How to disagree and still stay friends

Whatever the cause of disagreements and disputes at home or work, there are skills that can help you resolve conflict in a constructive way and keep your relationships strong and growing.

What is conflict?

Conflict is when people disagree on an issue or can’t get along with each other. This is just a part of life. It’s natural for people to disagree at times because we all have different interests, values, goals and needs.

Other causes of conflict are that sometimes we don’t understand other people and what they really mean. We can misinterpret the other person’s true intentions or another person can misinterpret the meaning of something we say or do.

Conflict happens in personal relationships with family, parents, caregivers, friends, partners, teachers and colleagues. It also happens in the wider society. We see conflict between groups with different interests and values – religion against religion, race against race, country against country, greenies against mining companies, pro-abortionists against right-to-life groups, city folk against country folk, political party against political party, and sport team against sport team. You can probably think of many other examples.

It can also happen within yourself when you learn something new that is different to what you always believed. The conflict inside yourself can make you cling to your old beliefs or it can make you change your beliefs. So, conflict can result in change – often for the better.

Conflict may be defined as a struggle or contest between people with opposing needs, ideas, beliefs, values or goals. It can escalate and lead to non-productive results, or conflict can be beneficially resolved and lead to high-quality final products.

Although very few people look for conflict, more often than not conflict is caused by miscommunication between people with regard to their needs, ideas, beliefs, goals or values. Conflict management is the principle that all conflicts cannot necessarily be resolved but learning how to manage conflicts can decrease the odds of non-productive escalation.

This involves acquiring skills related to conflict resolution, self-awareness about conflict modes, conflict communication skills and establishing a structure for the management of conflict in your environment.

Consequences

People deal with conflict differently. This means there are different consequences of conflict. It can get dangerous when people get aggressive and violent.

Conflict can lead to increased learning and greater understanding of each other’s viewpoints when dealt with wisely. Some people avoid conflict, which means they don’t get any say in what is happening.

Some of the negative aspects of ignoring conflict or badly managed conflict can be:

• Having a lot of anger that you don’t express.
• Trying to pretend that there isn’t a problem.
• Confusion.
• Conflict gets worse.
• Separation or family breakdown.
• Feeling resentful.
• Stress and tension.
• Illness, aggression and violence.
• Relationship problems.

The positive aspects of dealing successfully with conflict are:

• A sense of achievement and happiness.
• Stronger relationships.
• Learning more about others and yourself.
• Relaxation, good health, peaceful sleep.
• Teamwork.
• Learning.
• Feeling positive.

You probably already have some very good skills in dealing with conflict. However, we can all learn more skills to deal with conflict, which will bring more positive outcomes.

Dealing with conflict

It’s important to deal with conflict to avoid all the negatives we already talked about. The most effective way to deal with conflict is to negotiate with the other person involved. Work out first if the conflict is worth dealing with.

If it’s an important issue in your life or involves a person close to you, then it should be dealt with. If it’s something minor, for example, just a slight disagreement that will go away if you leave it, then perhaps that’s the way to go.

Although there are positive ways to deal with conflict rather than pretending it’s not happening or getting aggressive, it’s also important to know that there are times when conflict can be difficult to control and sometimes there is no easy answer.

Not all conflict will be resolved. However, most of it can be handled well if you use a positive, respectful approach.

One of the most popular ideas to dealing with conflict is the win-win approach. This does not mean it’s a competition – it’s more about both people being satisfied with the outcome.

It’s about finding out what you both want and where there are areas that you can both agree on, then working towards them. It’s about working together as partners trying to solve a problem, not as opponents trying to win against each other. It’s about working together on a basis of mutual respect to find a satisfying solution.

STEPS TO A WIN-WIN OUTCOME

Raise the topic (with respect): Bring the conflict out into the open. Do this in a calm way when both of you have the time and energy to sit down and talk peacefully. Say what the conflict is from your view and then ask for the other person’s view. Ask the other person if he would like to work out a solution with you.

