Anatomy of a Conflict

Despite all the good advice about resolv­ing con­flict, per­haps best exem­pli­fied by Stephen Cov­ey’s famous line, “Seek first to under­stand, then to be under­stood,” peo­ple most­ly don’t. When the emo­tion of con­flict takes over and the high­er func­tion­ing parts of the brain have been hijacked, what we want is to be under­stood, to be seen for our hurt, our pain, our sense of offense from dis­re­spect first. Even as we try to talk it out, anoth­er voice with­in may say, “he does­n’t get it” or “she’s still cov­er­ing up” or “he says he won’t do it again but I don’t believe him.” We bring, in essence, our firmest opin­ions of each oth­er and the oth­er per­son­’s pre­sumed motives. 

Hav­ing worked as a third-par­ty facil­i­ta­tor over the years with many two-per­son work­place con­flicts, my role seems to almost always include offer­ing a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive to counter the rigid neg­a­tive beliefs peo­ple hold about each oth­er. They often see the oth­er per­son as unre­pen­tant, self-excus­ing, and “hav­ing an agen­da.” Some­times, these beliefs are almost fun­ny because they are so extreme or so clear­ly pro­jec­tions, but most­ly they are just heart-break­ing. It isn’t a case of not lis­ten­ing; it’s a case of lis­ten­ing and then active­ly dis­card­ing the face val­ue mean­ing of the exchange. It goes some­thing like this:

Per­son One: “I did­n’t come to you when it hap­pened the first time because I did­n’t want you to get angry.”

Per­son Two: “It’s because you did­n’t come to me that now I am angry.”

Per­son One: “Yes, I under­stand that. I’m sor­ry. Next time I’ll do it differently.”

Per­son Two: “How do I get through to you how dis­re­spect­ful it is when you talk to oth­er peo­ple but don’t talk to me?”

Per­son One: “I real­ly am sor­ry. I get it!”

Lat­er, Per­son Two says to me in a pri­vate one-on-one debrief­ing, “Per­son One isn’t that sor­ry. She’s just say­ing that. I don’t believe she won’t do it again.”

I ask, “How come?” 

“She did­n’t come across to me as gen­uine,” Per­son Two replies. “Did you think she was that genuine?” 

“Yes,” I say. “I don’t have any rea­son to believe she’s not.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, when Per­son One and I debrief, she says to me, “Do you see what I mean? I try to talk to him and he just gets madder!” 

“Yes,” I say. “And I sense he’s real­ly try­ing to be hon­est with you about what’s going on for him.”

“Maybe so, but I think he knows he can bul­ly peo­ple and he likes it that way.”

You’ll notice as a savvy stu­dent of the human con­di­tion that I become each per­son­’s sur­ro­gate and the argu­ment is basi­cal­ly con­tin­u­ing. Obvi­ous­ly, I see things dif­fer­ent­ly, but if I’m not care­ful our pri­vate debrief­in­gs can actu­al­ly rein­force the conflict. 

The com­bat­ants in this com­mon sce­nario are fail­ing to adopt what my col­league and co-author, Kath­leen Ryan, used to call “the face val­ue rule,” a sim­ple prin­ci­ple about giv­ing the ben­e­fit of the doubt. If I say I’m sor­ry, I’m sor­ry. If you say you get it, you do. If your not talk­ing to me makes me angry, it’s so. It is all about tak­ing peo­ple at face val­ue. This, it turns out, is part of what it means to extend trust rather than hold onto mistrust.

Peo­ple in con­flict can have a dif­fi­cult time with the face val­ue rule because it vio­lates their ego-pro­tec­tive “truths” about the oth­er per­son, truths that are real­ly, of course, assump­tions. The prob­lem is these back­ground assump­tions at the core of the con­flict are not as dis­cuss­able with the oth­er per­son because they are so high­ly offensive.

A more seri­ous con­flict hap­pens when the par­ties begin to assert their neg­a­tive assump­tions in an aggres­sive way.

Per­son One: “What you can’t han­dle is this: you blow up when­ev­er any­body sug­gests you have the tini­est imper­fec­tion. You freak out and retaliate!”

