Curiosity and Conflict
In 2015, our book, The Essential Conflict Handbook, was published. The first sentence in the Introduction is: “Conflict thrives in the world today. One only has to pay attention to current events to be convinced that we live in times when, if conflict doesn’t exist, someone will find a way to disagree or disrupt whatever is happening”
Little did we know that eight years later, we’d find ourselves in a time of unprecedented unrest and massive changes in how we live and work together.
April is Workplace Conflict Awareness Month. The objective of the month is “to shed light on an ever-pervasive phenomenon within American culture and professionally resolve entirely preventable conflicts.”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think a month, or a lot of months, will accomplish that goal.
However, I do have a suggestion for you to try when you find yourself in a conflict situation—workplace or other type of conflict.
Ask questions in a respectful, kind, and empathetic way to gather as much information from the other person. When you’re curious about where they’re coming from, you may find you are closer to a solution than you think.
Curiosity is simply a desire to learn and isn’t that to be encouraged? Curiosity is a way to find out what the other person thinks or maybe even more important, how they feel.
And when you are genuinely curious about the other person and you ask them questions, not much will change unless you listen carefully to their responses.
In Stephen Covey’s classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit 5 is “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”. In that chapter, Covey quotes a Greek philosopher who said: “There is a reason why we have two ears and one mouth—so we can listen two times as much as we speak.”
Asking curious questions can also help us overcome our own personal biases and truly understand the other person’s perspective.
Curiosity makes us better listeners and being curious can positively open communications and resolve conflicts.
Give it a try. These ideas may not bring Americans closer together on some of the major differences we face, but it can’t hurt.
For lots more ideas on how to resolve workplace conflict, we hope you will order a copy of The Essential Workplace Conflict Handbook. It is filled with examples and suggestions for you to try in your workplace or your life. There is also a companion book titled The Conflict Resolution Phrase Book that contains 2,000 + phrases to use in any difficult conflict situation.