Are You a Competitive Fighter?
Competition as conflict management
This week on the HI Stack we’re continuing to explore how to engage in constructive conflict.
As a reminder, there are five ways to manage conflict. These strategies, originally laid out by genius mentor consultants Richard Nodell and Eric Wolff, are:
Competition (I win / You lose)
Collaboration (We both win)
Compromise (Win some / Lose some)
Avoidance (Lose / Lose)
Accommodation (I lose / You win)
Last week, in honor of the holidays, The HI Stack focused on Avoidance. Avoidance is typically a lose / lose conflict style, meaning, no one gains anything by (frequently) using it to manage conflict. But occasionally, avoidance can protect you from ill-timed or destructive conflict and is completely legitimate when used to serve a “higher” purpose, like refraining from potentially dramatic conflict in order to meet a deadline. If the holidays tend to provoke you into family conflict, avoidance might be your ticket. Read how to effectively use it to manage conflict here.
Today, we’re focusing on managing conflict through competition.
“Do you want to be right, or do you want to be close?”
The therapist’s question hit me like a glass of cold water thrown in my face. I’d been leaning forward, trying to get her — and my partner on the other side of the couch — to understand what really happened, and how his actions were hurtful. But he had a different view of the situation.
I sat back. Did I actually want to be right more than I wanted to be loved? Certainly, fighting so hard to make sure my partner saw things the way I saw them made it seem so. I realized how invested I was — more than sharing, listening, problem solving, or connecting — in winning an argument. I was competing with my partner over which version of our fight was the truth.
Competition — I win / you lose — is how most of us are taught to fight. It thrives in sibling and grade school showdowns: I know you are, but what am I?! It’s the default way to manage conflict if you haven’t had any communication training.
Competition is a great mode of conflict to use on a debate stage or in a courtroom, where one party needs to be “right.” It’s essential for sports, and can be useful in health management (i.e. beating disease) and in creating a thriving marketplace (as in Burger King and McDonald’s are often across the street from one another and that somehow works for both businesses). It is also the basis of war.
I recently helped two teammates emerge from a competitive rut. The team was charged with developing a new marketing strategy. One leader, an outside consultant, focused on their expertise: in-person events. The other, a staff director, believed in online promotion. The budget was tight, and they each had their reasons for why their strategic vision should be primary. They proved their ideas in deluxe presentations. But in their fervor to dominate the strategic plan, the two completely forgot they were on a team with a shared task. They started fighting in front of the team, finding research that proved the other’s methods inadequate, and enlisting some team members to take sides, while the rest looked on, paralyzed by their directors’ feud.
Three steps helped them.
How to shift out of competitive conflict:
Acknowledge the competition: Like the therapist’s arresting question, just naming competitive behavior can give people the space to pause and reflect on how competition impacts the conflict.
Being steeped in marketing — and a capitalistic mindset, the consultant director’s first reaction was, “But isn’t competition good?”
It can be in the right environments and in the ways it evokes hyper focus. But I pointed to how their dead heat had disenfranchised the team, failed to include them in decision making, and prevented the leaders from creating an alliance that may have yielded other innovative strategies. They were able to see, with their focus on who wins, how everyone was losing.
Competition isolates by requiring others to stand with or against us.
Explore what fuels it: Competition is driven by underlying needs, desires, fears, and urges. If you’re stuck in competitive conflict, explore the hidden drivers fueling it. At work: Are you scared of failure? Do you want a promotion or need more money? Are you bored in your role, and need the rush of competing to fill the void? At home: Do you believe the only way to get your needs met is to compete about whose needs are more important? Is competing one of the only ways you know how to relate? Finding the underlying drive can free you to explore new methods of managing conflict, such as collaboration and compromise (coming up in future HI Stacks!).
Notice your stance when arguing: What happens to your body in competitive conflict? Is your jaw set? Do your eyes narrow? What happens to your focus? Gathering and tracking this data will awaken an awareness of when you are in a competitive stance, and if necessary, help you switch gears.
When it’s not degrading, competition can be fun. During Thanksgiving, I watched a couple spar over which actor was in an old movie. “It was Robert DeNiro. I’m sure.” “You’re wrong. Dead wrong,” the other said. “It was Robert Duvall.” Their tone was pointed yet playful at the same time. When they relied on Google to settle the matter, the winner exclaimed “I won !” and the loser mock-sulked, and somehow, it seemed a playful way to deal with a low-stakes conflict.
Good alternatives to managing conflict competitively are collaboration and compromise. Stay tuned.
If you need help managing conflict at work or home, don’t hesitate to reach out.
How does competition work — or not work — for you in managing conflict?