Maximizing Performance Through Applied Common Sense*

In resolving conflict, after you have defined the problems, generated options, and started thinking about what the best options are, now you want to choose the options.  It is a good idea that you, along with those with whom you have conflict, after looking at all the options, start deciding which options are the best.  Take two or three options and put them together.  When you put them together then you can decide how to implement the options, however, you will want get clear on that before you do it.  If you get sign-up to the process of choosing among multiple options you will have much more forward movement.  That’s how you resolve conflict. 

The first thing to do to resolve conflict is find the problem.  Then you want to generate options and as you are generating enough options you are going to want to evaluate them.  The best way to evaluate the options is to look at all the options and rate them 1 to 10.  Ten means it is a great idea, one means it stinks.  When you use a 1 to 10 scale to determine the value of each of the options, the highest numbers become self-evident.  I recommend using the 1 to 10 scale and the best options will emerge by themselves. 

If you are going to resolve conflict, the first thing you want to do is find the problem.  After you have done that, you want to generate possible options.  Let’s suppose you are in conflict with some other people and you’ve agreed to sit down to work it out.  Their first impulse is to come up with what they think is the “right” solution.  My recommendation is to come up with multiple options; certainly more than two, preferably three or more.  If you have paper, write them all down.  You will have a temptation to evaluate the options as they are suggested.  I recommend that you withhold evaluation and that they do so as well.  Generate multiple options and you will see that the more options that are available, the less conflict there is. 

If you are going to resolve conflict, one of the first things that you need to do is define the problem, particularly with the person with whom you have conflict.  The way you do that is you ask them, from their view, what the problem is.  When they tell you, you listen and play it back and simply ask for clarification.  If there are more people with whom you have conflict, you ask them as well.  The more you ask, the more you find out, from their view, what the conflict is.  Then listen for the nature of the conflict in the form of a question as opposed to a statement.  So rather than saying, “The problem is we don’t get along.” say, “The problem is, how are we going to figure out to get along?” When you put it in the form of a question, you are much more likely to get answers and then you will get better results.  This is step 1 in resolving conflict.