I heard a different way to articulate conflicts today on a podcast* that might help shed some light or give some different language. Rather than thinking about the actions people want to take as causing the conflict, think of them as positions. And the positions come out of interests. People get entrenched in their positions, as it often seems the only way to meet their needs. But when we articulate the situation more clearly, we can start checking underneath - how does that position satisfy that interest? (How does that action meet your need?) Articulating the conflict often helps us see there maybe there are some things in common as well as understanding the assumptions we have about why our position is “right.” This new terminology adds to the options I have when thinking about these kinds of situations.
Conflicts arise in many scenarios every day - work, home, social situations, politics, … pretty much anywhere you have humans interacting with one another. Often people talk about compromise as the best way to “solve” a conflict. The challenge with many compromises is that they end up being lose-lose. Neither party really gets what they want - they’ve just made sure the other party doesn’t “win.”
The Theory of Constraints approach to conflict resolution is a way of thinking that says conflicts can be removed. Removed, not resolved or ameliorated. The specific tool is the “evaporating cloud” or “conflict cloud.” I also like Clarke Ching’s variant on this of Corkscrew Solutions or his earlier analogy to a stick figure. The general idea is to dig under the conflict to figure out what is going on - the conflict is happening because of the action or position: hold more inventory / hold less inventory; respond immediately / response later; spend money on X / spend money on Y. But also why do we want to take these actions? What is the underlying need behind what you want to do? Even deeper, is there a common goal that ties those needs together? Is there truly a conflict - can we really NOT do both of those things? And if there isn’t a common goal, then this discussion won’t apply either - if we don’t share something in common, why would we want a resolution?
Here is a classic case from business - hold more / hold less inventory. We want to have a profitable business (now and into the future). In order to do that, we need to control costs and we need to protect sales. In order to control costs we must hold less inventory. In order to protect sales we must hold more inventory. And we can’t both hold more and hold less at the same time. A conflict. And when there is a conflict there meetings and meetings and meetings, sometimes a compromise is obtained but then something happens and the conflict rears its head again: the organization misses a sales target, so push out more inventory. Or the finances aren’t looking to good, so cut inventory across the board. A classic sign of an unresolved conflict is this kind of pendulum swing between actions.
Articulating the conflict is just the start, but often a very good one. Now we can start checking the assumptions - the because under the statement “In order to meet need A, I must do X because ___.” And it is in the assumptions where the cloud can be evaporated: we can take one action (or a set of coordinated actions) that will enable us to meet both needs. A win-win.
* The podcast in question was a recent Hidden Brain episode Changing Behaviors, Not Beliefs with Prof. Phillip Atiba Goff.