Conflict is all around us. It has the potential to exist to some degree in every family, personal relationship, workplace or social group of any kind – indeed any situation in which two or more people interact with each other.

Our inability to deal with it effectively can cause friction and stress and at the extreme end, it can cost us our health and peace of mind, relationships, opportunities, jobs – it can even threaten our lives. After all, what is war if not large-scale conflict?

Managing conflict is one of the key social skills to master for effective interpersonal relations, and being able to handle it appropriately is one of the key leadership skills, since every leader will inevitably have to deal with conflict from time to time.

Many people, however will do almost anything to avoid it, in the hope that the issue will somehow miraculously resolve – which it rarely (if ever) does – usually rearing its head to become an even bigger, more complex and difficult challenge to deal with downstream.

 

But believe it or not conflict has its place

Conflict is a product of diversity. And we need diversity to make effective decisions, solve complex problems and come up with great ideas.

Workplace cultures that are too homogeneous are unlikely to be truly innovative. They’ll have significant blindspots, breed complacency and stagnate.

And sweeping conflict under the carpet by avoiding underlying issues can be potentially very dangerous as illustrated in this Ted Talk by Margaret Heffernan:

https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_dare_to_disagree

 

Major types of conflict

Most causes of conflict originate from these natural and basic differences between people:

  • Differences of opinion
  • Different beliefs
  • Differences in style, behaviour or ways of doing things
  • Differences in personality

Conflict can also be caused by poor communication, incompatible goals and competition.

 

Conflict Styles

We all have our preferred style of dealing with conflict. Some people will do their best to avoid conflict, others will repeatedly accommodate, for some it is very much “my way or the highway”, there are collaborative approaches and for some it’s all about the win:win. It can be useful to be aware of your preferred style or styles and to consider the potential benefits and negative implications of your style.

 

How to prevent or resolve conflict

Assertive communication

Even reading those two words is possibly filling you with dread, but the truth is that many potentially conflict-laden situations can either be headed off at the pass or avoided altogether if the issues are raised and dealt with early and from the relative calm of a small, open, non-emotional conversation instead of waiting for them to become larger, more knotty and more emotional.

If we’re trying so hard to avoid any conflict, then it is going to be a challenge to be proactive and speak up early.   Also, if we’re unused to communicating assertively, it can be difficult to know where to pitch our communication. We might communicate either too passively (avoiding saying what needs to be said, maybe by skirting around the issue or avoiding it altogether) or too aggressively (saying what needs to be said in an overly confrontational manner).   Neither passive nor aggressive communication is likely to be effective in conveying your message. When people communicate passively it can be really difficult to grasp exactly what they mean, and when being too aggressive, people will be far more affected by the tone than they will the words and will try to defend or protect themselves.

Practice assertive communication by “speaking your truth” with people who you know have got your back, and with conversation topics that aren’t too emotional or too important. Gradually build your muscle in this area working your way up to more challenging conversations and with people who are more likely to challenge you.

Also, come back to the purpose of the communication and focus on that. What needs to be said to resolve the issue, how can it be said to most effectively get the message across and what is your intention behind what you are trying to convey?

Acceptance and tolerance of diversity or difference

I often wonder why it seems to be so difficult for us to tolerate or accommodate people’s different beliefs, opinions, ideas, styles, behaviours and personalities. My personal opinion about this is because these things are tied to our identity, how we see ourselves. And we don’t generally like questioning who we are with any real depth, it can be really confronting.

The thing is, we don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are. Each of us is perceiving the world through our own unique and complex set of lenses or filters. These lenses are with us from childhood and comprise such things as the experiences or events we’ve been through (and maybe most importantly the meaning we have assigned to those experiences or events) the beliefs we were raised with or exposed to, ideas and opinions we’ve taken onboard from our interactions with others, our personality, our values and our thinking styles. Becoming aware of this and accepting it means that we can be more accommodating of diversity and we can realise that no matter how convincing an argument might be, it may not change someone’s opinion. For this reason I have become far less black and white around what I think is true, right, the best idea etc – and the amount of conflict (and associated drama) in my life has drastically reduced. This might be a big idea to grasp, but if you want more peace and less conflict, adopting this approach could help.

I’d like to hasten to add that this doesn’t mean I don’t stand up for what I believe in, it just means that I am a lot more considered about the issues I’m prepared to stand my ground on, and I’ve realised that most of what we argue about or diverge on isn’t that important, so I let that go. I’m comfortable stating my opinion – but I know that it’s just that, an opinion.