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The Art of Structuring Conflict
Resolution, conflict management, and conflict structuring are three very different things. Conflict resolvers want to end conflicts and produce harmony. Conflict managers want to help other people through conflicts in order to safeguard the interests of the organization. Conflict structurers, on the other hand, want to make sure that they win
Sun Tzu’s classic military text The Art of War may well be history’s greatest guide to conflict structuring. Whatever value his ideas may have for modern warfare (and, I admit, I have no idea whether they do or not), his treatise has survived and prospered for more than 2000 years because they it delves so deeply into the psychology of human conflict. To see The Art of War this way, of course, we have to extrapolate a bit, changing words like “enemy” and “battle” into less martial terms like “difficult co-worker” and “contentious department meeting.” These changes, however, make only minor concessions to context; Sun Tzu’s advice is timeless.
As we have already seen, the very fact that a battle (or contentious meeting) has to occur signals a suboptimal result. The best way to win a fight is never to have it—and instead to structure a response that achieves your objectives without giving the enemy (or difficult co-worker) any place to strike out at or retaliate against. Such subtle maneuvering is not always possible, however, and conflicts do—and must—occur. And just as the best way to win a battle is to make sure that you select the battlefield, the best way to structure a conflict is to control everything about it that you have power to control.
Sun Tzu’s classic military text The Art of War may well be history’s greatest guide to conflict structuring. Whatever value his ideas may have for modern warfare (and, I admit, I have no idea whether they do or not), his treatise has survived and prospered for more than 2000 years because they it delves so deeply into the psychology of human conflict. To see The Art of War this way, of course, we have to extrapolate a bit, changing words like “enemy” and “battle” into less martial terms like “difficult co-worker” and “contentious department meeting.” These changes, however, make only minor concessions to context; Sun Tzu’s advice is timeless.
As we have already seen, the very fact that a battle (or contentious meeting) has to occur signals a suboptimal result. The best way to win a fight is never to have it—and instead to structure a response that achieves your objectives without giving the enemy (or difficult co-worker) any place to strike out at or retaliate against. Such subtle maneuvering is not always possible, however, and conflicts do—and must—occur. And just as the best way to win a battle is to make sure that you select the battlefield, the best way to structure a conflict is to control everything about it that you have power to control.
15 pages, ebook
First published February 24, 2013
3 people want to read
About the author
Michael Austin
138 books293 followersI am an English professor who became an administrator who dreams of being a political pundit. After eleven years teaching English and writing books like this, I accepted a position as the Provost and Academic Vice President at Newman University in Wichita, Kansas. All the while, though, I dreamed of being a talking head. Soon after moving into administration, I started to write the Founderstein Blog, which examines contemporary politics from a historical perspective. My most recent book is That's Not What They Meant Reclaiming the Founding Fathers from America's Right Wing, a 75,000 word op-ed piece that treats the misuse of history by conservative politicians and media personalities.
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