Conflict Competence

It’s become a mantra that stress ages; stress kills; stress reduces quality of life. Stress is a major problem of the modern developed world. There are a lot of strategies for reducing and managing stress. Notoriously missing from the list of ways you can control your stress level is perhaps the most obvious one: learn to manage conflict.

On the usual list of strategies are some very good suggestions: eat well, rest, be physically active, smile at people, get a massage, love a lot of people, volunteer, and so on. Excellent ideas all. How about the big idea of transforming your conflicts into collaborative conversations? It’s hard to imagine something that would reduce your stress level more than not having that fight with your family, colleagues, friends, the parking lot attendant, and the person in customer service who keeps you holding on the phone for 20 minutes only to tell you that you need to call someone else. 

Here’s my best suggestion for reducing stress. Learn to do conflicts better. When you feel attacked, decide not to become defensive. When someone says something that strikes you as out of place, decide not to assume the speaker meant the worst intention. When you feel someone is trying to control you, find a different reaction than blowing up or automatically resenting and resisting. 

Change your reaction and you can change the interaction. Change one thing and you change everything. The only thing you can change is yourself. The only thing you can control is your reaction and assumption. Start there. Instead of becoming defensive, resentful, argumentative, or demanding, try asking a question to determine what the person meant to say. Rephrase what you heard to ensure you understand their intention as well as what you assume they intended.

I love the cartoons that have two parts: what was said and what was heard. One cartoon has the wife saying, “If you’re getting yourself some water, I’d love some too.” What the husband, depicted in the second panel, heard was: “You’re such a lazy slob you never do anything for me.”

Are you caught in this pattern of reacting to what you hear instead of what the person said? You won’t know if you just assume instead of asking and engaging in a constructive conversation. Do your stress level a favour and develop a better way of doing conflict.