Using Conflict to Your Advantage

How can education leaders take advantage of the conflict that often accompanies change to garner even more support for their efforts from those who are disgruntled? The Washington State School Directors Association offers the following techniques for resolving conflict and working with pressure groups:

• Meet conflict straight on
• Set goals
• Plan for frequent communications
• Be honest about concerns
• Agree to disagree - understand healthy disagreement should build
• Make better decisions
• Eliminate individual ego from management style
• Empower your team to create - people will support what they help create
• Conduct discussion of differences in values
• Stress the importance of adhering to policy
• Communicate honestly - avoid playing "gotcha" games
• Provide more data and information than is needed
• Develop a sound management system.

Pressure Groups: Turning Groans Into Grins

Pressure group tools are persuasion, pressure, protests, politics and the press. Yours are anticipation, communication and accommodation. Here's how each can work for you.

Anticipation: preparing ahead

• Review your school board policies to be certain they are in place before you need them.
• Conduct formal or informal opinion polls of your staff and community to determine feelings on various issues and communicate the results.
• Give advance public notice on controversial agenda items. When dealing with items that are likely to elicit a great deal of community interest, it is best to set aside a period for public comment before the board is expected to take action.
• Solicit ideas from your community on a continuing basis. If a pressure group represents a large portion of the community, it may well have a significant effect on policies or programs. If is has little support, or
• If its demands are detrimental for education, bringing to light other opinions in the community will help to point this out.
• Always try to work with people who have a complaint. Pressure groups sometimes form as coalitions of people who are unhappy about a variety of issues.
• Do a profile on your district to identify possible pressure groups.
• Analyze where the district has a "presence" and where it does not.
• Send school board minutes and materials to organization presidents.
• Train your school board on how to handle confrontative meetings and situations before they need it.
• Maintain an open door....and ear.

Communication: recognizing they won't go away

• Involve members of special interest groups on study and planning committees. Research shows that negative people do not sway the balance of a committee, but involvement sometimes brings them to a more objective or positive view.
• Take care not to stimulate additional grievances by appearing to be rigid, non-communicative, uninterested or insensitive to the pressure group's goals.
• Try to remain emotionally unattached.
• Avoid getting into a public debate with pressure group representatives.
• Listen to what they have to say and use a reasoned, factual style for your reply.

Accommodation: emphasizing the positive

• Sometimes it might seem impossible, but pressure groups have the potential of becoming very important school supporters.
• Search for a common denominator. Try to reach agreement on some things and exploit those areas of agreement. This will help you keep lines of communication open.
• Stop thinking of these groups as totally adversarial. Recognize that they are simply using the techniques they know best to put their viewpoints and preferences across.
• Don't let communication be severed. Keep talking and listening.
• Clear the air. Eliminate myths or incorrect assumptions.
• Be willing to give a little on minor points so you can stand firm on the important ones.
• Make your decision, but continue to listen. Make allowances for valid concerns and ideas missed in the initial process.
• Keep in touch with pressure group leaders. You might even want to see if they would like to be on your Key Communicators list.

In this Module:

In the Toolkit: