What causes conflict? Interesting question if you think back to those situations, particularly at work where conflicts happen so often (even if they are swept under the rug and ignored.)
When you get right down to it, conflict comes from a clash of values. You like results and efficiency and the other person values relationships. Conflict is bound to occur and emotions are created by those conflicts.
As a leader though, to resolve that conflict you’re supposed to be empathetic. It is hard to do that when you just can’t appreciate the other person’s values.
How can you resolve the conflict without empathy?
How can you empathize when you can’t relate to their values?
Some days there are more questions than answers.
Great blog Charles – good food for thought. I have two comments:
1. In disagreements caused by value conflicts, one tactic is to first appeal to a higher value that you both share. Think of what happens in successful sales and how influencing can be achieved through establishing similarity and small agreements first.
2. Also, better to think of value disagreements as occurring along a continuum rather than as ‘you either value this or you don’t’. They may have the same values as you but theirs are just not as strong as yours so you either work with that and try to move them closer to you appealing to the shared value or you have to move yourself closer to their values. Being emphatic and ‘seeking first to understand, then to be understood’ can help shift your thinking closer to the other. That’s how empathy helps.
Thanks for the thoughts. I do agree that a solution to value conflicts is to appeal to a shared higher value.
As to being empathetic though I guess it depends on your definition of empathy. If you see empathy as ‘being able to recognize emotions’ then that isn’t so hard. If however, you hold empathy to a higher standard, that of ‘vicariously experiencing another person’s feelings’ then it is much harder.
To reach the higher standard I think one would need to be vulnerable. How can you vicariously experience their feelings though when you don’t share those values and you might in fact be repelled by those values?
Charles/Keri – all good thoughts. When conflicts occur, I have often found it valuable to do 3 things:
1. Acknowledge the conflict openly and take your share (not expressed as a percentage)of responsibility for the conflict
2. Then ask the other person – “as we seem to be in a place where we agree to disagree – where/how do you feel (not think) we should go from here? [then shut up and wait]
3. Find the middle ground where both parties “can live with” the road to moving forward
My two cents…
Bob