Do Business Well

The problem does not have to be solved for the conflict to be resolved.

`Hogwash!’ you exclaim. ‘That doesn’t make sense!’ Let’s take a closer look.

Many people find it surprising that the path to harmony winds through a jungle where anger, resentment and similar ‘negative’ feelings flourish. You have noticed that this does not discourage the expression of these feelings — it permits their ventilation. This contradicts popular admonitions to ‘put on a happy face’ and ‘be logical’.

A Lesson from Psychology

One of the most common tasks of psychotherapists is to help clients become aware of their repressed anger, and to aid them in learning to express it in non-destructive, non-violent, healthy ways in appropriate situations. Seldom do therapists find it suitable to help their clients suppress angry feelings. Repressed anger is a major cause of neurosis, particularly depression, and poisons interpersonal relationships.

We must go through, not around. Finding interpersonal harmony requires ventilation without violence, contact without withdrawal.

Conflict is not resolved by reason alone. In fact, reasonableness has little to do with it. Still, our rational minds recoil at such an irrational notion.

When embroiled in conflicts in ongoing inter-dependent two-person relationships, we strive to achieve:

• solutions to the disputed issues, and
• enhancement of mutual trust, respect, acceptance, intimacy, and the overall climate of cooperativeness.

Only when people don’t need much from each other (low interdependency) can their differences be adequately managed by reaching rational agreement on substantive issues. Conflicts that occur in our most important relationships, at work and in our families, involve fundamental questions of trust, intimacy and cooperativeness. These are deeply emotional, not rational. Distrust is not amenable to rational solution.

Therefore, our first goal in using the Method is to produce an emotional climate of trust, acceptance, and cooperativeness. Once such a climate is achieved, disagreements on substantive issues can be more easily solved in mutually satisfactory ways. And, perhaps just as importantly, differences on sticky, persistent issues can be managed without destroying trust.

No Perfect Solution

Unfortunately, a single use of the method cannot `fix’ a relationship. Changes in the emotional climate that are produced by one Dialogue are seldom permanent. This may be disappointing, since we all hope for permanent solutions. The inescapable, unhappy fact is that no such solutions exist in human relationships.

So, in ongoing interdependent two-person relationships, it is more accurate to say that our differences are `managed’ than to say our conflicts are ‘resolved’.

Trust the Process

Recognising this fact, we must abandon the unrealistic expectation that we solve our conflicts rationally. Paradoxically, we must entrust ourselves to a process over which we cannot have direct control, and which may not even make rational sense to us. Accepting that we cannot force the outcome we want, we must trust the process to bring it to us. On Accepting Discomfort

Perhaps someone with the self-discipline of a Zen master is able to become emotionally detached enough to not feel uncomfortable during Dialogue. The rest of us mortals don’t have such control over our emotions; we find conflict unpleasant. The requires that we deal with the Other face-to-face, and tolerate a tense, charged atmosphere while talking it out. The Method is simple, but perhaps not emotionally easy. Using it calls on us to accept being temporarily uncomfortable. We must make a conscious decision in advance to withstand momentary discomfort in order to accomplish our objective of improved communication with our Other.

With practice, the knowledge that you are acting choicefully and purposefully, accompanied by your growing confidence that the method actually works, will diminish the discomfort you feel. Still, the meeting may be stressful. Using this peacemaking procedure requires courage in tolerating discomfort, not skill in avoiding it.

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