ver the last months, I came in several business situations where there was a latent or open conflict between the persons around the table. As happens in most conflicts, each party has the solution in terms of what another party could change, so that the problem would be solved. As often (and as predictable), this other party does not want to change. Take for instance a truck driver that arrives at his final destination, only to discover he doesn't have the necessary papers so that the customer can process the cargo. Often, the staff at the Depot will react "that's not our problem, you have to solve it". And then the discussion begins. The truck driver calls his company, the administration of that company calls their own customer (for whom he did the transport), that party calls back to the depot, etc. In general, it's always someone else who will have to take the blame. And finally, one discovers who made the mistake (or someone takes the blame, just to get to a solution), and then, suddenly, all parties start to work together to solve the problem, where the party that didn't make mistakes stays at the more passive end.


The recommendation?

If one analyses these conflicts, they are escalating as long as every party insists on their own privileges and claims to be "right". To make matters worse, the more people discuss, the more convinced they are they are right.

How come that people stay convinced that they are right? Simple, most conflicts are related to differences between persons: different viewpoints, and different attitudes. For instance, if I'm proactive, I may blame another party for "waiting too long". Or if I think people should decide for themselves, I may lame someone else for being "indecisive". Or if I want to concentrate at work, I may blame others for being "intrusive", and so on…

The breakthrough may come when a third party intervenes and starts managing the diversity. This involves showing both other parties how they are acting, and what causes problems (mostly by showing that both have good intentions ,ad that the differences in attitude get in their way).
Another solution path starts when one of the parties involved in the conflict starts looking at the problem from another angle. In stead of focussing on "what caused the problem" and "who is to blame", the question becomes: "Okay, so what do we do now, to get the problem fixed?"


Further resources:

Compare your attitude with someone else's. Let me point out how to do this with a coaching or teambuilding application of the iWAM test. You and the other party fill out the test. Once both are filled out, you type the other person's e-mail address and get a comparison report, indicating 5 patterns on which you are much alike and 5 patterns on which you score the farthest apart.