Conflict Won't Wait

If you don’t have health insurance, what happens if you get sick or injured? If you don’t have car insurance, what happens if you get in an accident?

Health problems and car accidents may or may not happen, but I know something that has a 100% chance of happening in every relationship.

Conflict!

Conflict is a part of every relationship there is; marriage, family, friendships, work, church, business, organizations, and of course sports. Conflict is inevitable when two or more humans approach a relationship with their own unique thoughts, experiences, goals, attitudes, desires and views, and attempt to mesh them and move happily forward together. Since no two humans are exactly the same, conflict is inevitable.

Conflict is a vital tool if it is managed successfully. This is surprising to some who think of conflict only in negative terms. Conflict is a skillset that opens communication, increases trust, reinforces goals, clarifies expectations, corrects mistakes, and builds the relationships needed to reach the highest levels of the purpose of the relationship. You cannot be your best without successfully managed conflict.

Mismanaged conflict always damages or destroys. Even small, often overlooked conflicts, will erode confidence, decrease trust, block communication, muddy goals, reduce expectations, diminish motivation, increase mistakes, and damage the relationship. Small mismanaged conflicts also tend to pile up, building upon each other.

Many try to avoid conflict. Avoided conflict is still conflict and is actually the same as mismanaged conflict. Avoided conflict does not go away. At best it causes the same damage described above. At worst it grows into something far bigger and much more damaging than it was when it was first ignored.

In terms of sports this means that all the money and time you prioritize for training, treatment, coaching, technique, strategy, mindset, nutrition, recovery, facilities, equipment and more…every dollar and every second you’ve invested for weeks, months, even years, can literally go up in smoke because of one mismanaged conflict, or can be exponentially reduced over time by a series of mismanaged conflicts. Conflict management should be a priority, as important as any other aspect of time and money investment in sports.

Very few people, especially in the world of sports, have any knowledge or skillset in conflict management.

I get it. When I was coaching there really was no formal awareness of the impact of conflict, much less anyone offering the skillset needed to manage it. So for most of my career I was unaware of the full importance and impact of conflict or what anyone could do about it.

Further, there were the big issues of time and money. I was already coaching 60-80 hour weeks, providing my teams with the best gear, equipment, innovation, training, competitions, sports psychology, nutrition, strength, and more. We did regular community service and mission trips on top of it all. My teams were stretched to the limits. In my case, time was a much bigger deal than money, especially with championships to prepare for.

What I know now is, the championships won’t matter if conflict derails the goals, time and money that have been invested to secure the best result possible. Conflict trumps all the time and money invested in everything else.

And while my programs achieved things everyone previously thought impossible, we still fell short. We almost always seemed to miss out on what we could fully be, and the reason for falling short was conflict that almost invisibly, insidiously, put limits on our success.

I know it is hard to find time for anything else when time is at a premium and you are already committing to so much. But conflict management skills may be the most important skillset any human can have. This skillset determines the value and impact of every other skillset.

Conflict management skills are like insurance, except with insurance you hope you won’t ever have to use it. You will use conflict skills all the time. The more you learn and use them, the more confident and competent you will be. You will be able to turn conflict into a competitive advantage. The sooner you gain these skills, the sooner you can unleash that superpower.

Visit Sports Conflict Lab today for Conflict Management Resources and to Pre-Order the book "Managing Sports Conflict: Five Tools to Master Conflict"

Bill Taylor

Founder, Author and Conflict Expert

Sports Conflict Lab 

www.SportsConflictLab.com