Through my role as a Leadership Consultant (LC) through the Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) Office, negotiating and managing conflict has been an important competency that I have built throughout the year.
Leadership can come with conviction; with that conviction, conflicts can arise when working as a group. Working with the LEAD team has come with working alongside different students leaders who are passionate about what they believe in. At times during the year conflicts arose when differences in ideas were voiced between different team members. For a time, it was difficult to have honest conversations between one another in order to move forward as an LC team. During the second semester the LC team was able to meet and have honest dialogue about ourselves and about how we stood as a team and that has helped not only build our LC team up, but also has enabled me to understand what it meant to negotiate and manage conflicts. During the honest dialogue we had as a unit we were able to voice areas that we felt we at times held back in voicing.
As the LC team began to have more honest conversations I developed negotiating conflicts because it put into practice what it meant to both advocate for a position and understand that one cannot get everything that they want within different contexts. A lot of my development within this competency rooted from being able to be flexible and in the moment for a lot of situations and understanding how to navigate advocacy for myself and have effective communication with those I work with. Before coming into the position, I was constantly giving up aspects of myself to please others and not voicing when I needed help. What this competency has helped build was an understanding of what it meant to take a stand when need be as well as manage different situations with other coworkers.
This competency is valuable for the position as an LC because of the work we do within this office and through different initiatives LEAD teams up with others offices in. This competency is tricky to develop because so many factors play into understanding what it means to negotiate conflicts. The circumstances of this competency are usually overlooked or ignored because conflict can put people at a level of uneasiness, but it is still a needed skill to develop as a leader. I have fortunately focused on developing this competency in order to maximize not only my potential, but the potential of the LEAD Office.