At this time, it’s also okay to tell the other person how you feel. It is only natural that conflict will bring out different emotions such as sadness or anger. Say how you are feeling, rather than taking it out on the other person – but be careful here.

If you tell the other person your feelings in a way that is blaming towards him, you may get him angry and lose the opportunity to discuss the issues, so you say how you feel without saying that he makes you feel like that.

The main thing to focus on at this time is what the problem is and what the issues are. Separate the issues from the person and the relationship. It is very important to treat the other person with respect while you’re discussing this.

At this point you don’t have to go on to work it all out – you have stated that there is a problem. You could then decide together whether to make a time to work on this together or to work on this now. You may like to print this topic out and use it together to try and resolve the conflict.

Understand each other: You should both have an uninterrupted time to explain how you see the conflict. Show respect for each other by not interrupting and really listening to the other person. Listen with your ears, your eyes and your heart, and ask for more detail if you don’t understand.

Do this in a positive way – no attacking or accusing. Really try to understand where the other person is coming from. Be open about what you might have done to make it worse. Be honest with yourself and the other person about this. By now you should both have a good picture of what is troubling the other person.

Define the problem: What exactly is the problem? Can you both define it together? Try and write it down in one sentence that explains the problem.

What do you both want? Think about what it is you both want. Answer this together by working out the areas that you can both agree on. How would you both like things to be?

Thinking about these things helps you work out together what your goals are. Once you’ve worked out together how you’d like things to be, write down the goals that you both have (this means what you would like to happen).

Brainstorming solutions: Now that you really understand each other and have worked out what the problem is and have worked out some goals, you can start to think about ways to get there.

Think of all the possible ideas you can come up with together that will move you both towards your goals – it doesn’t matter how good the ideas are at this stage. Write them down as you go on. When you finish brainstorming ideas, look at all the ideas you came up with. How can you make each idea work? What might be the outcomes of each idea? Decide which are the best ideas.

Putting it into practice: Make an agreement about which idea you’ll work on together. Work out all the details together clearly. You can even write it down so you both know you are clear and are agreeing on exactly the same thing.

A written agreement means it’s still clear later on, when one of you may have forgotten some details. If something comes up that means you can’t keep your part of the agreement, go back and work it out again.

If the solution looks like it’s not going to work after a fair time, then go back to the list you brainstormed. Try another idea. This may seem like a lot of hard work, but it gets easier each time you practise. And remember, there are all the good outcomes to resolving conflict that we already talked about. And all the not-so-good outcomes when you don’t resolve conflict.

Skills

A healthy relationship requires knowing the skills necessary for ‘friendly fighting’ – dealing with conflict respectfully and working together to find a workable solution. Friendly fighting means working out differences that matter. It means engaging passionately about things we feel passionate about, without resorting to hurting one another. It helps us to let off steam without getting burned. Friendly fighting lets us ‘fight’ and still stay friends.

Healthy relationships seem intuitively to understand the notion of friendly fighting. Some people have been fortunate enough to grow up in families where their parents modelled how to disagree without being disagreeable. Others were so horrified by the way their folks treated each other that they refuse to repeat the behaviour in their own relationships.

Most people, though, learn the art of friendly fighting by working it out together and supporting each other by staying in a close relationship – even when differences mystify, frustrate and upset them. Most come up with stated or unstated rules for engagement that are surprisingly similar.