Per­son Two: “And what you can’t han­dle is the fact you’re a cow­ard who sneaks around crit­i­ciz­ing peo­ple behind their backs because you don’t have the guts to say what’s real­ly on your mind. And no mat­ter how many times you say it, the truth is you’re not sor­ry at all.”

Some­times peo­ple dance around these angry “truths” a great deal, but even­tu­al­ly they begin to “leak” and some­times “gush” out in a moment of deep pain. The goal at this stage seems to be to force the oth­er per­son to acknowl­edge a weak­ness by rub­bing it in his or her face. “I see you for who you real­ly are,” seems to be the theme, “and I’m not going to let you get away with it.” But this is gaso­line thrown on the fire. 

And such state­ments can cause a rift that will last for­ev­er. Per­haps in the best case, the par­tic­i­pants in the con­flict each go home with the fire and think about it. Maybe they ask a spouse or friend a cou­ple of ques­tions. “Do I blow up when some imper­fec­tion in me is point­ed out? Do I real­ly do that?” or “Tell me the truth, do I talk about peo­ple behind their backs too much?”

This peri­od of reflec­tion may lead to some new under­stand­ing — if the spouse or friend is both com­pas­sion­ate and truthful. 

Per­son One and Per­son Two go back to work in this bet­ter sce­nario a lit­tle chas­tened, with the ten­sion still there, but in time one or the oth­er may apol­o­gize and the air gets soft­er and clearer.

So, if we were going to replay the whole scene, there’s anoth­er pos­si­ble way the script could run.

Per­son One: “I did­n’t come to you the first time because I did­n’t want you to get angry.” 

Per­son Two: “I did­n’t know you were con­cerned about that, and I’m not sure I understand.”

Per­son One: “It may be as much my prob­lem as yours, and I apol­o­gize for that. You’re right I should have come to you.”

Per­son Two: “Well, you know I do want to hear from you if I’ve done some­thing that’s upset you. But I don’t under­stand why you would­n’t talk to me — that hurts!”

Per­son One: “I know I’ve got to do a bet­ter job of con­fronting my own fears about speak­ing up to you. Are you open now to some feed­back about that?”

Per­son Two: “Yes. Tell me.”

Per­son One: “Okay, here goes…and I would appre­ci­ate your feed­back in return.”

And then, after a time, both of them share: “And here’s what I am learn­ing from our conversation.…”

To get to this sec­ond script requires per­son­al appli­ca­tion of the face val­ue rule — on both sides. Sim­ple enough to under­stand, hard­er to do, but why?

It’s easy to chock it up to ego and pro­tec­tion of self-image. Those are the fear fac­tors, for sure. But at a deep­er lev­el, I think it is also an unfa­mil­iar­i­ty with our own hearts, a faith­less­ness in our abil­i­ty to accept and then to reach across the divides and sep­a­ra­tions that are nat­ur­al to our rela­tion­ships. The heart thrives on being able to bridge, to reach across voids, inner and out­er. It is only our fail­ure to tru­ly accept these voids as real that stops us. We want to believe in a fan­ta­sy — and this too is part of the ego — that we our­selves are hid­den and omni­scient, and that we have no real agency or capa­bil­i­ty to fix things. That’s why the ego wants so bad­ly to believe it can actu­al­ly see into the oth­er per­son, that per­son­’s hid­den motives and real nature. It is this “knowl­edge” of the oth­er per­son that excus­es us to be silent, uncre­ative, pas­sive, walled in. But that is all fan­ta­sy and pro­jec­tion. That’s just our own ego try­ing to remain hid­den by claim­ing the oth­er’s real nature is so plain.

The heart, by com­par­i­son, seems to thrive on how well we accept our real sep­a­ra­tion from one anoth­er, our dif­fer­ences and our egos, so that we can then build a real bridge. This is a great deal more than sim­ply “agree­ing to dis­agree.” The bridge is the prod­uct of the void in the way sep­a­ra­tion is what makes an active apol­o­gy pos­si­ble and nec­es­sary. The void demands our ener­gy, our agency and our forgiveness. 

No one can pos­sess anoth­er’s heart and when we think we can see into some­one else bet­ter than he or she can, then it’s quite like­ly we real­ly don’t know our own heart at all.

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