“Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.” — Max Lucade

Conflict happens.  How you respond to and resolve conflict will limit or enable your success.  My goal with this post is to give you the tools to understand conflict, learn your own conflict patterns, and empower you to make more effective choices when you are finding or facing conflict.

Embrace Conflict as a Source of Growth and Transformation

Conflict can come from a variety of sources:

• Goals.  Conflict can happen as a result of conflicting goals or priorities.  It can also happen when there is a lack of shared goals.
• Personality conflicts.  Personality conflicts are a common cause of conflict.  Sometimes there is no chemistry, or you haven’t figured out an effective way to click with somebody.
• Scarce resources. Conflict can happen when you’re competing over scarce resources.
• Styles.   People have different styles.  Your thinking style or communication style might conflict with somebody else’s thinking style or their communication style.  The good news is that conflicts in styles are easy to adapt to when you know how.
• Values.  Sometimes you will find conflict in values.  The challenge here is that values are core.  Adapting with styles is one thing, but dealing with conflicting values is another.  That’s why a particular business, group, or culture may not be a good fit for you.  It’s also why “bird’s of a feather flock together” and why “opposites attract, but similarities bind.”

By embracing conflict as a part of life, you can make the most of each situation and use it as a learning opportunity or a leadership opportunity.  You can also use it as an opportunity to transform the situation into something better.

Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument

The Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument is a model for handling conflict:

The model organizes five conflict management styles based on two dimensions:  assertiveness and cooperativeness.

Five Conflict Management Styles

Here are the five conflict management styles according to Thomas, K.W., and R.H. Kilmann:

1. Accommodating – This is when you cooperate to a high-degree, and it may be at your own expense, and actually work against your own goals, objectives, and desired outcomes.  This approach is effective when the other party is the expert or has a better solution.  It can also be effective for preserving future relations with the other party.
2. Avoiding -  This is when you simply avoid the issue.  You aren’t helping the other party reach their goals, and you aren’t assertively pursuing your own.  This works when the issue is trivial or when you have no chance of winning.   It can also be effective when the issue would be very costly.  It’s also very effective when the atmosphere is emotionally charged and you need to create some space. Sometimes issues will resolve themselves, but “hope is not a strategy”, and, in general, avoiding is not a good long term strategy.
3. Collaborating – This is where you partner or pair up with the other party to achieve both of your goals.  This is how you break free of the “win-lose” paradigm and seek the “win-win.”  This can be effective for complex scenarios where you need to find a novel solution.  This can also mean re-framing the challenge to create a bigger space and room for everybody’s ideas.  The downside is that it requires a high-degree of trust and reaching a consensus can require a lot of time and effort to get everybody on board and to synthesize all the ideas.
4. Competing – This is the “win-lose” approach.  You act in a very assertive way to achieve your goals, without seeking to cooperate with the other party, and it may be at the expense of the other party.    This approach may be appropriate for emergencies when time is of the essence, or when you need quick, decisive action, and people are aware of and support the approach.
5. Compromising – This is the “lose-lose” scenario where neither party really achieves what they want.  This requires a moderate level of assertiveness and cooperation.  It may be appropriate for scenarios where you need a temporary solution, or where both sides have equally important goals.   The trap is to fall into compromising as an easy way out, when collaborating would produce a better solution.

By knowing your own default patterns you improve your self-awareness.  Once you are aware of your own patterns, you can pay attention to whether they are working for you and you can explore alternatives.  By using a scenario-based approach, you can choose more effective conflict management styles and test their effectiveness for you and your situations.

Photo by ashraful kadir

“Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.” –
Aristotle

Judo is a Japanese martial art meaning “gentle way.”

One of my manager’s at Microsoft referred to my colleague’s ability to influence others as “Mental Judo.”  My colleague was highly effective at influencing others in a gentle way, whether it was to share his own opinion, help others see another perspective, or to find another path.  His approach was highly effective and surprisingly simple.

His mental judo boiled down to three things:

1. Ask questions over make statements
2. Share a story
3. Ask somebody to share their story

Ask Questions
Rather than just make a statement or take a strong position, my colleague would ask questions. His questions created curiosity.  He invited people to explore the path.  His soft approach made a safe haven to explore an idea, without making people defensive and without coming across like an immediate critic.

Share a Story
Everybody loves a story.  My colleague was a good story teller.  His stories were short and insightful.  Rather than just state a conclusion or tell somebody they were wrong, my colleague would simply share a relevant story of his first-hand experience.  You can argue facts, but you can’t argue somebody’s experience.  His stories were a gentle way of sharing an alternative view.

Ask About Their Story
Asking somebody to share their story, is a simple way to see another point of view.  When somebody shares their story, they take you on their journey.  You can learn their mental model.  This helps explain why they see the situation as they do.  Together, this helps explain what’s behind their conclusion, and it puts their drivers and concerns in context.  It also helps you know whether this is first-hand experience, or hear say, etc.  It all starts so simply too … “Can you tell me about a time when you used that?”

How can you improve conflict resolution?  Do you find yourself stuck in conflicts or arguments that go nowhere fast?  You know the ones, where the longer you argue, the more you spiral down.  If you don’t know the secret of conflict resolution, you can literally spend a lifetime butting heads and locking horns.  If you know the secret, then you can recognize situations and quickly get unstuck.

What’s the secret of conflict resolution?  … Shifting tense.   Rather than focus on the past or the present, shift to the future.  The future is choice and opportunity.  In Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion , Jay Heinrichs writes about resolving conflict more effectively by shifting tense.

