Decision Making And Conflict

The bigger issue that I see with conflict in regards to decision making is that people view far too many decisions as some sort of zero sum game. To be sure there are areas where decision making is zero sum as there are only so many dollars to spend or widgets to be made. Leaders on a battlefield certainly face grave consequences where lives are on the line. However, for the most part, interpersonal conflict is something where the emotional investment in a given position can outweigh the practicalities of a situation.

Stewart Levine's 10 principles of new thinking offer ways to re-frame common conflict variables. These are such re-framings as abandoning scarcity and instead looking at the abundance. However scarcity of resources often happens so I tend to find this a less useful principle. Others are much more useful such as turning enemies into friends or leaving secrecy behind and disclosing feelings (important in relationships). What I don't like is that these principles assume that everyone is playing by the same rules. Anyone that has engaged in tense business negotiations or had to make very difficult command decisions can tell you that relying on logic can be more useful than relying on feelings. Intuition, however, can be very useful at times so learning to blend logic and intuition may be more useful than simply abandoning reason and feeling one's way through a situation. I don't think Levine argues for such extremes but there is a danger in attempting neatly classify modalities of thinking. If anything, I argue that flexibility of thought and an understand of how emotion clouds decision making is a more useful way of thinking. I like to think that is in the spirit of Levine's model.

Without baring all the details I can say that in my former marriage I allowed to many emotional responses to cloud my thinking. My wife would want us to do something that I may not have enjoyed and instead of working to find a common ground I would become stubborn. With a certain amount of age and perspective, as well as education oddly enough, I learned more of what drove my responses and through that insight was able to abandon negative reactions to emotions. I still have my moments of stubbornness but now I know to place myself in the other person's shoes and take a look at things from their perspective.

I think that does along with what Mr. Levine is attempting to say. Had I been less concerned with winning or my own bravado I would have had a healthier relationship with my ex-wife. The marriage may or may not have worked out but at least I wouldn't have been left with the feeling that I was not the best person I could have been.

Conflict exists in all manner of human interactions and it really isn't a good or bad thing; it just simply exists. That being said, not all conflict is something that can be handled with Levine's 10 Principles. There are times when real-world implications are such that someone will win and someone will lose.  That does not, however, mean that EVERY conflict need to be treated as such and I think that is where many people, including myself, have made mistakes.