6 Ways Nice People Can Resolve Conflict

How you behave during a conflict and how you resolve it affects your career in the most direct way. If you win conflicts by acting harshly and aggressively, you lose in the long run because your ability to hurt and offend colleagues someday will inevitably work against you.

Experienced employees can confirm this, because they know that over time the balance of power changes, former subordinates become bosses, and vice versa.

If you remain passive during the conflict in order to save face and be pleasant to everyone, this is also not an option: so you you lose the opportunity to achieve your goals and defend your interests.

The key to dealing effectively with conflict without being aggressive but also not passive is to find that distance between you and the other person where you don’t become aggressive or demand that you comply with your needs, but keep your interests and interests in mind. declare them. This approach is called assertive.

If we draw schematically, in the form of two arrows, aggression and passivity, then aggression will be directed in one direction, passivity in the other. And, accordingly, both approaches will take you away from the goal. And assertiveness will be in the middle, because assertive people never move too far to either side during conflict, maintaining balance. This means they hear and respect both their interlocutor and themselves.

How Nice People Can Resolve Conflict

It’s easy to think that nice people are too passive and therefore accommodating. But such constant compliance will sooner or later end in an explosion and even more aggression. To resolve the conflict and not act at the same time either aggressively or passively, you need to learn how to make the conflict healthy.

How to make the conflict healthy if you are a pleasant person and do not want to offend anyone?

1. Learn the art of not only being silent, but also speaking

Estimate how much silence will cost you. Sometimes it is very difficult to force yourself to speak if the situation is clearly not in your favor.

The easiest and fastest way to motivate yourself to get out of your passivity zone is to remind yourself that if you do not try to change the situation, it absolutely right will turn against you.

The main thing you need to do is shift the focus from what kind of “headache” it is and how much you don’t want to get involved in it, to the details of the subject under discussion and what what would you like the ideal situation to be?.

2. Say “and” instead of “but”

This simple technique is to replace “but” with “and” – immediately makes conflict more constructive.

For example, your colleague plans to use a significant portion of the total budget for advertising and promotion, and you would like to hire a smart employee instead.

Your first impulse will probably be to say, “I see that you want to spend this money on advertising, but I think we need to hire one more person now.”

Instead, say, “I see that you want to spend this money on advertising, and I think we need to hire one more person now.”

It would seem that the difference is quite insignificant. But the first phrase is constructed in such a way that you broadcast your disrespect for his idea, and the second states the facts and invites them to discuss. Your interlocutor will understand that you are working with him, not against him.

3. Use questions

When you declare your interest, it is shouldn’t look like you’re punching holes in your opponent’s idea (even if it actually is).

For example, you are going to say, “Your idea won’t work because you don’t know how our sales team is organized.” And you are right.

But rather say: “Do you think our sales team, in its current composition, will be able to do this?” So you give the opponent the opportunity to explain how he imagines it.

4. Don’t say “always” and “never”

These words immediately put the opponent on the defensive, if only because the person is too complicated on his own to do everything the same way.

Instead of this state the facts. If something really repeats itself too often, say: “I think a similar situation happened last year.”

5. Ask questions until you get to the point.

It is very important. We we rarely understand the motives of the other and what made him make this or that decision. First of all, we concentrate on the fact that they want to offend us or our interests are infringed, and this immediately triggers an emotional reaction. Automatically, this makes all the ideas of the “enemy” stupid in our eyes.

Try to understand the reasons. Ask questions: “Why did you decide to do this? Why do you think it will work better? Can you help me understand?” Even if you don’t communicate directly, these questions contribute to greater understanding and trust.

6. When objecting, offer a solution

Nobody likes when their idea is simply crossed out.

Build the dialogue like this: “One of the problems that I see is … But I think we can solve it if we find a way how … “.

So you say that understand the enemy, recognize his idea and want to work together. And understanding and willingness to cooperate are the main killers of any conflict.