Managing Conflict - and recognising it

Earlier this week, I listened to the weekly Manager-Tools podcast on managing conflict in the workplace, but one thing really stuck out. Conflict is defined by the behaviours resulting from disagreement.

Perhaps the reason why so many managers don’t deal well with conflict is that they don’t recognize it. Am I one of them?

I tried to think back over the last 7 months or so that I have been in this team, to an incident involving genuine conflict between members of the team. I could not. Am I seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses, or has there genuinely been no conflict between any members of our team in 7 months?

I can recall many times when the weekly programme meeting turned into a heated debate, but there was never any negative behaviour. No-one ever criticised any one else personally; only a policy, a decision, or a rule. That's not conflict.

We whinge all the time. We moan about slow progress, poor decisions, silly themes for dress-down days.... But we moan and whinge in unison. And we laugh about it.

Am I just lucky here?