Work this busy month has revolved around a theme: dedicated, ethical, and well-liked people got into conflicts that could have been prevented or solved early. My clients were in situations that left them feeling unfairly treated, angry, misunderstood, and/or the victim of an injustice. How did it get to be this way for intelligent, good people?
It can’t be reduced to a simple answer, but there was a pattern. Once they felt disagreed with, they saw their own perspective, defended their position, and got bogged down in a conflict they could not find a way to end with grace.
Here’s a typical example of the situation and how they eventually addressed it.
If a boss reprimands an employee and the employee accepts that, there is no dispute. If the reprimand feels unfair, the employee challenges the boss creating a dispute if that is how the boss responds. If they put this incident into a framework of ongoing personality and stylistic differences and make the reprimand about everything the two of them ever had differences about, it is a conflict.
There is no dispute.
Employee might accept the reprimand because: employee admits wrongdoing; boss is too powerful to contradict; employee feels reprimand is trivial in the bigger picture; boss speaks in a way employee does not take seriously; employee does not respect boss’s opinion, and so on. In each possible option, the employee makes meaning of the boss’s words and decides, consciously or unconsciously, how to react. The dispute is prevented because the employee mentally normalizes the reprimand as less important than, say, doing the job well or getting along.
The employee challenges the boss.
Once employee engages boss, it’s boss’s turn to decide what meaning to put on the interaction. The dispute may emerge or not, depending on the respective meanings they put on each other’s words and attitudes. Decisions about meaning are not made in isolation. They are grounded in history, character assessment, judgment of effort, value to the team, and other factors. The prevention strategy at this level is to ask yourself: What assumptions am I making without verifying their accuracy? How are my feelings about the person affecting how I perceive the person’s words and deeds? What are my words, deeds and attitude contributing to how this interaction is unfolding? If I change or manage how I feel and react, what else would change?
They put this incident into a framework of ongoing differences.
Because boss and employee have a history, a dispute over the reprimand will recall each time the other has been perceived as irritating, overbearing, wrong, or an obstacle to success. Their words are no longer about the reprimand, but call up experiences such as: “you always”, “you never”, “last time this happened”, “you promised”, “when will you ever”, and reconstructions of other times that expectations were disappointed. The reprimand takes on the meaning they make of their entire relationship. The incident that caused the reprimand is replaced with allegations of character flaws, inadequacies in abilities, and judgments about the other one’s lack of ethics and honour. The prevention strategy at this level is to ask yourself: what am I attributing to the person that has nothing to do with this incident? Is how I feel about our relationship affecting my response to the words the person is saying now? If my best friend said exactly the same things what would I assume s/he meant?
Every new dispute incident piles up in the context of the ongoing conflict.
Things may seem calm until the next incident, at which time the fuse is shorter, recovery time to equilibrium is longer, hurt feelings are deeper, and mistrust is stronger. The next time boss makes a decision employee takes it personally. The next time employee stumbles boss perceives it as lack of commitment. The prevention strategy at this level is to ask yourself: is my judgment about this situation being affected by left over feelings from the conflict? Do I perceive this as being done to me rather than something that just is? What is my responsibility, if any, for the situation?
You can address disputes before they become conflict systems. Talk to yourself honestly about what is really going on and how you are interpreting it to fit your image as the innocent party. Whether it is boss, teammate, partner, or other person, the question is not who is right or wrong - each believes s/he is right and the other is wrong. The better question is what meaning are you, a human with feelings, making of what is going on? Change the meaning you attribute to the situation, and your perception of the qualities you attribute to the other person can also change.
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