Conflict is all around us and it certainly is hard to escape conflict on a family farm. Recently on a PDPW Dairy Signal podcast, Tim Schaefer and Liz Griffith, both with Encore Consultants, shared that sometimes historical conflict gets carried on from generation to generation, and conflict is referred to in a negative notion. They say it doesn’t have to be this way.
Schaefer says all family enterprises have conflict, but some deal with it better than others.
“Good conflict is really good for family dynamics,” Griffith says. “It’s really good for the business because it means that you have the ability and the skills to really talk about and dive deep into those difficult issues.”
Griffith says that often farms avoid talking about difficult issues and let them build up instead. Having hard conversations can be conflictive and can be healthy to grow a business.
“Talk about where’s the next generation going with the business. What are we going to build or expand next or what are we going to cut out. And when you have good conflict, that doesn’t mean that everybody agrees, but you can have that debate, and you can listen, and you can hear respectively what other people are sharing so you have a way to get to the answer,” she says.
Schaefer says sometimes farm meetings that are not conflicting is just because partners are avoiding the conversation altogether. He shares that managing conflict poorly severs relationships, stifles innovation, halts progress and is costly.
“If people aren’t communicating, they don’t trust each other,” he says. “And, that’s a bad deal. But if you think about it, as an advantage, if your family farm is really good at dealing with conflict, the decisions will be much faster. Probably better thought out because you’re going to be able to debate all the angles, not just the one that’s in your own mind. You know, and really start thinking about what’s good for the entire farm, not just for yourself.”
Root Cause
Often, conflict is not the root cause, it is a symptom of a deeper issue.
“I was just meeting with an attorney here last week and he said, ‘Boy, everything was going great until one of the sons decided to leave the farm and then it all blew up,’” Schaefer shared.
He says that often people just stow away issues to avoid conflict and the problems just manifest, and the root cause of all the conflict are unmet needs.
“People want to satisfy their own needs. If you can figure out what your true needs are and the needs of other people within that conflict, you will go a long way towards resolving conflict,” Schaefer says.
To listen to the entire podcast to learn more about conflict resolution from both Schaefer and Griffith, click on The Dairy Signal | PDPW
