Oh, conflict. It’s a subject that makes 99% of people recoil. Confrontation is such an unpleasant thing that most people just deal with the things themselves or tell every single person except for the person that it pertains to, all so that they can avoid one conversation or one man’s opinion…that’s crazy! For something that is so widely hated it is interesting to me that conflict is so completely necessary for success. There is no way to avoid it so you might as well embrace it. This week Clay taught the business coaching team that there cannot be a success without conflict. Clay quoted one of his idols TD Jakes who said “Whenever extraordinary and ordinary meet there will always be conflict”. This is a concept we often teach our business coaching clients, in fact we celebrate their conflict. Just this week one of our wins of the day was that a client was successfully implementing the proven systems and making much more money as a result. His congratulations? Everyone in his community hates him.
Would you rather have a few moments of conflict or a lifetime of dealing with something you are not entirely happy with?
There are two people I have met in my life that love conflict more than any average person and no surprise they are some of the most successful people that I know, and that is Clay and Jonathan (see Jonathan’s post on conflict here. Both of them have a passion for conflict because they know that conflict is a necessary aspect of being a good manager. As Clay would say “Management equals conflict”. I used to fear confrontation to a point before Thrive but I have definitely been learning to love it. If you take a step back and look at it in terms of numbers confrontation is a no brainer. Would you rather have a few moments of conflict or a lifetime of dealing with something you are not entirely happy with?
Conflict will be found in every area of life. You will find that as soon as you set a standard for anything you will immediately find someone who does not agree with what you are doing. You want to start getting up at 3 AM to get ahead? People will tell you that’s unhealthy. You want to start recording your employee’s calls? They will threaten to quit because they feel it is unethical. You want to eat a cleaner diet? People will be offended that you don’t eat their cookies. Progression is all about going outside the norm, it is not rainbows and roses the whole time. If fact Clay talked about one of the quotes that is current on the wall in the men’s bathroom at the business coaching office. The quote is “If you can’t work for 5 years without praise then deposit your dreams here” the quote then has an arrow pointing to the urinal. This is one of my favorite quotes in the office because it is 100% true. Whenever you start working towards a new goal or business idea no one is going to care about it, everyone is going to think you are crazy. So if you cannot deal with at least five years of conflict and no external motivation then you will never achieve your goal. I know super encouraging, right? All you have to decide to do is drink the haterade and eat a bowl of conflict flakes.
