Conflict is highly motivating to people. Most people who find themselves
in conflict are highly motivated to resolve (or get out of) it.
Therefore, as a change management catalyst (that's what my consulting work
is), I often find it necessary to create or heighten the feeling of
conflict in order to get any change at all to happen.
As you point out, however, while some (much) conflict is negative, there
is also positive conflict. I describe the general case of positive
conflict in this way:
You discover that you can be better off doing something different than
doing what you're doing now.
The trick is, because most people expect so much "pain" from changing,
that the expectation of positive results must be great enough to overcome
the expected the pain of changing. And the discomfort (conflict) from
knowing that you could be better off must be enough to counterbalance the
comfort you feel in continuing to do things the same way.
That's why, and I ask to be forgiven for this, it's sometimes easier to
"catastrophize" the current situation -- make it feel like a disaster is
looming -- in order to get people to consider changing something. And I
do resort to this technique. I don't lie about how bad the current
situation is (or will be in the future), but I do things to make people
experience this negative conflict more personally and more strongly.
--"John W. Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>