The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. -- Carl Jung
The Invisible Wall
You have been there before. You are speaking with someone important to you - a co-worker, boss, spouse, child, client or neighbor - when suddenly your conversation hits an invisible wall. You cannot reach the other person. No matter what you say, the words don't get through to the other's ears. "What just happened?" you think to yourself. Anger, fear, and anxiety are the bricks and mortar in these walls. Just like real walls, these are not built instantly; it takes time, but eventually, brick by brick, these emotions lay the foundation for a formidable barrier.
The invisible wall blocks our conversations and relationships. The wall leads to avoidance. You give each other the silent treatment and avoid talking about the underlying issues. Your resentments keep building up and the wall gets taller. You subtly dig at the other person's faults. You may even badmouth the other behind his back.
What happens when you confront that person? The build up explodes into blow up. You both raise your voices; the floodgates release and pent-up anger streams out. The two of you morph into adversaries. When you step out of the room, you both say to yourselves, "Wow, that was worse than not talking about it."
So you bounce back into avoidance. You act as if nothing happened. You leave a room if you think the other person will be arriving soon. This pattern continues until the next disaster gets triggered and then the relationship spirals downward further. Seeing people handle these situations, I am astounded by how similarly very different conflicts play out.
My curiosity about conflict and passion for problem solving has guided me to a professional life as a mediator, consultant, professor, coach and writer. In these roles, I have helped people resolve their conflicts, whether it has been between labor and management over contract bargaining, researchers and marketers over product development, managers and employees over performance evaluations, landlords and tenants over cleaning a front yard, parents and administrators over a librarian firing or politicians over project budgeting. Though I could not see the walls between the warring parties, the walls were tall and imposing.
Tear Down the Walls
While these situations, and the people and issues involved have varied dramatically, the words that people used and the actions they took to break through the walls were strikingly similar and are tied to one central premise: first and foremost they made their invisible walls visible. People accessed something authentic inside themselves. They faced their own fears with courage and shifted away from seeing themselves as victims. They were able to see the part they played in the situation. They got out of their own way and reached out honestly to the other person.
To resolve conflicts from the inside-out means to first examine one's own thoughts, feelings and actions. This internal shift fundamentally alters interactions. People take greater responsibility and release themselves from debilitating restrictions. They persuade the other party to reciprocate. This is about being inner directed rather than letting the outer conflict control you. An outside-in approach places the individual more at the mercy of the other person and external events.
Walls sometimes crumble instantly. Walls sometimes deteriorate over years. Walls get rebuilt. Conflicts in human relationships vary dramatically and have their own inner logic. While some ideas herein may provide immediate relief, the ideas are meant to contribute to a long journey. Many conflicts are long-term affairs that require vision and commitment. This column identifies approaches already existing in you, though often overlooked, and suggests ways to do so more consciously.
Over the years, I have kept notes about things said or done that transformed adversaries into allies. I logged hundreds of examples and ideas as I negotiated, mediated, coached and taught. I wrote down advice from colleagues. I wrote columns on this topic for journals and websites. I read books on negotiation, conflict management, mediation, counseling, history, and politics. I continually noticed that the approaches unlocking conflict were informed by an insight into one's own or the other's actions.
This column is a mining of those notes and underlying experience. The recommendations here are more focused on conflict resolution as an art rather than a science, though it is clearly both. These ideas are more about mindset rather than specific technique, though both are important. Successful conflict resolution depends on many factors and I do not pretend to cover them all. What I have targeted is an increased ability to understand one's own blind spots, strengths and vulnerabilities to enter a conflict with confidence and compassion. The simple approaches presented here have worked for many and will be helpful to you in resolving your conflicts.
How to Treat the Difficult Person as a Pathway Rather than a Wall
Let's begin by examining some conventional wisdom. Difficult people are the problem, right? You see walls that you are absolutely sure they have constructed. Perhaps you are right. They may be irrational and stubborn. And by the way, if you asked the other person, they may be thinking the exact same thought about you.
Here is an example. An adult daughter had a mother who worried a lot. The mother constantly called to make sure tasks were done, e.g. she would be picked up on time and the airplane tickets had been bought. The daughter's blood pressure went up whenever the mother was around. She blamed the mother for heightening her anxiety. The mother saw the daughter as irresponsible since she remembered the times the daughter forgot to do important tasks. When the daughter reframed this as an opportunity to work on her own anxiety, this altered her dynamic with her mother and reduced the conflict and her blood pressure.
Each reaction to the difficult person is a learning opportunity. If rage overwhelms you, then you can learn to control rage. If fear paralyzes you, then you can learn how to gain safety from that fear. The lessons will not be mastered in a minute, a day or a month, but these lessons give you the chance to make progress. The person with whom you are in conflict provides a pathway for your development and ultimately for the conflict itself.
In my next column I will write about how to approach conversation as a craft in order to connect with the other person to create stronger bond and prevent walls from building in the first place.
GRANDE LUM, Director and Professor, Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution, UC Hastings Law School.
Grande Lum works with organizations and individuals to enhance their negotiation skills through practical methods of communication and preparation. He is the author of The Negotiation Fieldbook and has published extensively on negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution. He is the Founder and Managing Director of Accordence a global training and consulting firm, and was a founding member of ThoughtBridge. He co-managed the Alternative Dispute Resolution Externship Program at Stanford Law School and was a teaching fellow with the Harvard Negotiation Project, under the tutelage of Roger Fisher. Mr. Lum received a JD from Harvard Law School.
For further discussion, contact Grande at grandelum@accordence.com