There are many ways to look at conflicts as well as taxonomies for them.

Those of you who’ve seen Me cover this subject for the DS before know that I like to boil it down to the essentials. That’s because this is the DS not an article and I want to get you up and moving after something to consider. So let’s consider this one in a little more thoroughly this time.

Why do people fight? Most psychologists will list about 7 different reasons. Reasons such as…

     1. Expectations not matching reality.

     2. Differeing goals.

     3. Differing values.

     4. Money or resources.

     5. Dividing responsibilities.

     6. Personal habits of the other.

     7. Differing procedures.

     8. Ability to get along due to habits or religion or ethnicity.

     9. Failure or reneging on past agreements; undependable.

And if we’re talking about couples, you might as well throw in the big four: kids, expectations not being met, money and infidelity. That’s why couples fight most often.

In the workplace the list remains largely the same in terms of number but is less personal. They are reasons such as:

     1. Leadership. Who will lead?

     2. Interdependance. I wait on you. All the time.

     3. Threats to status.

     4. Procedure. (We like doing it the old way around here.)

     5. Unclear communication/vision.

     6. Organizational Change. (People miss the old manager.)

     7. Scarce resources.

     8. Adversarial management. (He’s an asshole.)

But then these can be neatly organized into taxonomies for clarity. Such as:

     1. Relationship Conflicts. 

     2. Structural Conflicts. Means that they are baked right into your life or company by way of policies, how your procure things, etc.

     3. Data conflicts. That means miscommunication, differing valuations on information, lack of data, too much data, etc.

     4. Interest Conflicts. Our goals are to go here with this, there’s are to go someplace else.

     5. Values Conflicts. Someone prefers so and so as manager. Someone like the old way of doing things and is always bucking the system.

Now on a macro-scale, when countries are going to fight it usually comes down to this for civil warfare: NERR

Means nationality, ethnicity, race or religion. That’s what they’re fighting about.

And there’s another way to simplify this in case this is information overload this morning. Those lists above  can be reduced down to just THREE things:

     1. Power

     2. Resources

     3. Compatability

Everything else on the lists are a derivitive of those three. Those three are your core. If you remember nothing else you can always start with those three.

Finally, because I’m such a generous guy, how about we talk about resolving some of these conflicts. Would that be useful? Ok, we’ll cover that one tomorrow.

One last heuristic on this side of the court however taxonomy-wise: Victim and Perpetrator. Yes, you are probably one of thee two of these, even subliminally when there’s a fight between you and someone else. Which I find hysterical.

Here’s the difference:

The victim is a victim of the system and needs to right things morally.

The perpetrator is a threat to morality. He needs acceptance not to right things.

They are more apt to get along *if*…

     1. The victim hears the perpetrator apologize.

Or…

     2. The perpetrator hears that the victim is willing to forgive.

Hahahaha…! Don’t you find that hysterical? Do you see yourself in one of those two roles in your past conflicts? I think that is spot-on.

Ok, tomorrow we talk about resolving conflicts when they occur starting with the good ol’ Fight vs. Flight response and we’ll get more granular from there.

If you got something out of today’s DS, why not tell a friend? We could use the endorsement and hope to make more visitors happy and repeat.

🌑