Running Toward Conflict
Most people consider conflict a dirty word. All we hear on the news is conflict, conflict, conflict: it is presented as negative. But it’s not. You need to run toward it. It is nowhere as big a deal as you think it will be. Conflict only happens when two parties care about something. If you had another you beside you who just kissed ass, you wouldn’t have conflict. But I’ve trained myself to run toward it fast so a molehill doesn’t become a mountain. And when it does, it’s usually just in my own head. Contrarians in your life are healthy and make you think better. It’s an adjustment, it makes you work hard. I often hear “I will let that sleeping dog lie for a while”. No! That’s a terrible idea. A sleeping dog will gnaw at your subconscious until you deal with it.
We are conditioned to think conflict is a dirty word. We hear that every day and every night in the context of “bad equals conflict”. So we are conditioned to avoid it. From a DISC profile perspective, everybody except high Ds runs from it. High Ds behaviorally understand there is only conflict if you care about something. The D behavior wants to solve that. There’s no emotion when they think through an issue, it’s just about solving it. Most people do their best to avoid conflict, which makes things worse.
Nothing is usually as good or as bad as you think it is unless you let it simmer. Then it grows. As soon as something feels bad, address it, understand whether there is an issue there or not. It’s a good thing to do less wondering. Wondering is problematic for the psyche.
If somebody emails you, “Let’s have a meeting at 10am, I need to talk to you”, then there’s immediate anxiety. Don’t let it eat you up. Just write back: “Great, can I have the topic of the meeting so I can prepare?”. This kind of approach keeps you from staring at the ceiling all night, being mean to your spouse, ignoring your kids because you figured an email meant you were in trouble when it was actually just to tell you you’re getting a bonus.
The faster we can talk about everything, nothing becomes a mountain, it’s all a molehill. Every problem can be solved, running away from it makes the problem worse. Running away makes people try to solve things independently rather than work as a team. Run toward it.