Generally speaking, conflict makes us uncomfortable. This is more true for some than others, but based on years of observing this in various fields, I easily recognize the pattern now. A conflict emerges. Two people on the same work team who thought things were going well now seem to want to go in different directions. Or one is not recognizing the other’s efforts. Or one is perceived by the other as not working in true partnership. It usually starts small–an email or a few sentences in a meeting, or a page of some work product. And when that conflict initially emerges, what is the typical response?

Walk away. Change the subject. End the meeting and reconvene later. Silence.

Anything but actually confronting the conflict. There is often a logic to the response. You can tell something is wrong but you need time to think about it properly. You wouldn’t want to make the other party mad unnecessarily. So you’ll gather your thoughts and talk about it later. Or maybe you want time to calm down about it if you had an emotional reaction. That all makes sense–in theory.

But in practice how often do you actually come back to the conflict after you’ve taken your time? The more time passes, the harder it is to talk about the conflict. It’s like a taxi meter is running on the “stakes” of what is involved. Every day you wait, that meter is still running so by the time you bring it up, you’ve got $50.00 on the stakes meter, whereas if you talked about it immediately, it would have been $2.50. So we usually convince ourselves that we can work it out without confrontation, only to discover later that we can’t when the conflict has escalated to a new level.

So here’s the very simple (but not easy) tip: move towards the conflict. As soon as conflict emerges, go towards it and talk about it. When I used to do international conflict resolution, we would bring in black belts in the martial art of Aikido to teach this lesson. Aikido is a defensive martial art, where the aim is to disarm your attacker while protecting them from harm. In many Aikido moves, when an attack comes, you move towards it first, rather than away. If you move away, the attacker has more room to redirect and to increase the speed of the blow. Moving towards them changes that and allows you to redirect the energy behind the attack.

You do the same with conflict. That first email or statement the other party makes that feels like it’s off, or upsetting, or in conflict with your views, interrupt the current conversation and address the conflict. You may not even fully resolve it right then, but by addressing it early, you’ve taken a lot of the energy out of it, and that “stakes” meter is now off, or running at a much slower speed.

Our negative view of conflict often comes from our negative experiences in conflict situations, but those are frequently precipitated by our inability to address conflict earlier on. So try to raise your awareness of when you choose to avoid or wait on a conflict, and try experimenting with moving towards it instead.

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