Conflict-competent leadership

Disagreement is inevitable. How can school leaders use it to bring about positive change?

Even though many want to believe that schools follow the motto of the Three Musketeers — “All for one, and one for all” — that level of camaraderie is often elusive. Indeed, dispute is common among every combination of relationships in a school community: parents vs. teachers, teachers vs. teachers, teachers vs. building administrators, building administrators vs. central office, and central office vs. school boards. On top of that, the tensions of these polarized times are reaching into schools, leaving education leaders caught between opposing points of view regarding such issues as standardized testing, racial and economic inequity, and appropriate topics for school curricula.

For all of these reasons, conflict management is one of the most stressful and frustrating bullet points in a school leader’s job description, yet the subject is rarely examined in graduate-level leadership preparation programs or in-service professional development. Studies have found leaders spend 20-40% of the workday careening from one conflict to the next (Chan, Huang, & Ng, 2007; Johnson, 2003). As longtime building and central office administrators, we found that dealing with conflict was a recurring theme when our colleagues shared complaints about the job. It’s not what school leaders signed up for, and they were never taught the necessary conflict resolution skills.

Conflict can result in unsustainable levels of stress, a palpably toxic work environment, and knee-jerk resistance to change. We believe these factors have contributed to an exodus of school principals (Superville, 2023) and superintendents (Morton & Valley, 2022; White, Evans, & Malin, 2023). A recent RAND Corporation research report found 16% of U.S. principals retired or resigned in 2021-22, more than double the rate of the previous year (DiLiberti & Schwartz, 2023). According to the study, the attrition rate is attributable to “high levels of job-related stress” (p. 10). Superintendents do not fare much better. RAND calculated that the superintendent attrition rate the same year was 14% (DiLiberti & Schwartz, 2022). In a letter to the editor published in Education Week, a principal succinctly captured the feeling: “We’re not OK” (Meade, 2022).

Without adequate preparation, leaders who do decide to stay often adopt either an aggressive or avoidant response to dissension. Aggressive leaders manipulate institutional rewards and punishments (e.g., withholding or bestowing preferential teaching assignments and schedules; unfairly conferring superior employee evaluations) to coerce compliance with their favored goals. Avoidant leaders might refer thorny questions to committees that seem to endlessly meet with no useful conclusion. Or they might address only “low-hanging fruit,” restricting solutions to the most inconsequential and underwhelming options. A classic example is the school that decided a bulletin board and assembly for Black History Month was sufficient for addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion.

When leaders feel unequipped to manage deep discord, they may avoid intervening in consequential issues, such as racial and income inequities. Amanda E. Lewis and John B. Diamond (2015) chronicled this phenomenon in a case study of a Chicago-area high school. In one interview after another, students, parents, teachers, school and district leaders, and the board of education recognized the prevalence of egregious racial and income disparities in some of their programs, but they feared the disruptive dissent that would follow if they took action. So they chose the path of least resistance.

The need for conflict-resolution training

In our presentations to education leaders at state and national conferences, we regularly ask whether participants ever attended a class or a workshop on conflict resolution. The response is invariably all hands down. And yet the fields of business, organizational psychology, and peace studies offer a wealth of knowledge on how to manage conflict. In fact, contrary to the misplaced conception of dissent as a sign of failure, the literature depicts conflict as normal and potentially beneficial. When school leaders skillfully address conflict, positive outcomes include a deeper understanding of complex issues, growth of collaborative problem-solving skills, a renewed school culture more accommodating of change, and a healthier and less stressful work environment.

Dispute doesn’t need to be disastrous if prospective and practicing school leaders learn to embed constructive conflict-resolution practices in their school culture. Just as regular exercise tones arm and leg muscles, regularly practicing “conflict-agility” skills conditions school leaders to leverage conflict as a means to school improvement.

The following conflict-resolution skills can be important additions to leadership certification programs and professional development for practicing administrators. Some of these are habits of mind concerning the way we think about conflict and our reaction to it. Others are institutional structures that facilitate a positive response to conflict.

Keep calm and principal on

The union president rises at a high school faculty meeting to protest “do-nothing” administrators allowing chaos to rein in the hallways. Scanning her inbox, another principal notices the fifth similarly worded email of the day from a parent complaining, “My 3rd-grade child still hasn’t learned to punctuate a sentence.” Both school leaders feel levels of adrenaline and cortisol, the stress hormones, elevating in their bloodstreams. Their bodies involuntarily assume “fight or flight” mode, a useful physiological state when encountering a grizzly bear in the wild, but unproductive when it causes school leaders to react with aggression or avoidance.

Dispute doesn’t need to be disastrous if prospective and practicing school leaders learn to embed constructive conflict-resolution practices in their school culture.

