Four Tips To Help You Think Critically And Resolve Conflict By Leah Brown FRSA

Are you someone who melts at the first sign of conflict? Or maybe in a disagreement, you are self-assured and prefer to give someone a piece of your mind. But have you ever thought about why you respond to conflict in a particular way? What might help you respond differently?

Research shows that our childhoods impact the way we approach conflict. As we grow, we take on assumptions about ourselves and about the world around us. Over time, those assumptions take root.

But what if we could think differently? Well, meet Sally and Emilia. They are annoyed with each other and thinking critically and creatively would help them challenge their respective positions and agree on a path forwards.

Sally: I host a weekly clothes swap for my local community outside my flat in the shared front garden. Neighbours love it, and flock to the house to donate and take things they want. I’ve been doing it since Covid when we couldn’t go to the shops and I think it’s really good to be able to offer this service for people who can get to know each other better and save money. Inevitably stuff gets left over. When I have time I list it on Facebook Marketplace, but life often gets out of the way. My upstairs neighbour isn’t keen and seems to always be angry with me. Every Saturday morning Emilia makes a point of stomping around the house. I know it’s an over-reaction but I wish she’d just talk to me about it.

Emilia: Every week, Sally hosts this clothes swap in our shared garden. I guess it helps those in the community, especially young mums. But there’s loads of stuff everywhere afterwards. It’s basically fly-tipping and it’s in my front yard! It happens every Saturday without fail (unless she’s on holiday). She never asked for my permission and I think I’m going to have to report her to the council if she doesn’t find somewhere else to run this madness from.

Leah Brown FRSA is a writer, recovering corporate M&A lawyer, accredited mediator and entrepreneur. She runs a crisis advisory and mediation practice called Broadstairs Consulting Ltd.

What can we learn from Sally and Emilia’s situation?

If you apply logic, you need to make one person right and one person wrong. Emilia wants Sally to change her behaviour but would rather act passive aggressively than confront Sally or ask her for what she needs. Sally isn’t willing to accept that she is taking liberties and so has assumed that an apology to Emilia for the inconvenience or engaging her in conversation wouldn’t be worth it. In this situation, Sally is a people-pleaser and fails to take responsibility for the way her people-pleasing is affecting her neighbour. But Emilia is also not thinking critically. Reporting Sally to the council is not the only way to resolve this conflict.

Sally feels burdened by the need to keep this clothes swap going. She wants to make sure that people in her community feel cared for and have what they need. But Sally also thinks that it isn’t her responsibility to broach conflict resolution. Emilia is an angry conflict avoidant and still has a responsibility to own her own feelings and to confront Sally. She thinks the only way forward is to escalate the situation to the council which is a lose-lose outcome for the community. What you think and how you feel matter, but you have to own those thoughts and feelings.

We all have an in-built tendency to believe that our perspective is right. Critical thinking helps us to temper this tendency. Often people are unable to see what you can see; they may never see what you can see as people have totally different perspectives. Sally and Emilia aren’t seeing eye-to-eye and may struggle to see each other’s points of view. But critical thinking will enable them to see the situation as more grey than black and white, and that’s the first step of conflict resolution: finding common ground.

Critical thinking is a muscle that needs to be flexed, but if you find yourself in an impasse, you can always ask for help. Even the best critical thinkers find conflict difficult.  Sally and Emilia struggled to believe that there is a solution that could work for both of them. Sometimes you need help in a conflict resolution to come to creative solutions. Sometimes you need someone neutral to help you find a suitable path forwards that you and the other person can live with.