Resolving Conflicts by Sidestepping Them—Part III

The Collision Theory of Conflict and Its Legacy

Introduction

At last we come to the concluding part of our three-part article on an alternative way of thinking about conflicts and addressing them, a way that follows directly from the new epistemology.

It is possible that a few other approaches to resolving conflicts may share some commonalities with the approach recommended here, simply because all successful approaches to resolving conflicts are likely to share these same tacit philosophical assumptions about the nature of conflict.

You can read any number of long tomes about conflict resolution, but hopefully we have managed to cut to the essence of the most successful approaches, and express that essence in the smallest possible number of words, cutting out the distracting irrelevancies that still keep people tied in knots.

We didn’t get here, however, by generalizing from other successful approaches to conflict resolution. Not at all. Rather, we developed our own, original approach from first principles, basing it on assumptions about conflict that follow naturally from the new epistemology.

Just to be clear, we ourselves have successfully practiced what we preach in this article, countless times over some decades, applying the approach equally to major, mission-critical conflicts both in the C-suite of Fortune 100 corporations and at the national and international level, ensuring that seemingly intractable conflicts could be rapidly resolved before they had a chance to turn into disputes.

So while we are unabashedly talking theory here, this is a bit of theory that has proved its mettle and superior merits in the real world. We feel it therefore represents a way of looking at things that we can commend to our readers without hesitation.

—The Editors

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Resolving Conflicts by Sidestepping Them—Part III:  The Collision Theory of Conflict and Its Legacy

To treat a conflict as a kind of dispute, even an internal dispute within my own mind, is to do nothing towards resolving it, as we said last time, and, almost invariably, only makes matters worse. 

This judgment may seem to you a little harsh.  But to understand what I mean by truly resolving a conflict we need look no further than the dictionary.  

Indeed, there is no better guide to the theory and practice of conflict resolution than that contained in the very word “resolution” itself. 

The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that “resolution” means “the analysis, decomposition, or separation into components” of something, or its “conversion into another form.”  

According to the OED, to resolve something is to “convert it” or “reduce it by mental analysis” into something else, and then, by extension, to “solve, explain, clear up or settle” a “doubt, problem or question.”  

In music, interestingly, “resolution” is “making discord pass into concord,” or less acute discord.  

The result when one resolves something into something else is, appropriately enough, “the resolution,” as in a formal expression of opinion or intention (say, in an official meeting, perhaps arrived at by a show of hands) and the resulting mental state is also one of “resolution”:  “boldness and firmness of purpose” once our way is clear.  

In optics, to resolve is “to separate and make visible the separate parts of an image,”¹ to “distinguish between,” and so “to clear away, dispel,” and we speak of the “level of resolution” at which we look at something when we focus, literally or metaphorically, on different levels of detail.  

This excellent word “resolution,” in its various dictionary meanings, could provide a virtual Table of Contents for a handbook on the successful resolution of conflicts, as we shall see.

Contrasted with the extreme richness and hidden utility of this excellent word “resolution” is the corresponding extreme poverty and hidden perils of the terrible and inherently divisive word “conflict.” 

According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary² a “conflict” is a literal or figurative—“fight” or “struggle,” a “clashing (of opposed principles, etc.)” or “collision,” “a state of opposition or hostilities.”  

The very word “conflict” would seem to spawn the Collision Theory of Conflict, in which a conflict is viewed as a struggle, battle or head-on collision between contending, opposed forces.

Once you tacitly accept the metaphor of collision, you are trapped within the narrow range of remedies available to you within the metaphor.  Either you can somehow eliminate one or other of the opposed aims, or stop it in its tracks, or negotiate a diversion from its intended course, or figure out some sort of compromise. But that’s about it.

What this infelicitous metaphor, the Collision Theory, does not allow for at all is actual resolution:  mentally breaking down the whole pantomime and transforming it, along with everything in it, into something altogether different and more congenial.  

If you happen to subscribe to the Collision Theory, whether consciously or unconsciously, it seems to make perfect sense to negotiate a kind of truce between the opposed purposes or between the opposed parties pursuing them.  Hence the vogue for employing negotiation as a nostrum for addressing conflicts, and the derogatory sense the phrase “evading the issues” has unfairly acquired.  

However, once we abandon the Collision Theory and accept that the issues and clashing interests do not need to be understood or addressed at all, a conflict presents a design problem and no more.  The task becomes one of reconciling sets of design constraints, negotiating not issues, as we shall see, but realities, as fragile certainties shatter and crumble.

A conflict is an opportunity for resolution, opening up latent possibilities. 

Fortunately, seeing something from a fresh angle does not take time.  The resolution of any conflict occurs in a flash, an epiphany. 

Yet patient, disciplined inquiry may be required to discover its resolution, and until that point, negotiation of “the issues” cannot commence because, by definition, the issues will not yet have been correctly identified. 

The successful resolution of a conflict must therefore always precede negotiation and should never rely on it.

 

The Snare of Consensus

The salient issues, then, are never merely given but must be carefully framed.  Again, you know that you have correctly identified the issues at play only once the deceptive appearance of conflict dissolves.  

Uncontentious details are all that then remain to be negotiated, and the ease with which these are agreed indicates that the conflict has indeed been resolved and that the matter was therefore ripe for negotiation in the first place.  

By the same token, the making of concessions, the acceptance of a “need” for trade-offs, readiness to compromise, or the experience of delays are enough to indicate the failure of resolution and are all signs that entry into negotiations was premature.  

In the resolution of conflict, a negotiated settlement is the booby prize.

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© Copyright 2010, 2023 Dr James Wilk
The moral right of the author has been asserted

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1. Random House Dictionary of the English Language

2. Fifth Edition