Conflict resolution, or the ability to dissipate conflict between two people, is an extraordinary skill to develop to breed success in later life.
The ability to resolve conflict and different opinions, which reach boiling point in modern society, seems to have disappeared, or is rapidly disappearing.
One of the greatest anecdotes I ever heard for conflict resolution came from David Servin Schreiber's book, Healing Without Freud or Prozac.
The best thing you can do in conflict resolution is to breathe before you speak. Servan Schreiber was a psychiatrist building a very successful unit in the United States who recalled the story of going into a patient's side room when the family were present and being screamed and shouted at by the family because they were unhappy with something that he was doing. His immediate reaction was to just turn around and defend himself and shout back, but what he did was walk out of the room and count to 10 (he was seemingly one of the most well-adjusted people I'd ever read) before walking back in to explain his position.
This seems like a simple trick, an obvious thing to do, but think back to the arguments or the fights, and the situations of vocal conflict that you found yourself in and realise how often you haven't done it.
It's the same as the ‘sleep on it thing’, when we get a message or an email that we don't like, the worst thing we can do is answer it now. Creating the space to understand someone else's view or their opinion, or understand the place they might be coming from, might be one of the greatest things you can ever learn.
Today I met someone who was presenting himself as a superstar expert in everything, but that was before we had met. I was laughing about the fact that they were presenting me with something which was bringing them up in the hugest possible way, until I actually met them, and realised that what they were doing was covering up their massive insecurity with something that they felt protected them. When you understood that that's what the person was doing, it became very easy to disarm them, very easy to see their vulnerability, very easy to become almost friends.
Conflict resolution, we're never not going to have conflict, so we'd better find some resolution.
Blog Post Number - 4509
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