Conflict Management. What is your habitual style?
We are all different. We also, by default, operate from the mindset of scarcity and separation. This is the unconscious training that we get from our childhood experiences. We all learn unknowingly, through repeated experience how we view difference and conflict.
We have learnt that someone got what they wanted, and someone didn’t. When this happened, we implicitly learned three things:
The difference usually means someone wins while other loses; someone is right while the other is wrong
Those with more power get their needs met more often
And conflict is inherently dangerous because we can lose that which is important to us
Because of this conditioning, very few people are at ease in the face of conflict. We each tend to respond to this in one of the several different ways as
- Conflict Avoidance: Attempting to avoid addressing conflict
- Competitive confrontation: Engaging directly with aggression or force
- Passivity: Yielding to conflict, giving up our own needs, or appeasing
- Passive Aggression: Engaging indirectly by expressing displeasure/hostility while pretending all is well
Reflective questions:
What is your habitual style of handling conflict?
How is this working for you in the now?
What is the long-term implication of your style?
What is the underlying belief beneath this style?
Would you want to change this style?
What would you want to be your learned style to manage conflict?
Be more. Do more.