Divine Days Community CIC

Conflict Resolution

How do you deal with conflict?

Conflict can be a highly stressful situation, where anxiety levels can rise above what someone can cope with.

What situations do we see conflict? For me there are several

1. In A Relationship
2. Driving
3. On Social Media
4. On The Phone, Usually Customer Service
5. In Shops
6. Over Politics and divisive subjects

How we deal with conflict can really support our mental health, rather than fuelling it. In a world where freedom of speech is pedalled out on a regular basis, people only interact with those who confirm their own beliefs at this stage of the 21^st century.

So how do we resolve conflicts? Do we know? Or do we avoid conflict and walk away? Sometimes the latter is a good way of diffusing a situation, I have in place a question I ask myself before getting into a potential conflict situation. The question is, what benefit is this discussion or debate going to have for me? If the answer is non, or to make me feel like “I win the argument” then that’s not really a good place to begin from. If it is to understand another person’s perspective and disagree (or agree) in a calm and thoughtful and respectful way, then that works for me, to gain knowledge and understand someone else’s point of view. I don’t have to agree with them but showing them the respect they deserve in an adult conversation is a positive step.

So, from the bullet points above, there are many different ways to have and resolve conflict, or escalate conflict in our society, these are not finite but are the most pressing to me currently. So going through them individually.

Relationship conflicts – Do you have to be right? No, but do you have to be heard? Yes, relationships work best with open conversations about all sorts of things, from who does what in the home, to what interests you have and how to make time for them. Working through potential conflict situations and keep working over a prolonged period and wanting to do, makes for a healthy relationship.

Driving – When driving I used to be quite aggressive and an angry driver, but ultimately who does that negatively impact? Only me. I was once in a traffic jam and I’d made a silly manoeuvre which was bad driving on my behalf, the person came alongside me, wound his window down and instead of shouting, he made a stupid noise and laughed, before driving off. I found this hilarious, and it totally diffused a situation which may have escalated. Don’t get me wrong, I still use my horn if someone has driven poorly and it enables me to ensure they know I am there, but since then I haven’t felt the need to wave my arms or be aggressive to another driver.

Social media – As someone who used twitter as my main platform, I had a time where I’d always respond to anything that differed from my point of view, my rule was to try and debate, but if they used profanities then I’d ignore any further conversation. This rule worked pretty well, until I made, what I thought, was an innocent post about adoption on World Adoption Day. This turned ugly pretty quickly and I only saw this from my perspective and hadn’t considered other points of view. Did I do anything particularly wrong? No, but it did make me think about why I was using the platform and how best to use social media moving forward. Now I use it to spread positive messages and always try and end on a note which is kind and centred in understanding and in the past 12 months, have had no major issues with any user on the platform.

Publicly – In shops or on telephones. Having worked in retail I find customer service pretty poor in this country on the whole and am happy to challenge poor behaviours, you could say it is my pet hate. So, when I receive great service, I always ensure I feed it back. On many occasions though when receiving poor service, I will broach the subject immediately, usually when colleagues are talking to each other (when in shops) or on the phone when they put on several holds for no apparent reason. I do always try to approach this calmly and with the notion that if they are receptive, then I can explain what good looks like. They can use this information however they like but hopefully will ensure they look at their own standards in future. This doesn’t always work and can build conflict, at which point, I would walk away or hang up.

Finally, over divisive subjects, such as politics. This is as hard a subject as any, but s important to find out what someone else’s perspective is on a subject and try and respectfully disagree, if that’s the outcome.

So, the question is Why am I engaging in this conflict? If the answer is unclear, walk away. Walking away can be a way to resolve conflicts and is no issue about someone’s character, but if it is something worth fighting for, then respectfully engage, but you don’t have to convince them you are correct, just putting your point of view across should be enough.