Opinions Good Thinking Conflict: A real growth industry
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Good Thinking
By John Canfield
Management Consultant
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"Conflict is definitely a growth industry." – Fisher and Ury
Roger Fisher and William Ury (Harvard Negotiation Project) speak with wisdom and practical perspective in their book Getting to Yes. They address the ever-growing attraction in our society to conflict — here meaning when two or more people actively and publicly share their very different points of view. And share, and share, and share — selling all sorts of newspapers, tabloids, movies, reality TV programs, political analysis, etc This kind of conflict is demonstrated by behaviors and decisions that most often defend (and defend, and defend) a person’s point of view.
This article series for years now has encouraged readers to think about this conflict stuff as an very significant source of waste, and learn to move past the unproductive forms of conflict (position, personality, ego, etc.) and learn to embrace productive conflict (generating and selecting more good options than we can implement). Win-win is indeed possible and profitable. We just have to change our minds.
Lawrence Green (Real People) helps us understand the often-unproductive forms of conflict by describing them and how they’re different:
Perception: “You say potato, I say potato…let’s call the whole thing off.”
Needs: Different goals – different and cooperative. Agree to disagree. Two persons want the one remaining orange. They do the fair thing, They cut it in half. If they had dug deeper in their conversation, and identified the intent of their choice (one wanted the rind to make a pie, the other the pulp to make some juice) they both would have doubled their prize.
Values: Different goals – different and non-cooperative. Fight to the finish. Here it seems our amygdala (emotionally driven part of the brain) takes over and prevents thinking that would serve us better for the long term. Our best thinking takes place in our prefrontal cortex, home of executive functioning.
Green importantly points out that it is very difficult to resolve value-based conflict. The best strategy seems to be to move the issue into needs or perception types of conflict if possible.
Let’s consider how to do this.
Fisher and Ury suggest the following – I will add my suggestions for techniques:
Separate people from the problem. Fundamentally you want to create another place to look to break escalating eye contact, and something else to focus on — like diagrams and data. So for example, say two people are in conflict about how a particular problem occurred. To avoid the blame-arm wrestle, step to a white board, set to the right side, and draw a box about five inches square. In the box, write a description of the problem. You then work with those who might know, including the two, to place other data-boxes upstream (to the left) of the problem to guess how the problem was created. You’re on a treasure hunt for the source of the problem, for example, not a fault-hunt for who is to blame for the problem.
Focus on interests not positions. Here brainstorm, prioritize and document what the group wants the process to do — success as measured by:
You can learn more about these techniques at my YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/canfieldgoodthinking
The leadership style used here effectively could be described as facilitative. Working with people to help them come up with an alternative they like. Political representatives, please take note.
Two great movies to see this leadership style in action (without the advantage of white boards etc. – more a leadership style review) are:
So what
This approach to reducing conflict actually is more a series of suggestions of how to promote, provoke and capitalize on conflict where conflict is productively seen to be a healthy presentation of options. These approaches and tools seem to have the effect of engaging the prefrontal cortex and executive functioning.
Conflict managed this way helps teams build both great options while they build support for the options. People who are very involved in the generation and consideration of options they presented are far more likely to support the results.
Independent trainer and meeting facilitator John Canfield helps clients build high performance business teams. Reach him at 616-392-2634, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or visit www.johncanfield.com.