Conflict-management literature suggests that a constructive first response is to “slow down and cool down” (Runde & Flanagan, 2010). Taking a figurative step back and inhaling a deep breath or silently repeating a personal mantra are effective strategies to arrest the stress. When facing a contentious comment in person, we routinely buy ourselves a moment to collect our thoughts by responding with a statement such as, “That’s interesting,” followed by a neutral question (e.g., “That’s interesting. Can you tell us more about that?”) Initially clearing the mind of anger and angst by briefly pausing enables leaders to come up with a more reasonable and helpful reaction.

Accept disagreement as normal. Don’t take it personally.

The misconstrued idyll of a conflict-free organization gives rise to misleading expectations and a fraught relationship with dissent. But conflict is, in fact, inevitable in schools. People’s values vary, stakeholders must vie for a school’s limited resources, education has no universal standard of care, parents and teachers both have cause to believe they know what’s best for a child, and change inevitably brings resistance. A wise colleague once remarked, “Show me a principal beloved by all, and I’ll show you a principal who hasn’t attempted anything difficult.”

Conflict is normal and not actually the problem. Difficulty arises when the reaction to conflict is unhealthy. This often begins with the tendency to take the backlash personally. If a union president is being critical at a faculty meeting or a parent is complaining about the 3rd-grade writing curriculum, the danger is to adopt an “us vs. them” mentality and attack these critics’ personalities, competence, and motives. Such antipathy becomes a pattern and leads to a toxic environment. After taking a moment to calm down, the leader’s role should be to direct conversation toward systemic issues (e.g., school climate, the writing curriculum) and away from counterproductive, self-serving personal attacks (e.g., they’re acting out of ulterior motives).

An effective leader should be ready to act as a referee, blowing a proverbial whistle if play digresses from the field of productive ideas. Ideas under discussion may be controversial, but they’re impersonal and less provocative for a group to examine and debate than the motives and actions of specific people or groups. Ideally, wide and deep exploration of ideas leads to an appraisal of systems at the root of a problem. For example, when the union president complains that children are running rampant in the hallways, it’s not helpful to lobby back-and-forth charges that either administrators or teachers are to blame because they’re absent from the hallways. Instead, leaders can redirect meaningful conversation to systems: What is prompting the behavior? To what extent do students feel engaged in the school community? How can we impart exemplary behavior?

Identify assumptions. Engage in inquiry.

A critical function of leadership in times of conflict is to recognize presuppositions. It’s normal for people to try to oversimplify a manifestly complex world, but doing so can lead to misleading thought patterns, called cognitive biases, that limit people’s ability to solve problems underlying conflict. For example, people might limit their options to only two alternatives, neglecting the range of possible solutions, an example of cognitive bias called “false choice.” We see this in the assumption that the response to misbehavior must be either swift and sure punishment or permissive acceptance. In confirmation bias, people seek evidence to affirm their original hypothesis, ignoring information to the contrary. This would show up when a parent sees every punctuation mistake in their child’s work as a sign of neglected skills, even if objective measurement shows their child’s performance is around average for their grade level.

An inquiry approach can help leaders avoid these biases and better understand the issues underlying disputes. Inquiry involves collecting data and examining it for a deeper meaning. Relevant data should include stories, artifacts, and observations from people who are directly impacted, as well as data from more traditional sources, such as objective measures and professional literature (Dugan & Safir, 2021). It can help if leaders pose questions that prompt sustained analysis, such as, “Where and why are we stuck?” Another option is the Five Whys protocol, which involves repeatedly asking “why” until the deeper issues are unveiled, a process metaphorically compared to peeling back an onion.

Expand opportunities for collaborative problem solving.

As groups flex their “conflict agility” muscles, they become more adept practitioners of collaborative problem solving. Building structures and protocols can help groups build these muscles together. When he was a school leader, Seth regularly began the first 10 minutes of faculty meetings with a protocol called “For Good of the Community.” Faculty members could share a community problem, then brainstorm solutions with the group on the spot. As faculty gain experience with the process, they develop confidence and trust in their collective ability to address increasingly complex and thorny issues.

Without structures in place that allow groups to frequently apply conflict-resolution principles and strategies, it’s difficult to imagine how a faculty can develop conflict competence. Aggression and avoidance in response to disputes may occur simply because the school community hasn’t gained enough experience working through differences and its leaders haven’t had the opportunity to facilitate working through conflict.

To advance from conflict to collaboration, an array of well-structured committees charged with exploring vital school community issues is an essential leadership structure. As an example, in schools we led, search committees consisting of parents, teachers, and administrators convened to recommend finalists to fill faculty vacancies. As they reviewed application materials, selected promising candidates, drafted interview questions, conducted interviews, and observed demonstration lessons, they engaged in intense conversations about the characteristics of effective teaching and the school’s short- and long-range hiring needs. Meanwhile, a sense of camaraderie and shared understanding grew, smoothing the path the next time a potentially contentious controversy arose. Another committee to revise the student code of conduct dissected the issue of restorative justice versus swift and sure behavioral consequences. Their 12-person conference table became a safe space to discuss a multifaceted controversy about which participants held strong emotions and to nurture consensus under the guidance of administrators who’d adopted the conflict-competent habits of mind discussed above.

