The Three Conversations in Conflict

I don’t like conflict. In fact, left to my own devices, I actively avoid any conversation that could lead others to dislike or misunderstand me. And by the time I do finally address an issue festering beneath the surface, my emotions are so entangled with the matter at hand that I fail to communicate and – just as importantly – listen effectively to work toward a resolution that benefits everyone concerned.

We often bring our own judgments and perspectives into a conflict intending to blame others and justify ourselves. This creates an adversarial environment where we fight to WIN rather than work to RESOLVE. This is why so many conflicts damage relationships. If one side wins, usually both sides lose.

So, how do we approach a disagreement or offense so that one understands the other’s concerns and both parties work together to find a mutually beneficial path forward? We will spend the next several weeks exploring this question. For this post, however, let’s focus on one of the most important aspects of healthy conflict: Listening to the Three Conversations.

Often in conflict, each person has their own version of the matter at hand. To truly communicate then, we must first work to understand each person’s perspective so well that we can articulate it clearly ourselves. To accomplish this, we must listen not only to what others say, but also to what they are NOT saying.

In their book, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen argue that beneath every statement, we each have distracting thoughts and feelings swirling in an internal vortex of multiple simultaneous conversations that distort our perceptions. These fall into three basic categories:

The “What Happened?” Conversation.

We often believe we can observe an event objectively. What happened is what happened, right? Yet each of us creates a story about what happened based upon our assumptions, personal experiences, and how we see the world. These influence the conclusions we draw from a given situation. Furthermore, we often fail to realize that others hold equally valid interpretations based upon their own experiences.

When we focus upon conflicting conclusions without considering the story that led to them, communication quickly collapses. Rather than working to understand another person’s story, we argue to convert them to our story. This rarely succeeds, because people tend to not change without first feeling understood.

We must listen to understand one another’s interpretations of what happened and recognize how our own history has impacted our perspective.

The Feelings Conversation.

Just as we have our own interpretation of what happened, we each have our own experience with how it made us feel. We may attempt to keep our feelings out of a disagreement, but they are usually too powerful to ignore. They will leak into a conversation through body language, tone of voice, sarcasm, impatience, defensiveness, or detachment.

Others go to the opposite extreme by allowing feelings to explode into a conversation in damaging or embarrassing ways. Every feeling is real and valid, to be sure. Yet as we mature, we must develop the skills to communicate our feelings respectfully.

We must learn to understand our own emotions and listen to the emotions of others without blame or judgment.

The Identity Conversation.

Conflict often creates anxiety because it threatens our self-perception. It can lead us to ask, “What does this say about who I am as a person? Am I competent? Am I a good person? Am I worthy of love?”

Such “identity quakes” can cause us to react in fear and derail any progress toward resolving the issues at hand. We must recognize that we are complex and nuanced individuals and our mistakes do not define us.

Conclusion:

“What happened? How do I feel about it? What does it say about me?” These three questions are the currents in which we swim during conflict. As we become more aware of how we answer these questions, and as we strive to be sensitive to how they are answered by the other party, we will more effectively navigate difficult conversations, work toward resolution, and emerge on the other side with our relationships strong and healthy.