Is Your Conflict Real or Perceived?

Conflict is a word that instantly rouses a number of negative emotions, as we start to recall conflicts that we are either in right now or that may haunt us from our pasts. It’s not surprising that most people are conflict avoidant. While avoidance of conflict certainly has its time and place (such as in potentially life-threatening encounters), in our everyday interactions at work it often makes matters worse. The longer we avoid confronting the perceived conflict, the worse it can get, as we start to create self-fulfilling prophecies and potentially unwind relationships. We often shift our behaviour when we believe we are in conflict with someone. For example, if we assume that someone doesn’t like us, we might start to find reasons why we shouldn’t like that person…

 “She’s lazy and doesn’t pull her weight.”

“She’s just a mean and nasty person.”

“He’s a loner and a total weirdo.”

Unfortunately, as soon as we label someone, a natural tendency is to look for information that reinforces the label we’ve selected and ignore what doesn’t fit. What if, however, that lazy woman who doesn’t pull her weight is suffering from cancer and chemotherapy treatments that she doesn’t want to disclose? What if that mean and nasty person goes home to suffer 4 or 5 hours of verbal and physical abuse every night? What if the loner and total weirdo is a single father who stays up half the night trying to finish a college degree so that he can make a better future for his kids?

What would it mean for you if you could build a positive relationship with anyone you meet? Most conflicts can be easily resolved if we can become aware of the cues around us and commit to timely actions, with the intent of having positive relationships. Simply asking for more information and considering: “What am I missing here?” can help us with fostering good rapport with others. A good starting point would be to ask yourself, “What might I not be seeing and how might I figure that out?”