Defining Conflict

I recently heard an interview by Tim Scudder, co-author of “Have a Nice Conflict,” and learned an interesting way to view conflict. 

Every time you see a conflict, you have an opportunity to learn what matters to people.  You learn how they defend their interests and how they define their self-worth.

He made a point to differentiate between a disagreement and a conflict.  Just because you disagree with me doesn’t mean that we are in conflict.  We can simply disagree, which gives us the opportunity to talk through our differences.

A conflict is when we start to get personal, and we add an emotional component to our interactions.  Yes, your self-interest is getting in the way of mine, but there’s more to it than that.  We’re no longer able to calmly and objectively articulate what you want and what I want.

Once emotions come into play, logic fails us.  I start to feel threatened.  I start to feel that my very self-worth is being attacked.  In turn, I strike back at you — wanting to hurt you as intimately as you hurt me.

Whatever we were discussing — and, now, fighting about — must be extremely important to both of us, because why else would we gamble so heartlessly with our self-worth?

Whatever threatens our self-worth is really important to us; therefore, every time you have a conflict with someone, you learn what matters to that person.  Once you figure out why that person is upset — what really matters to that person — then you can start figuring out how to resolve the conflict.

But to actually resolve the conflict, I must suspend my wants and needs — my self-interest — and focus on your wants and needs.  That’s darn hard when we’re already in the middle of a heated argument where emotions have already taken over and each are protecting our self-worth from further attacks from the other.

No, it’s much too late by then.  Once we get to that stage, neither of us is concerned with the problem or the other person.  We are only focusing on our own self-worth.

Tim Scudder elaborated on this phenomenon by explaining that there are three stages of conflict. 

• In the first stage, I can see and focus on the problem; I can see and focus on my needs; and I can see and focus on your needs.
• In the second stage, as the conflict starts to deepen and gets more severe, I start to focus only on the problem and my interest.  You’ve dropped out of the picture.
• By the third stage, my emotions have blinded me to everything but my interest.  I don’t even see the problem anymore.  I’m only defending and protecting my self-worth that is being threatened and attacked. 

It’s at this third stage that it’s really too late to try to come to any type of resolution with me, because neither you nor the initial problem exists for me.

The trick is to keep conflicts from escalating into the second or third stages — where we lose focus of each other and the problem.

How do we do this?

I guess we’ll tackle that the next time we’re together. 

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