Disagreement. As simple as it is, when there is a disagreement with some other person in any situation, there arises a conflict. In a Software perspective, it can be just proposing some ideas for a solution which your colleague disagrees or in Real-life, it could be your next vacation plan with your spouse.

Each one of us will be dealing with these conflicts in our own unique ways. Some of them I could think of are changing the situation why the conflict was raised, agreeing to the other person (one of the easiest), forgetting that the conflict is there in the first place - just letting it go and the hardest of all - convincing the other person why your option is better than theirs.

But, these are not going to be the resolution of the problem at hand - just the workarounds. Dealing with conflicts in the above mentioned ways does not bring a closure either to you or the person you are having conflict with and sometimes even for both!

Let's get back the the software perspective, where you and I are trying to solve a problem with two different ideas and ended up with a conflict.

When you have a conflict with someone else, first thing you could do is sit and talk about it .So, both of us can meet and talk about our perspectives, listen to what each others bring to the table talk about each other's mindset. Understanding the other person solves most of the heavy lifting - where you could understand what was my intention behind my solution and I get an idea about your intention, we will be on common grounds.

The next step would be to understand why we hate each other's ideas. This way we will understand where each of our solutions might fail and come closer to solving the problem at hand.

Doing the above mentioned two steps, we will end up in a contract to the solution. The solution could either be any one of the below -

At the end of the day, we both will have a better understanding of the problem, and the knowledge which we lacked when we were working independently and the conflict is resolved with mutual concerns.

Okay, when we have a conflict, we just meet and talk about it and just like magic, does the contract come out? No! There are so many different ways in which the meeting could go wrong.

So, when in the meeting where the sole purpose is to resolve the conflict we have, we need to keep few things in mind -

Listen and understand before you criticize. Be an active listener and get complete understanding of the other person's idea and thought process. And when the other person is talking, keep your criticisms to yourself until you get the complete picture.

Explain your idea simple and clear. Prepare yourself way ahead of the meeting and think of ways why the other person is not interested in your idea, so that you could have answers when criticized.

Accept criticism without ego. When there comes a time where the other person starts to provide their opinion on why certain things won't work in your idea, keep your ego aside and take this as a chance to improve your solution. Have a learning mindset and accept your mistakes. At the end of the day, it is better for yourself.

Avoid judgement. The factor of judgement also sometimes relate to ego. It could because of some past experience with them, their experience level or it could be as simple as how late they arrived to the meeting and kept you waiting or even anything else.

Focus on the end goal. Here, the end goal is not to show who is better and you are not playing against each other, you both are part of the same team and you both play to come up with the best solution for the problem at hand. So, focus on that.

At the end of the day, its a win-win-win for you, the person who had conflict with and your problem. As you get out of this meeting with a good set knowledge which you both did not have before and the problem is addressed with the best solution

There are the ideas I follow when I have conflicts. So, what other strategies do you follow? Please do comment below and give a 💖 if you learned something new!