We use this metaphor to describe the elephants that live among our teams in the workplace. They’ve often been present for so long that we’ve learned quite adeptly to navigate around them, leaving them in tact and untouched. This has, by the way, at times been quite difficult due to their growing circumference juxtaposed to the fixed and growingly constrained size of our office space. The bigger they’ve gotten, the more we have tried to avoid noticing them. By definition, an elephant is: any continuing problem or dysfunctional group dynamic that we all know exists and have unconsciously agreed never to discuss. An elephant is something “we do not speak of.”

We avoid speaking of them or addressing them through the use of what some have called “willful blindness.” What we don’t see can’t hurt us, right? In cases where we should have and could have known but rather chose to remain blind we are guilty of this all too human coping mechanism. Margaret Heffernan defines willful blindness as including the idea that “there is an opportunity for knowledge, and a responsibility to be informed, but it is shirked.” We choose to remain ignorant, to stay in the dark rather than seeing the light. Willful blindness allows our elephants to graze freely throughout the office. Ever stepped in a large pile of elephant dung?

For those organizations and teams that have the courage to expose their elephants, the possibility of deep change opens up. Many if not most of us are far too afraid to begin to shed light on our team elephants. However, allowing others to safely and carefully point out our dysfunctions to us is a significant indicator and predictor of future team health and development. Things we don’t see, those things “we don’t speak of,” are hurting us. Bringing them into our vision allows us the opportunity to understand, analyze and correct things, moving us together in a better direction as a team.

One of the common elephants in teams is found in the form of chronic contributors to the potential for conflict development. These things we ignore begin to build up and like the fuel of paper, wood, or even gasoline, and require only the slightest of sparks from the beginnings of interpersonal conflict to burst into flame. Exposing elephants allows us to make the office safer by removing this fuel from future fires. This is the essence of conflict prevention.

Conflict is a subject, most of us, would rather not talk about. It seems to be connected to intuitive and instinctual feelings that cause most of us discomfort. We seek to avoid this perceived threat to our desire for normalcy and peace by pretending it out of existence. Because we don’t spend large amounts of time or effort seeking to understand the dynamics underlying the sprouting of conflict, we render ourselves sitting ducks to be drawn into its web in the same familiar ways over and over again.

Healthy and vital teams seek to understand conflict so that they will not be caught off guard in this way. They intently study the areas of likely development and seek to clear out the brush that will quickly ignite them into a forest ablaze. One of the best things that we can do as coaches and team development assistants it to help teams face their fears and begin to see the health that comes from taking this critical first step toward health: understanding the nature of conflict.

If you and your team are interested in entering into an awkward conversation that you’ve been avoiding and would rather not have, you are cordially invited to attend our webinar introducing you to the Demand Model of conflict. Got elephants? Let’s begin to face them and enter a new level of team health we have yet to experience. Understanding conflict is a great place to start.