Don’t forget to follow up.

An agreement, once reached, is not guaranteed to last. As Yankee catcher Yogi Berra observed, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Decision-making processes in schools typically end prematurely, without adequate follow-up.

In design thinking, implementing a prototype solution is followed by assessment of the outcome to determine whether modifications are indicated. In our decades in school administration, we’ve seen that this step is routinely neglected. Generally, once a committee launches a new practice or policy, the group disbands, leaving the possibility that their chosen solution won’t work as expected. A design thinking protocol calls for the committee to create criteria for evaluating their solution and to meet periodically to analyze results and adjust as needed.

Ideas under discussion may be controversial, but they’re impersonal and less provocative for a group to examine and debate than the motives and actions of specific people or groups.

These strategies can also be used in parent-teacher conferences. As groups meet to address a child’s lagging academic performance, maladaptive behavior, and other emotionally laden subjects, parents often leave the meetings harboring uncertainty or misgivings. If the strategies suggested in the conferences do not work and there is no feedback loop, these feelings of uncertainty can harden into antipathy. Suggesting, “Let’s check back in a week or two” at the end of a contentious conference can be reassuring.

Whether dealing with faculty or families, leaders should also take time to follow up on the decision-making process itself by asking questions like these: How did you feel about our meetings? Did you feel your voice was heard? To what extent were you satisfied with the outcomes? What could I have done better to facilitate the group? These questions help leaders learn how they can more positively address conflict, and they communicate to the group that the leader values collaboration. It’s possible to pose these questions in an exit ticket or survey format, but we recommend face-to-face conversation to further enhance group dynamics through potentially difficult conversations.

Preparing leaders for conflict

We strongly advocate incorporating the above skills and strategies in preservice leadership preparation and ongoing professional development for building and district administrators. Leaders need opportunities to explore literature on conflict resolution and engage in exercises that provide practical, applied experience.

Teams of aspiring and practicing leaders can use realistic simulations to become more adept at addressing conflict. A scenario might be a school board proposing annual parent evaluations of teachers against vehement staff objections. Half the group participating in the exercise might role-play the perspectives of diverse stakeholders, while the other half closely observes and takes notes. Follow-up discussion would examine the dynamics of the conflict. What were the underlying issues, and what questions did the leader ask to surface them? Was participation widespread and fulfilling? What was the tenor of group discussion, and were there inflection points when the tenor shifted? Was the information shared during the discussion likely to produce a wide and deep appreciation of the issue?

Conflict is one of the most vexing and stressful facets of an administrator’s job, but a new outlook on conflict can transform both the school leader and the prevailing school culture. In an adversarial environment, resistance to change is almost automatic. But as school leaders develop expertise in conflict management, they learn to perceive disagreement as a pathway to improvement rather than an obstacle. Collaborative problem solving becomes “the way we do things” and the culture is ready to embrace the challenge of change.

References

Chan, K., Huang, X., & Ng, P. (2007). Managers’ conflict management styles and employee attitudinal outcomes: The mediating role of trust. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 25 (2), 277-295.

DiLiberti, M.K. & Schwartz, H.L. (2023). Educator turnover has markedly increased, but districts have taken actions to boost teacher ranks: Selected findings from the Sixth American School District Panel Survey. RAND Corporation.

DiLiberti, M.K. & Schwartz, H.L. (2022). Flux in the educator labor market: Acute staff shortages and projected superintendent departures: Selected findings from the Fourth American School District Panel Survey. RAND Corporation.

Dugan, J. & Shane, S. (2021). Street data: A next generation model for equity, pedagogy, and school transformation. Corwin Press.

Johnson, P. (2003). Conflict and the school leader: Expert or novice. Journal of Research for Educational Leaders, 1 (3), 28-45.

Lewis, A.E. & Diamond, J. (2015). Despite the best intentions: How racial inequality thrives in good schools. Oxford University Press.

Meade, L. (2022, January 2). A principal’s assessment: We’re not OK. Education Week.

Morton, N. & Valley, J. (2022, January 6). Who wants to lead America’s school districts? Anyone? Anyone? Hechinger Report.

Runde, C.E. & Flanagan, T.A. (2010). Developing your conflict competence: A hands-on guide for leaders, managers, facilitators, and teams. Jossey-Bass.

Superville, D.R. (2023, February 16). Is this the beginning of the principal exodus? Education Week.

White, R.S., Evans, M.P., & Malin, J.R. (2023). Political battles in suburbia. Phi Delta Kappan, 104 (5), 6-10.

This article appears in the December 2023/January 2024 issue of Kappan, Vol. 105, No. 4, p. 37-41.