Do you avoid the hard conversations because you don’t like the conflict?
If you answered yes, congratulations you are normal. But you’re also making your life harder. People that avoid conflict end up feeling more strain in their relationship. People create friction when they get together. Our ideas are not always in alignment. Our expectations of the same situations are frequently different. And our definitions of values are rarely in alignment. (Even within the same family you will find drastic differences in values!)
That my friends is a recipe for conflict. If you are the type of person that dislikes conflict to the point that you avoid it, here’s what might be happening:
- You bite your tongue a lot.
- The people around you feel great, but you absorb all of the stress and strain that is normally distributed between two people in a relationship.
- You feel like you give, give and give, but you don’t get equal reciprocation in your relationships.
If that sounds familiar, it’s time to take a more positive approach. Being good at having the hard conversations does NOT mean you create more conflict. It’s actually the opposite. It means that you catch conflict when it is small so it doesn’t have time to grow!
Here are 5 common mistakes people make, along with tips of how to do it better.
- I’ll wait until it’s less emotional to bring up my concerns. The problem with this common avoidance mistake is that people wait until the emotion passes, and then they rationalize that since it is no longer emotional, it’s okay to wait and see if it becomes a problem again. I don’t recommend starting a tough talk when you are upset. I do recommend addressing it within 24 hours. Problems are easy to fix when they are small. They get harder the longer you give them to fester.
- I don’t like this, but it’s not a HUGE deal. I’ll just bite my tongue. This one is just plain strange! What you are saying is I will only address major problems, but I’ll let all the little ones slide. Remember me saying that problems grow with time? I promise for every BIG, EMOTIONAL, DRAMATIC tough talk, there were smaller, less emotional opportunities to course correct. It’s like saying I’ll take the car in for a checkup after it crashes. Doesn’t really make sense.
- I’d rather not fight about it, so I’ll just deal with it. The incorrect assumption behind this statement is that fighting and resolving conflicts are the same thing. They are not! In fact, the conversation to resolve the conflict should be less emotional and cause more peace. If you are doing it right, everyone should leave the conversation feeling better. So why would you want to put that off? If you think resolving conflict = fighting, I’d love to suggest you check out my book, Walk Your Talk: Take Ownership and Lead Like You Mean it.
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We’ll never get on the same page, so why talk about it? This is the fastest way to ensure that you are always on different sides of the fence on the big issues. When we were newly married we argued every time we sat down to budget. So we decided to stop having those meetings and just not spend money. Any one reading this knows how stupid that was. But are you doing this in your business or personal life? - All I’m asking for is common courtesy. I shouldn’t have to say it, it should just be an expectation. Common according to who? Unstated expectations are tomorrow’s frustration. When I was in middle school and my dad remarried, we learned really quickly that families had different expectations. Some of us thought good manners was locking the bathroom door so no one would walk in on you. Some of us thought good manners was just knocking before you opened a door. A simple assumption led to SEVERAL family arguments.
It’s okay if you don’t like conflict. I don’t particularly like it either. But it’s essential to your success that you LEARN how to do it well!