Past, Present, Future
The past is about assigning blame.  The present is about values.  The future is about choice:

• Past = Blame
• Present = Values
• Future = Choice

Example of Blame, Values, Future
Heinrichs uses an example to make the point.  Imagine a scenario where a couple is in their living room, reading books and listening to music.  In response to her request, “Can you turn that down a little?” , he can respond with blame, values or choice:

• Blame: You’re the one who set the volume last.
• Values: So that’s what this is about.  You hate my music.
• Choice:  Sure, I’d be happy to.  But is the music too loud, or do you want me to play something else?

Forensic, Demonstrative, and Deliberative
According to Heinrichs, Aristotle thought tenses were so important that he assigned a whole branch of rhetoric to each one:

• Forensic (past-tense) rhetoric threatens punishment.
• Demonstrative (present-tense) rhetoric tends to finish with people bonding or separating.
• Deliberative (future-tense) argument promises a payoff.

The past tense is good for whodunits and for courts of law.  The present tense is good for describing people who meet a community’s ideals or fail to live up to them.  The future is good for making joint decisions.  The future skips right and wrong, good and bad, in favor of expedience.

Switch Tense to the Future
Heinrichs suggest switching tense if you find yourself stuck:

If you find an argument spinning out of control, try switching the tense.  To pin blame on the cheese thief, use the past tense.  To get someone to believe that abortion is a terrible sin, use the present tense.  The future, though, is the best tense for getting peace and quiet in the living room.

I think this is as simple as asking a solution-focused question.  For example, “What’s the solution?” … or “How can we solve this?”

Focus on the Future
Rather than get stuck on right or wrong, or good or bad, you can shift to the future.  Heinrichs writes:

We expect our arguments to accomplish something.  You want a debate to settle an issue, with everyone walking away in agreement – with you.  This is hard to achieve if no one can get beyond who is right or wrong, good or bad.  Why do so many arguments end up in accusation and name-calling? The answer may seem silly, but it’s crucial: most arguments take place in the wrong tense.  Choose the right tense.  If you want your audience to make a choice, focus on the future.  Tenses are so important that Aristotle assigned a whole branch of rhetoric to each one.

To put this in practice, at work rather than ask somebody “why are you late?,” I ask them “how can you show up on time?”   This moves the argument from blame to opportunity.

Control the Issue
Do you want the issue to be about blame, values or choice.  Don’t get stuck in blame game or fighting over values.  The most productive arguments focus on choice.  Heinrichs writes:

Do you want to fix blame?  Define who meets or abuses your common values?  Or get your audience to make a choice?  The most productive arguments use choice as their central issue.  Don’t let a debate swerve heedlessly into values or guilt.  Keep it focused on choices that solve a problem to your audience’s (and your) advantage.

Control the Clock
Use tense as your friend.  To move the ball forward, shift gears to the future.  Heinrichs writes:

Keep your argument in the right tense.  In a debate over choices, make sure it turns to the future.

The point here is that if you are aware of the tense that you’re in, you can shift it deliberately to be more effective.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• Many arguments that fail take place in the wrong tense.
• Past is blame, present is values, future is choice.
• Focus on the future for more productive arguments.

My Related Posts

• Agree, Build, and Compare
• Overcoming Resistance with Entanglement Strategies
• Framing Compelling Arguments
• Refuse the Sucker’s Choice

“If you can’t go around it, over it, or through it, you had better negotiate with it." — Ashleigh Brilliant

When you don’t get what you want, don’t get angry.  Compliment, disarm, and clarify instead.  Rather than focus on your anger, focus on getting what you want. 

In Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated , Dr. David D. Burns writes about complimenting, disarming and clarifying over focusing on your anger.

Overview
Here are keys to negotiating more effectively::

• Find a way to genuinely compliment.  This helps reduce friction.
• Find a way to agree.  This takes the wind out of their sails and helps build rapport.
• Clarify and assert what you want. 

I think the key is staying focused on what you want rather than expressing your anger.  Getting angry will escalate emotions and put you in a less resourceful state.

Summary of Steps
According to Burns, here are ways to negotiate more effectively:

• Step 1 – Compliment
• Step 2 – Disarm
• Step 3 – Clarify

Step 1 – Compliment. 
Instead of telling them off, compliment them on what they did right.  It’s an undeniable fact of human nature that few people can resist flattery even if it’s blatantly insincere.  However, since you can find something good about them or their work, you can make your compliment honest. 

Step 2 Disarm. 
Disarm them if they argue, by finding a way to agree with them regardless of how absurd their statements are.  This will shut them up and take the wind out of their sails.

Step 3 – Clarify. 
Clarify your point of view again calmly and firmly.
Repeat the above techniques over and over in varying combinations until the other person gives in or you reach an acceptable compromise.

Additional Recommendations
Burns writes:

“Use ultimatums and intimidating threats only as a last resort, and make sure you are ready and willing to follow through when you do.  As a general principle, use diplomacy in expressing your dissatisfaction with his work.  Avoid labeling him in an insulting way or implying he is bad, evil, malignant, etc.  If you decide to tell him about your negative feelings, do so objectively without magnification or an excess of inflammatory language.  For example, “I resent shoddy work when I feel you have the ability to do a good professional job” is far preferable to ‘You mother —-! Your —- work is an outrage.’”

The key is to stay diplomatic and avoid using insults and threats

My Related Posts

• Disarming Technique
• How To Improve Your Crucial Conversations
• How To Deal with Criticism

Photo by Andyrob