At the broadest level, we define our identity by two things:

–Who we are – our personality, our beliefs, values etc.
–What we do – our actions, behavior, etc.

We want others to accept us the way we are and to accept the way we do things. When either of these expectations is challenged, there is conflict. Usually it’s a play for power – sometimes there are other reasons…


All of us are unique – living in our own slice of the world, imagining our perceptions and our beliefs to be absolute. Let’s call these slices Reality-Slices, because that sounds really neat. Reality-Slices are a bit like multiple dimensions within the same space, conveniently allocated to each human so they get to feel important they have their own bit of Reality-Slice estate.

When Reality-Slices intersect as people come together head-on, there is some friction. We call this conflict. When the Reality-Slices are aligned a bit better, we call that collaboration.

Conflict is not the opposite of Collaboration. In many cases, it is simply an earlier stage in the relationship. Remember the storming stage in teams?

It will now not be a surprise to you that there are generally two kinds of conflict:

Don’t be like this – related to others having an issue with who we are
Don’t do this – related to others having an issue with what we do or how we do it

If you are still surprised that these are the only two kinds of conflict, go back to the beginning of this section to read the first few lines again.

Avoidance

So the question is: if conflict is so commonplace and natural, why do we skirt around conflict and avoid it like the plague? Well, there are basically two reasons:

you don’t want to remove the mask – when there is conflict, the friction can generate feelings of resentment, irritation and rejection. Rather than disclosing such real feelings, people tend to either avoid the conflict situation or pretend all is fine and under control. In some cases, people use withdrawal to shield themselves.

–you don’t want negative consequences – people worry that conflict and conflict escalation may cause damage to a relationship, to organization morale, to the status quo. More importantly, this might then lead to negative personal consequences. In organizations, a typical situation is where managers avoid confronting staff on performance issues because they don’t want to damage the relationship or their popularity as a manager. There is also this worry that the conflict may stir up a hornet’s nest of other issues.

Conflict Triggers

Knowing that conflict is caused by friction between Reality-Slices is a useful starting insight but it is now time to look more closely at the surface where the friction takes place – zooming in on the specific triggers of conflict.

Let’s go back to the basic types of conflict:

a) Don’t be like this

Here the main conflict triggers are Expectations of Behavior and Expectation of Values. Examples of this are “You are not the person I was hoping you’d be” or “I felt you’d be someone who understands the value of time but I am really disappointed”. We really want other people to behave as we would want them to and to adopt a persona that we craft for them. When they don’t, we get upset.

b) Don’t do this

Usually the main conflict triggers here are based on Expectations of Process and Expectations of Results. Examples of this are “I asked you to put together a report based on demographics; why did you use a geographic perspective?” or “well the immediate financials are important but for heaven’s sake when are we going to look at the bigger picture”. You see, people derive their sense of how a process should work and where it leads to from the vantage point of their own Reality-Slice. This can lead to differences in perspective and vision – the line-of-sight from my vantage point in the organization (say in HR) may be very different from the line-of-sight for another person (say in Finance).

Bottom Line – The So-What?

Conflict is commonplace – read this article and understand it. Whenever there is possibility or occurrence of conflict, use your knowledge of the key conflict triggers to allow people to adopt postures that lead to better alignment of Reality-Slices.

So for example, when building a team, to reduce the possibility of  unnecessary friction, your most important work will be defining expectations of behavior, values, process and results.

Now you understand all you wanted to know about conflict management – Let us hope it will be enough for the next conflict…