willing to take, and learn from, criticism is an important skill in becoming an effective leader and communicator.
God places before us a constant stream of conflict to temper our capabilities and mold them into God-like characteristics.