Conflict or Opportunity?

You are in a conflict with someone at work. What do you see? Is it a battle or an opportunity? Life is not all about winning and losing. Life is about identifying opportunities. Life is not a battle that you have to win. Life is opportunity for you to learn and become better. Where there are two people, there are conflicts. Where there are conflicts, there are opportunities.
I have had conflicts with others (who didn’t?), in my professional and personal life. While I am still learning to see the conflicts in my personal life as opportunities, I have successfully converted some of the bad situations at work into opportunities.

Very early in my career, call it inexperience or adolescence; I was in conflict with a Vice-President of a company (that I went to work for later). My career was on the verge of crashing before even it took off. In a disturbed emotional state with no certain future, I still managed to see an opportunity, took it, went to work for the same company and set out on a path to success for next eight years.

While working for a manager with a knee-jerk reaction, conflicts were the norm. As people in my group were quitting every other day, it was especially difficult to keep calm. The day finally came when my company announced that they were downsizing and my manager told me that my job was being outsourced to India. Although devastated, and took some time to get back on track, I did leave the company, went on my own and ventured into Industrial Automation and MES.

Today, I am at the crossroads again. I briefly had the job of my dreams, before another knee-jerk reacting manager had to show me the door. Bounced back again on my feet, delivered some good projects, built a few references and was marching strong when the same manager paid another visit, this time with a grudge I never knew he had. So, I am at a crossroads again! I am trying to identify the opportunity in this difficult situation and make myself stronger and better.
With these three examples, I submit the following for your consideration during conflicts and difficult times.

1. Conflict is an opportunity – to learn and become better
2. Learn from your mistakes/failures, for it’s only a failure if you don’t learn from it.
3. Disagreements have reasons, sometimes good ones. Listen to know what they are.
4. Turning problems into possibilities focusing on what’s possible, rather than what is not.
5. Make the best of a bad situation – there may be a door or even a window waiting for you to open – Identify, and open it.

The possibilities are endless. No conflict will remain a conflict if you can see an opportunity. When you learn to turn a conflict into an opportunity, life will be filled with opportunities.