Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Types of conflict in cohousing -- did I miss any?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Jan 24, 2016, at 12:01 PM, Mary Baker, Solid Communications <mary [at] 
> solid-communications.com> wrote:
> 
> I don’t believe that conflict is healthy, any more than going to the ER for 
> stitches or getting the flu is healthy. But to deny that it’s part of human 
> concourse is, in my opinion, eerily offset from reality. 

But how can conflict not be healthy? It arises when one person 
wants/believes/needs this and another wants/believes/needs that. If there were 
not conflict, there would be no health. No diversity. No questioning. Only 
adapting and conforming.

> Maybe I’m just old enough to remember an era when “conflict management” meant 
> that managers were supposed to suppress conflict while pretending to make 
> everyone happy. Or fired.


“Management” has taken a wrong turn as a word but not everyone realizes it has 
taken on negative implications. But if you read the management literature, it 
still means leadership, coordination, inspiring others, understanding others, 
etc. It is a totally people oriented field. One problem with understanding it 
is comparing bad management with the good of anything else.

We need leadership and that is what managers are supposed to be.

I was very surprised when I started reading business and management literature 
how social/psychological it was.  When my daughter did her MBA at Cornell, they 
spent what seems like an inordinate amount of time on personality tests and 
group therapy exercises to learn about themselves and others. When a friend wo 
worked in management her whole life took a vice presidential job at a major 
university to “fix” an administrative department, the first thing she did was 
to learn what everyone did, what the jobs were, and what the university wanted. 
The second, parallel activity was understanding everyone personally and helping 
them to understand each other. Understanding personality types. 

There was no manipulation involved though some people were fired or transferred 
because they were not qualified to do their jobs and refused to become 
qualified.