October 2004 - Conflict Resolution: Winning Without War
- Conflict Resolution
- Tips and Suggestions
- Resources (links, books,
articles, humor)
Conflict
Resolution: Winning without War
It’s late, you are leaving the office and you see an e-mail from someone
with something surprising to you. You quickly fire off a response thinking
that will take care of the issue.
The following day, you get another e-mail that indicates
that the person did not understand your intent. Maybe they copy your boss on
this one or others. Again, you respond without thinking over the
issue and copy the other person’s boss or do a "reply all" to
everyone.
Maybe you are starting to get a niggling feeling that something isn’t going
well with this communication but you aren’t sure what it is and you’ve
got lots of other stuff on your plate so it doesn’t consume much of your
energy.
Time passes . . . the event escalates, people’s feelings are hurt, major
misunderstandings occur, your motives are misunderstood, maybe you are called on
the carpet about it.
Does this sound familiar? I suspect most of us who have been working a
while will recognize the scenario.
Another scene: You live in a neighborhood with a homeowners
association. You’ve been working hard, have had family illness or
other more important things happening in your life. You haven’t cut your
grass for a while, you leave your garbage can at the curb too long, you finally
decide to cut down that tree that’s been leaning, your build a kennel for your
dog or you’ve been laid off and haven’t paid as much attention to your
property as you used to.
You get a letter from the homeowners association with a notice that you are
not maintaining your property, you’ve been assessed a fine for cutting down a
tree without permission, you are chastised for doing something to violate the
covenants or you have a lien placed on your property for unpaid association
dues.
You are mad, furious even. How dare they!!! You fire off
a letter telling them off in no uncertain terms. Later, you may hear from an
attorney or get even nastier letters from the association.
Does this sound familiar? Many of us who live in areas managed by
homeowners associations have encountered this or we know someone who has had
similar (or worse) experiences.
Another scene: You are a participant in the television show, The
Apprentice. Your team is in the boardroom because you lost this week’s
challenge. You cannot be fired in this round because you were the winning
project manager in last week’s challenge. Without thinking it through, you offer to
give up your exemption to being fired and ask to be judged along with your
team.
The next thing you know, Mr. Trump fires you! Why?
Because he feels that was a dangerous and stupid move on your part, much greater
than all the failings of the others on the team, who made lots of very serious
mistakes. He fires you even though he tells you that you are the best
person in the room.
Does this sound familiar? It’s what happened to Bradford Cohen.
Mr. Trump said Brad’s mistake was a "life-threatening
mistake." Why? Because if Brad did something like that without
thinking in a
business deal, he could destroy his entire company.
Wow!! One mistake, one slip of the tongue — that seemed like the
right thing to do at the time — could take down an entire company. It could
destroy a potentially lucrative career. It could wreck the high hopes of a
very talented man.
Sobering thoughts.
Back to our first scenario of firing off that quick response to an
e-mail. Everyone has done it a one time or another, even those of us who
think we are calm, effective and reasonable people. We are all
human. We all have our stresses. We all have distractions at
times. We all have other things in life to think about. We don’t
always take the time or energy to think about the potential ramifications of
every action we take or everything we say spontaneously.
Why do we get ourselves into these messes?
The simple answer is, "Because we are human." A more complex
psychological answer involves our basic personality, how that interacts with our
physical and emotional world, and with other people.
Another answer is because we are all different and that naturally leads to
conflict. Our challenge and our opportunity is to learn to live and work
together in a more peaceful, accepting and effective way.
Conflict is part of our human experience. We each see things
differently. We each have our personality quirks. We have our own unique
background and life experience. We each have beliefs, motives, personal values,
morals and religious values that are different from others.
That means we experience the world through our own unique set of
"filters" that color everything we see, everything we say, everything
we think and everything we do. Everyone else also has a unique set of
those filters as well and their filters are somewhat different from ours. Is it
any wonder we don’t agree all the time? It’s a wonder we ever agree on anything when you think about it.
If there was time, we could analyze our own filters, compare them to someone
else’s filters, and map out a strategy for communicating with them. In about
50 years, we might be ready to start to work with them. Who has that much
time?
Therefore, we muddle along doing the best we can at any moment and find
ourselves in small quagmires of problems, escalating crises or just plain mad at
someone or something.
This is how corporate relationships get in trouble, how lawsuits get started
and how international wars get started.
What does this have to do with conflict resolution and winning a war?
When we understand why we do what we do, say or think (which is not a simple
task), we can begin to get a small glimmer about why others might do what they
do, say or think.
The things that get us into trouble are the inherent aspects of what make us
unique humans. That’s the good news and the bad news.
We can also choose to operate from the positive aspects of ourselves or from
the negative aspects of ourselves. Yes, we all have negative
aspects. And, they become more prevalent and available when we are
stressed, even though we may be totally unaware that we are operating that way.
Think of someone who is normally a calm and reasonable person. Then,
see if you can remember a time when they seemed to change, to be come
unreasonable, stubborn, dogmatic or "hyper" about something. They were probably
under stress, which tends to put us into the negative parts of our
personality. We have several articles about this in our Personality Game
section.
When faced with a surprising event, we may become defensive, aggressive,
domineering, passive, excited, calm, silent, loquacious, pushy, weak, dogmatic,
involved, distant or any number of other responses. When two stressed
people come together, even more variety can occur, such as one person becomes
pushy and the other becomes belligerent.
