Conflict Management: How to Turn
Any Conflicts into Opportunities
There’s a lot out there written on conflict
from how to ask what you really want and how to understand what the other side
really wants.
But what I have seen from those materials is
that most of them have been written in bubbles using armchair philosophy with
almost zero empirical evidence and applicability in real life.
It’s like the case with the orange. One side
just wants the orange bark while the other side wants the inside of the orange.
You solve the case by giving them both what they need and there you have it,
you’ve solved the conflict.
In real life, both sides want the entire
orange and they are not willing to budge a centimeter until they get it and
that’s why I’m making this guide. No more armchair philosophy, no more talking
in the bubble. We are entering the real world and this is how you will solve
the conflicts and get what you want.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Chunking down conflict into
primordial pieces
o
1. Level of conflict (emotional -
rational)
o
2. Scale of conflict (short-term or
long-term)
o
3. Proximity of conflict (four
decisions)
o
4. How to gain the upper hand
2. Pack your Conflict Toolbox and off
you go
Chunking
down conflict into primordial pieces
Conflict has multiple different layers which
all play different roles and parts. And the biggest gain for you is going to be
figuring out where exactly is your conflict playing out.
You will use a different method for different
situations so this guide will serve as an arsenal of weapons for conflicts and
you will just pick the right tool for the right situation. It’s like having a
toolbox with a hammer, a drill, a screwdriver, pliers and many more inside and
you use the one which you need at that moment. And we’ll call that our Conflict
Toolbox.
With that in mind, let’s start with:
1.
Level of conflict (emotional – rational)
Level of conflict helps us perceive where
exactly is the conflict playing out. The two possible options are emotional and
rational.
Emotional is the most common one. In fact, a
rational conflict is so rare that I’ve seen it happen only once in my entire
life. Nevertheless it happens and it’s going into our Conflict Toolbox.
Emotional
conflicts
Emotional conflict is a conflict based on emotions
and for it to be solved, it needs to have an emotional solution, not a logical
one.
The example is when your wife gets upset that
you came 10 minutes late for dinner and you bought her diamond earrings to fix
that. But they don’t have that effect because the level of conflict is played
in the emotional part, where your wife wants you to care and make an effort. So
you will only fix it by displaying care and effort, not by trying to buy your
way back.
A logical solution to an emotional problem is
destined to fail.
One more example is your boss who doesn’t
want to give you that promotion. He is worried that you might take his job
further up if you keep this pace. He is frightened and scared and uses
defensive emotional mechanisms to cover it up.
No amount of justifying to him is going to
fix that because you are appealing to his logic. You need to solve his
emotional pain – being scared and frightened of you- and tackle that problem
with an emotional response that will calm those fears down.
Instead of telling him that you won’t take
his job, prove it to him by displaying family as your number one priority in
life and proving to him that a higher end job would just take away precious
time from them.
Show him that you have interesting hobbies
and that you are not simply “John from work” but “John the mountain-climber” or
“John the National Dart Champion.” Make an emotional bond which will alleviate
the concerns from the other side. Then, and only then, will you be able to
solve that conflict.
Remember that when dealing with people, you
are dealing with emotional beings who only use logic to justify their
behaviors. But in rare cases, the conflict can be rational.
Rational
conflicts
Rational conflicts happen when the logic of
one proposal meets head with the logic of another proposal. It’s one of the
least studied areas of life because there is not a lot of people having
conflict only on a pure logical base. Most of us are victims of our narrow
understanding of the world cognitive biases and
beliefs to be able to put them aside and have a conflict based only on logic.
I’ve even used a cognitive bias myself when
describing rational conflict by stating that “it’s so rare that I’ve seen it
only once in my life” which is an anecdotal evidence and falls under the information bias.
But if you ever find yourself in a strictly
rational conflict, the best way to solve it is by finding a unique angle
(perspective) which will make your agenda stick but will also help the other
side.
Conflicts are everywhere and if we don’t
decide which fights to take, we will lose our minds. With that, we are coming
to the second layer of conflict.
2.
Scale of conflict (short-term or long-term)
The scale of conflict is really important.
Some short-term conflicts can be left unattended but the long-term ones should
be addressed as soon as possible and here is an example:
You’re working with a fellow colleague on a
project and he forgets to add a really important piece of code in the program.
Because of this, you just gained another week of work on your back.
If this is a one-time thing and he made a
mistake because of some other problems currently happening in his life, then
it’s okay. It happens to everyone.
But if this shows to you that your colleague
is sloppy and that he isn’t detail-oriented, then you know that similar
problems will keep popping up in the future and this should be addressed as
soon as possible.
