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In view of the breaking news of the MakerDAO turmoil, I wanted to talk a bit about conflicts. <thread>
1/ Not many know that I have a degree in Conflict Facilitation and Organizational Change from @ProcessWorkPDX. Disclaimer: I was a terrible student, and subsequently decided not to take this as my profession. But this education informs everything I do in Blockchain and crypto.
2/ Considering how frequent conflict is, and how devastating it could be to organizations and projects, I have always marveled why it is so hard for professional conflict facilitators to find engagements.
3/ The problem is the misconceptions people have about conflict and conflict work. Our instincts and intuition about conflict are informed by rather bad histories. We often believe that having an authentic conversation is dangerous and may put us at a disadvantage.
4/ But the truth is really quite the opposite. Enduring the pain of dialog and authentically trying to understand the opposite side of the conflict not only leads to the reduction of hostility, it often informs us about things we need to understand in order to be successful.
5/ Let’s talk a bit about what conflict is. Counterintutively, a difference of opinion is not a conflict. We have all had experience of working with someone who disagrees with us quite peacefully and productively.
6/ Conflict almost inevitably points back to the topic of power and leadership. Every conflict I have ever seen in crypto-related teams exposes a duality between personal and collective power.
7/ This is inevitable, because leadership is a coordination technology, yet we are ostensibly building leaderless systems. This is what the @MakerDAO situation is about.
8/ A good conflict facilitator, were they to work with a conflict of this kind, would first fully expose our attitudes towards power and leadership. This would happen in one-on-one interviews with the team.
9/ Then, the facilitator would bring the group together and subtly encourage sharing, while holding a strong container to ensure that people feel safe.
10/ The result of this dialog is usually a deepening of the understanding on part of the team members of each other’s emotional needs and a shift in the overall atmosphere of the team.
11/ Essentially, people become more productive and less adversary because they both understand others better and feel better understood.
12/ Now, once the conflict gets out of hand, it usually involves lawyers and a strong restriction on communication. At this stage it is often too late to do anything, sadly.
13/ The work has to start long before then. If the first signs of anyone in the team feeling emotional strain a professional facilitator is engaged, the team can avoid a breakdown.
14/ If the facilitator is simply present from the start, say a monthly session with the whole team, the team will avoid many dynamics that lead to decohesion and loss of productivity.
15/ In my humble view, literally every team working on decentralization MUST do this. In my humble view, this work reduces chances of failure due to conflict by an order of magnitude. In my humble view, this should be a requirement before the team could get investor money.
16/ PM me if you need recommendations of good facilitators.