Next thing we know, there’s a dispute. Then it escalates and involves
more people. Soon, there are grudges building and dysfunctional patterns
set in. There may be arguments, nasty letters or break-ups. Others
may get mad at us or come to our defense.
In the international arena, we’ve seen this escalation play out into world
wars, regional wars, civil wars and bitter battles over territory or religion.
What to do?
Before reacting in a strong way to something that is a surprise, that pushes
our buttons or triggers our adrenaline:
- Take the time to rethink the ramifications before shooting off that e-mail
or nasty letter.
- Never respond quickly just to get it done with. That's what gets
most of us in trouble and when we are most prone to making a mistake or
saying exactly the wrong thing.
- Take a long walk before telling someone off.
- Breathe deeply a few more times before spouting off about why you are
right and the other person is wrong.
- Do research on the facts. Find other alternatives to what is
proposed and back it up with facts.
- Think before you act.
- Try to understand why the other person might think (or act) the way they
do.
- Count to 10 or even to 100 if you feel agitated, then take a long walk.
- Pause a while before you presume to know the "real truth" about
a situation.
- Reconsider before ascribing sinister motives to another person.
- Consider if the other person might be under stress that caused them to do
what they did.
- Consider if you might be under stress that is causing you want to react
more strongly that the issue warrants.
- Take as step back to a time before this surprising event and imagine that
this issue is just a feather floating softly across your desk. Watch
it without reacting to it.
- Ask a friend or co-worker (who handles conflict well) how they would handle this.
- Consider not responding at all and see how things are in a few days.
Even knowing all these good suggestions won’t prevent people from
occasionally doing something "stupid" anyway. Our ability to
control our own behavior is a constant challenge. Even those who consider
themselves mature adults struggle with this at times.
Controlling the behavior of others is totally outside our ability, much as we
would like to believe we can tell others what is wrong with them and what they
should do to fix it!
I know this is much easier to explain than to do in practice because I’ve
personally been faced with it this week and am not liking my own responses to
minor surprising events.
Some tips for coping with surprises
- Be yourself, as authentically as you can be, and also be aware that you
are not going to agree with everyone all the time.
- Be kind to yourself and be gentle with others — they are human and
suffer the same challenges you do.
- Assume that the motives of others are pure and that they are only trying to
deal with things as they see them. Try to imagine how they might see
the situation.
- Get plenty of rest, exercise and good nutrition, which helps to give you the
strength to deal with life’s stresses.
- When stressed, be extra cautious in how you react to others.
- Be completely and brutally honest with yourself about how you contributed
to any conflict or misunderstanding.
- Maybe make yourself a pledge not to answer any surprising e-mail, letter
or phone call until the
next day — if that is possible. At the very least, wait until later in the
day when you have had time to reconsider what it might mean and how you
might react in a more positive way. Some very effective people set aside a
block of time to answer all phone calls and correspondence.
- Instead of sending an e-mail or writing a letter, call the person and chat about whatever the
issue is. Better yet, talk in person. A good rule of thumb is to never send
someone an e-mail or a letter that will surprise them. Instead, visit them
in person. If that is not possible, at least make a phone call. This rule
works for corporate environments and personal relationships as well as
homeowners associations and international affairs.
It’s amazing how trivial some disagreements become when people talk
face-to-face. You may even laugh about your reactions and imaginary
thoughts.
Be aware that surprising someone often triggers a negative reaction from
them. Is that what you really want? Or, do you simply want to get an issue
resolved?
Resolving conflict without escalation, hurt feelings, flared tempers or
waging war is truly winning for everyone involved.
Over time, you will find that your ability to calm in the face of surprises
will increase. Your ability to see someone else with compassion instead of
anger will increase. You will notice that people don’t push your buttons
anymore and that your heart isn’t racing as hard. That's truly winning
without warfare.
In other words, you will be more peaceful and your life will be more
peaceful. Isn’t that worth making an attempt to change your reactions
slightly?
Books
- Disclosure: We get a small
commission for purchases made via links to Amazon.
- Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion, Marshall
Rosenberg. PuddleDancer Press; 1999. ASIN: 1892005026
- Tongue Fu! Deflect, Disarm & Diffuse Any Verbal Conflict, Sam
Horn. St. Martin's Griffin; 1997. ISBN: 0312152272
- Terrorism, Freedom, and Security: Winning Without War, Philip B. Heymann.
The MIT Press, 2003. ISBN: 0262083272
- Working Woman's Art of War: Winning Without Confrontation, Chin-Ning Chu.
AMC Publishing, 2001. ISBN: 0929638298
- Genderspeak: Men, Women and the Gentle Art of Verbal SelfDefense, Suzette
Haden Elgin, Ph.D. John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1993. ISBN:
0471580163 Suzette Elgin has written several books on
communication.
- Speaking Your Mind in 101 Difficult Situations, Don Gabor.
Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994. ISBN
0-671-79505-8
Articles
The Personality Game and related
articles
If there is something that you have to do, resist the temptation to do it
under duress. Ask yourself, "What’s the worst thing that would
happen if I didn’t do this?" And if you can get away with not doing
it at all, don’t do it. And then imagine what would it feel like to have
this done. Spend a day or two, if you can, just 15 minutes here, 5 minutes
here, 2 minutes here, here and here, imagining it completed in a way that
pleases you! And then, the next time you decide that you’re going to
take action about it, the action is going to be a whole lot easier. ... Abraham: 4/5/98, Phoenix, AZ
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