The most important things here is to assess
if this behavior will repeat itself in the future or if this is a one-time
mistake. If it’s a one-time mistake, you don’t need to make a huge deal about
it (even though you need to inform your colleague about the problem) but if
it’s going to happen again and again, you need to deal with the problem asap.
As Tony Robbins said “Kill the monster while
it’s small” which means that you need to address the problem before it gets out
of control.
3.
Proximity of conflict (four decisions)
This is my favorite part of conflict
management. The proximity of conflict can be defined as the importance of the
relationship you have with the person with whom you’re having conflict.
Depending on the relationship, these are the
four decisions you can take:
- Exit
Exit is all about removing yourself from the
situation. This is something I do in 99% of the situations because I only
deeply care about 1% of the things in this world. Everything else is really not
worth arguing for.
With Exit, you simply move physically from
that environment; or if it’s digital, just turn off the website and that’s it.
It takes a little bit of time for you to get used to this but when you do, it
will be one of the most liberating experiences of your life. Playing “I’m
walking away” by Craig David in your head helps a lot!
- Neglect
Neglect happens when you think you can’t
change the situation so you just leave it like that, lowering any effort from
your side to a minimum. This is mostly the case with a thick family member who
is bullying everyone else but nobody can do anything about that. So you just
accept that this is one war you won’t win and leave it be.
You might think that neglect is quite rare…
until you remember your teenage years where you had almost no power in your
household. You had to do chores that you absolutely hated so you tried to do
them with the least possible effort. I know it was vacuuming the house for me –
it was one of the worst things ever and I hated it from the bottom of my heart.
Neglect is everywhere around you, from the
people at DMV who are half-asleep doing their job to the 17-year-old kid
serving you fries at McDonald’s.
- Persevere
Persevere means that you don’t have enough
influence to change the current situation but you are building it for the
future. This is the case of idiosyncrasy at work- what can you wear?
If you are a professor for 6 months and want
to wear khaki shorts to work, it will never happen. But if you work there for a
couple of years, build your reputation and influence and then wear khaki sorts
to work, nobody will say anything to you.
- Voice
Voice is a direct confrontation of the
problem head-on. This is where you stop your tracks and have the
argument/conflict at that moment.
Voice doesn’t happen that often because
people are in different situations and using Voice means that you are tackling
the problem (and the other person) head on. And for this, you need to ready for
the consequences. If it’s your boss you are confronting on a meeting, think
about the position you are currently in and if Voice is actually the best
option to go for.
We have covered the layers of conflict and
now it’s time to see what our Conflict Toolbox says about it.\
4.
How to gain the upper hand
Conflicts pave the way to opportunities and
if we use the right tool from our Conflict Toolbox, we will gain the upper hand
in it.
A master of this was Dale Carnegie and he
explained all of it in his best-selling classical book How to Win Friend & Influence
People. Dale’s philosophy
can be summarized in to playing the upper hand by actually letting the other
person be right, appear great (especially in public) and letting them know that
they sit on top of you.
Stroking the other person’s ego will help you
get what you want because you are making the other side appear so great that
they show you “some mercy” by actually giving you what you want. But the catch
here is that you’ve already done the hard work by yielding so that they have no
other option than to give you what you want – because doing that will help them
look even better in the eyes of other people.
Not only will they appear smart, brilliant
and on top of all right – but they will also show grace, mercy, thoughtfulness
and consideration.
Just think about it – how many times have you
snubbed at the person who was condescending you in any manner. I know I did
because nobody likes to be condescended but a lot of us if we have the
opportunity, love to “teach someone else a lesson” or “show them a thing or
two.”
We are social creatures who have dominance
hierarchies and it’s inevitable that ego will come into play. It’s in our best
interest to have it as a great servant instead of a horrible master.
So the next time you’re in a conflict, set
your ego aside and see how you can actually make the other person look better –
it will help your cause.
Pack
your Conflict Toolbox and off you go
We’ve dissected conflict into its primordial
layers and found out that conflict can:
- Have an emotional or rational level
- Be on a short-term or long-term scale
- Have four different relationships regarding proximity:
Exit, Neglect, Persevere, Voice
We have talked about how to actually deal
with conflict and how you can turn it into an opportunity for yourself. Here,
we talked about the age-old wisdom of Dale Carnegie and his message of stroking
the ego from the classic “How To Win Friend & Influence People.”
And now you have your Conflict Toolbox packed
with different tools which you can use in different situations.
Off you go into the world of conflict or
better said – the world of opportunities.
Bruno Boksic
https://www.lifehack.org/784659/conflict-management
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