TEN RULES FOR FRIENDLY FIGHTING

How to ensure that conflicts will strengthen your relationships instead of harming it:

1. Embrace conflict. There is no need to fear it. Conflict is normal, even healthy. Differences mean that there are things you can learn from each other. Often conflict shows us where we need to grow.
2. Go after the issue, not each other. Friendly fighting sticks with the issue. Neither party resorts to name calling or character assassination. It’s enough to deal with the problem without adding a new problem of hurting each other’s feelings.
3. Listen respectfully. When people feel strongly about something, it’s only fair to hear them out. Respectful listening means acknowledging their feelings, either verbally or through focused attention. It means never telling someone that he or she shouldn’t feel that way. It means saving your point of view until after you’ve let the other person know you understand that they feel intensely about the subject, even if you don’t quite get it.
4. Talk softly. The louder someone yells, the less likely they are to be heard. Even if your partner yells, there is no need to yell back. Taking the volume down makes it possible for people to start focusing on the issues, instead of reacting to the noise.
5. Get curious, not defensive. Defending yourself, whether by vehemently protesting your innocence or rightness or by turning the tables and attacking, escalates the fight. Ask for more information, details and examples. There is usually some basis for the other person’s complaint. When you meet a complaint with curiosity, you make room for understanding.
6. Ask for specifics. Global statements that include the words ‘always’ and ’never’ almost always get you nowhere and never are true. When the other person has complaints, ask to move from global comments of exasperation to specific examples so you can understand exactly what he or she is talking about. When you have complaints, do your best to give examples to work with.
7. Find points of agreement. There almost always are parts of a conflict that can be points of agreement. Finding common ground, even if it’s agreeing that there is a problem, is an important start to finding a common solution.
8. Look for options. Fighting ends when cooperation begins. Asking politely for suggestions or alternatives invites collaboration. Careful consideration of options shows respect. Offering alternatives of your own shows that you also are willing to try something new.
9. Make concessions. Small concessions can turn the situation around. If you give a little, it makes room for the other person to make concessions too. Small concessions lead to larger compromises. Compromise doesn’t have to mean that you’re meeting each other exactly 50-50. Sometimes it’s a 60-40 or even 80-20 agreement. This isn’t about scorekeeping. It’s about finding a solution that is workable for both of you.
10. Make peace. An elderly friend who has been married for 68 years tells me that she and her husband made a rule on their wedding day to never go to bed angry. They agreed from the outset that the relationship is more important than winning arguments. Sometimes this meant they stayed up very, very late until they reached a workable compromise. Sometimes it meant that one or the other of them decided the issue wasn’t really important enough to lose sleep over. Since they both value the marriage, neither one gave in or gave up most of the time. When one did give in or give up, the other showed appreciation and made a peace offering of his or her own.

Managing and resolving conflict

You can ensure that the process of managing and resolving conflict is as positive as possible by sticking to the following guidelines:

• Listen for what is felt and said. When you really listen, you connect more deeply to your own needs and emotions, and to those of other people. Listening also strengthens, informs and makes it easier for others to hear you when it’s your turn to speak.
• Make conflict resolution the priority rather than winning or being right. Maintaining and strengthening the relationship, rather than ‘winning’ the argument, should always be your first priority. Be respectful towards the other person and their viewpoint.
• Focus on the present. If you’re holding on to grudges based on past conflicts, your ability to see the reality of the current situation will be impaired. Rather than looking at the past and assigning blame, focus on what you can do in the here-and-now to solve the problem.
• Pick your battles. Conflicts can be draining, so it’s important to consider whether the issue is really worth your time and energy. Maybe you don’t want to surrender a parking space if you’ve been circling for 15 minutes, but if there are dozens of empty spots, arguing over a single space isn’t worth it.
• Be willing to forgive. Resolving conflict is impossible if you’re unwilling or unable to forgive others. Resolution lies in releasing the urge to punish, which can serve only to deplete and drain your life.
• Know when to let something go. If you can’t come to an agreement, agree to disagree. It takes two people to keep an argument going. If a conflict is going nowhere, you can choose to disengage and move on.

References

https://blog.hubspot.com/service/conflict-resolution-skills https://www.helpguide.org/articles/relationships-communication/conflict-resolution-skills.htm https://www.joinonelove.org/learn/handling_conflict/ https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/projects/leadership-team-management/10-effective-conflict-resolution-strategies/ https://theparticipationcompany.com/2016/06/5-conflict-resolution-strategies/