MANAGING PEOPLE & TEAMS
What’s The Temperature of the Conflict?
Knowing Whether a Conflict Is Hot or Cold Helps with Resolving It
You’ve seen — or been in — this kind of situations before: everyone’s either raising their voices, calling names and wagging fingers, or they’re being unresponsive, frozen and passive-aggressive.
Conflicts have a temperature and knowing the temperature is critical to how you’re going to resolve issues later. Depending on whether it’s warm or cold, understanding the nuances and differences between the two will help drive productivity in discussion and create more understanding between the conflicting parties.
If the conflict is highly emotional, then it’s most likely a hot conflict. Typically, there’s shouting, physical aggression, and incendiary language. It’s potentially explosive and dangerous.
When conflicts have unfettered growth in their temperature, it may explode, potentially burning relationships due to overt hostility and anger.
If emotions are suppressed intensely, it’s a cold conflict. Typically, you would see someone deflecting contact, turning away from the speaker. Parties are physically withdrawn and people are muttering under their breaths. Silence is usually the key here, but people can also act in passive-aggressive manners. There’s usually some kind of awkwardness or tension in the atmosphere, which you can intuitively sense.
When conflicts become too cold, the relationship will be frozen and icy. Emotions are left unexpressed. The parties involved are unable to voice out their concern, and their relationship with one another will erode.
You need warm conflicts — people that are ready for discussion and are willing to be more objective.
Both types are not constructive by nature. You need warm conflicts — people that are ready for discussion and are willing to be more objective.
To resolve conflict, you need to understand what you have to do after assessing the conflict’s temperature. In a sense, if it’s cold, you need to ‘warm it up’. If it’s hot, you need to ‘cool it down’. Understanding how you can move it to a useful and productive temperature zone is key to being a leader/conflict resolver.
What To Do With Hot Conflicts
We now know that hot conflicts are potentially explosive. Emotions are difficult to control, especially if it’s something we feel strongly about. Hence, you need to observe the following:
- Eliminate personal attacks. You need to get everyone to understand that doing so will only cause the argument to never go forward
- Have them recognize their own emotions and internalize it
- Don’t rush into resolving the conflict if everyone’s emotions are too high to be dismantled: agree to come back and resolve it once everyone is more cool-headed
For instance, if two coworkers are involved in a heated argument, you can get both of them to internalize their emotions. What is that the person did that made him/her feel that way? What are the reasons behind the anger?
What To Do With Cold Conflicts
Cold conflicts are ticking time bombs — one wrong move and you’ll see the conflict skyrocket into a hot conflict. Cold conflicts are only cold because the parties involved are suppressing their emotions. However, with a cold conflict, you can go into a usual dialogue and debate, observing the following:
- Body language
- Tension in the air — it’s typically unspoken, but when people are ready for discussions, there’s a noticeable shift
Regardless of the temperature, conflicts are not meant for a compromise: it is about bridging the divide and coming up with new solutions. Conflict resolution is more than just simply finding ‘middle ground’, but rather, deepening trust and strengthening ties between parties using a new option.
Getting Better At Resolving Conflicts
Conflict resolution is a difficult task and it’s not something you can learn overnight. You need to practice, experience more conflicts and consider every angle possible. Different individuals react differently to a single issue and understanding the nuances caused by their personality is also crucial.
You must take stock before taking sides: keeping an open mind, avoiding self-righteousness are ways to remain objective in an argument.
If we are in an argument, most of us will rush to prove our points but it is always better to use empathy instead. Why are they disagreeing with us? What is from their expertise, experience or knowledge that is causing this conflict? How can we understand them deeper?
Choosing a selfless framework always triumphs a selfish one. When we have a deep and holistic understanding of the other party’s perspective, it is where we can begin with persuasion, making logical arguments instead.
We must exercise patience in any conflict: sometimes we can’t solve it today and sometimes it will drag out for long. Regardless of how it is, knowing how to assess the conflict on a whole is a testament to a leader’s character.
Conflicts are inevitable, but we can always get better with the resolution. Learning how to control the temperature is the only way we can position ourselves to resolve anything that, in time, comes our way.