Maximizing Performance Through Applied Common Sense*

The final step to resolving conflict, once you have defined the problem, come up with multiple options, evaluated the options, chosen what you want to do and implemented the solutions is to follow up.  It is absolutely essential that you follow up.  You must meet again with the people with whom you have conflict.  If you fail to follow up the whole thing will evaporate. And, when you do follow up, fine-tune and keep going and the resolution is solid. Remember to follow up. 

In resolving conflict, once you have defined the problem, come up with multiple options, evaluated the options and chosen what you want to do, implementing is critical.  Now, you want to assign who is to do what and when.  Perhaps you are to take care of Option A and Larry is to take care of Option B.  When you make those assignments of who is to do what and when, you’ve got the traction you are looking for and the conflict can now be resolved.  So the key is to make some accountability and assignments and you are on your way to resolving conflicts.

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.  

One of the things you will want to do if you are going to resolve conflict is to review the way you think about compromise.  If you’re a them vs. us, win - lose, black - white, kind of person then often you think that any kind of compromise is a loss.  Compromise is, you give a little and I give a little, and we make a quid pro quo kind of deal.  But, if you think that anything less than what you want is a loss, then you are going to associate weakness and loss with compromise.  My recommendation is to remember if you are going to resolve conflict, compromise is one of the essential tools to do it.  When you learn to compromise, you are probably going to resolve the conflict and move on. 

One of the things that you want to do if you are going to resolve conflict is you must adjust your view on conflict.  Lots of people think that conflict is bad and therefore, destructive and you must avoid it.  The reality is, conflict is inevitable and it’s what happens with people.  If you understand that it is inevitable, sometimes when you actually resolve conflict, you feel relived; it feels like the air is cleared.  Rather than deciding that conflict is bad, consider that conflict is normal and right on schedule.  If you think that way, you are much more likely to confront it and learn the skills to resolve it.  So conflict is inevitable and you can learn the skills and you’ll get better results.

When it comes to resolving conflict, most of us are ill-equipped and unskilled to deal with it effectively.  Most of us do either “fight” or “flight.”  “Flight” is where you run away from the conflict hoping that it will take care of itself.  “Fight” is an opportunity for a contest where there is an adversarial outcome that goes on and on.  The first thing to think about when it comes to resolving conflict is the “third option.”  The “third option” is to resolve.  Resolving the conflict means we have to have the skills to do it and we want to come up with an outcome that we can live with, something that is less than perfect but still workable.  So think about resolving conflict rather than flight or fight. 

If you think about conflict that you’ve been dealing with in one respect or another, you’ll notice that every time you encounter conflict you start to polarize.  What that means is that you’ll interpret anything that creates stress from a position of two options.  You’ll think about right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, win vs. lose, and all vs. nothing. When you start polarizing you are only thinking two options and you start obsessing about the loss, the nothing, the stupid or the failure.  So what you do is make sure that in any situation around which there is conflict, that there are a minimum of three options.  You’ll be struck to see that when you offer three or more options any conflict now seems to be manageable.  So instead of polarizing, make sure there are multiple options… a minimum of three.