Can Conflict Stimulate Creativity

The most difficult part is to transform the conflict from within to a productivity or creativity lifecycle.

Wherever there’re groups of people, there’re conflicts. People vary in their ideology, cognizance, perceptions, and priorities; and they react to situations in different ways. Therefore, conflict is perhaps inevitable. Conflict can have both a positive and negative effect depending on the cause of conflict as well as how to deal with it. On the bright side, conflict can stimulate creative thinking or innovative solutions when solving it positively; it may cause damage and negative impact if not handling properly.

Conflict can lead to open debate and stimulates creativity if handling wisely: Having conflicts in the team is sometimes productive if it could lead to open-minded discussions for alternative problems solving. Many command-control working environments are static and tedious, there is no energy in the room because people are afraid of being themselves and saying anything which might cause conflicts. In an open and creative work environment, there is energy between people, meaning they are not afraid to say things that will help the business. The diverse viewpoints are welcomed, even they seem to conflict, Conflicts can be handled wisely. It creates a sense of positive competition in the team, and a number of times, a lot of new ideas come up for some very difficult tasks. Things are being acted on, the team is energized and there is a healthy debate, but not debating for the debate's sake. At the same time, the communication doesn't destroy others' self-esteem or end up being about getting the last word. In these environments, conflict leads to open debating and stimulates creativity.

The most difficult part is to transform the conflict from within to a productivity or creativity lifecycle: This is a wholeness. The conflict can come from an internal conflict or a conflict with the outside world. Internal conflicts include - individual internal conflict, conflict when working with others, and internal conflict within groups. External conflict is a struggle between a character and an outside force. What is one state of mind to one person need not necessarily mean the same thing to another. And that's where the conflict comes in. What we project gets reflected back us. If you have a stable internal process, conflict can stimulate creativity. Patience relates to tolerance and tolerance gives us the ability to understand other points of view and connect unusual dots to stimulate creativity; tenacity could help lead to your vision, and keep things on track. Collectively, if there is a trustful relationship in the group, conflicts within the group can stimulate deep discussions, spark collective creativity, and improve the productivity lifecycle.

Make a smooth transition from Conflict competency to creative competency: The great thing about looking at conflict from a behavioral point of view is that behaviors can be learned. It means that anyone who wants to become more "conflict competent" can become more "conflict competent" by managing the emotion cycle smoothly. The true conflict in innovativeness is self-imposed by trying to make our “visions” reality. For example, we need conflict to initiate, but after initiation, there should be a debate to create! There is the “madness” to think “out of the box,” and do things in a new way. From a management perspective, everyone likes to be successful, the best way to deal with people is to give them a taste of success, reward them for it, and then keep raising the bar and pushing them to achieve the next level of change or innovation that needed.

The right way to deal with conflict is to identify them right at the start, find the root causes, to encourage constructive behavior and open discussion upon the issues, deal with conflict skillfully to achieve harmony and transform conflict to creative competency.

Posted in: Creativity,Talent Master