Why Recipes Are Helpful
I like recipes: I like them for cooking and I like them for projects and I especially like them for conflict resolution. Recipes make it easy to take action. When you are trying something new and you are a little uncertain of how to go from A to B, following a recipe increases your confidence. When I’m cooking a new dish, I keep checking the written directions. It’s not until I have cooked the dish several times that I allow myself to improvise. That’s because I enjoy knowing that something is tried and true. And that is one of the reasons I share these negotiation and conflict management strategies with you. Strategies I have used and I know they work. Like how to turn arguments into conversations.
Partial List of Ingredients
First, come with an attitude of curiosity. If you believe you already have the answer and that you know what the other person is thinking, you have already set the stage for a lose/lose outcome. Curiosity brings you information and allows you to understand core of the conflict.
Second, learn to make distinctions: unbundle your conflict in order to understand and resolve it. I’ve given you one distinction already: are you arguing over a measurable issue or is the problem coming from different points of view over how to get some thing done, a conflict about process. There are other distinctions you want to be aware of, for example, is the argument about tasks or relationship issues?
Third, acknowledge the other person’s point of view. To be able to acknowledge someone requires that you listen. You won’t acknowledge someone appropriately if you haven’t paid attention.
Ingredient No. 4: Acceptance
The next step is acceptance. Just like acknowledgment is not the same as agreement, the same goes for acceptance. Acceptance is not agreement. Acceptance allows you to go forward. Resistance keeps you stuck.
Here’s an example from Liz, a biochemical engineer with excellent trouble-shooting skills and a respected manager of a small team at a growing company.
While Liz’s job is very high profile and demanding, she has developed a strong commitment to her own work/life balance so she can be healthier, happier and more connected with family and friends. Her spouse Jonathan works nearly 70 hours a week, and they rarely have time to be together. In addition to commitment to his career, he is very anxious that he’s never doing enough or what he does is not good enough and he won’t get ahead. The conversation about spending time together quickly moves into an argument, given that they hold oppositional points of view.
For quite a while, Liz was stuck in both denial and self-righteousness, fueling their arguments. In response to Jonathan’s belief that he needs to put in very long hours or his work won’t be adequate, she countered by denying what he was saying. This is how she explained it to me, “He can’t possibly believe what he’s saying. I don’t believe him; his ideas are crazy!” Or, she pulled out her “I know best” attitude: “Let me tell him what I know and what’s right and he’ll change his mind.”
Does anyone reading this right now think she was able to turn this argument into a conversation by following her own homegrown recipe?
What if she tried accepting what he was saying? “Jonathan tells me he feels he can never do enough to be good at his job. This is his reality at this time.”
Here’s the next part of the conversation, and of course, I am making this example very concise so it’s an easily readable illustration. In a recent interaction, Liz acknowledged Jonathan’s point of view: “You’re saying that you need to put in these long hours in order to stay on top of your work.” Now she can ask, “What if that wasn’t the case, what if you didn’t have to work so hard. What would you like to spend some time doing?”
Here is where a conversation becomes possible. Liz is now an expansive space. She started the conversation with “what is.” Now they are talking about “what could be.” Obviously this is a hardcore problem and one conversation isn’t going to provide all the answers. What I’m illustrating for you is the importance of acceptance, non-resistance, so you can get unstuck, and create room for a conversation that opens up a new way of thinking and talking.
I’m not giving you a magic bullet: these steps take courage and the willingness to take a risk trying something new. You might not get the ideal response the first (or second) time your try a new approach. Especially if your partner, whether it is your spouse, your employee, or your boss, has been trained to expect an argumentative attitude from you.
I’m sharing this courageous and challenging strategy with you because I want you to have more peace of mind, less stress, less time eaten up by other people’s problems, and more time to spend doing what you love.
ACTION STEP
How about a baby step? Is there a place or person in your life where your automatic response is denial or self-righteousness? Consider if your response has helped create a dialog or perpetuated the argument. If the latter, would you consider accepting the other person’s reality as “true” for them, even if it makes no sense to you? Without taking this simple but courageous step of acceptance, there will be no peace: no inner peace, no peace in your relationships, and certainly no peace in the world.
