When we encounter conflicting viewpoints with a colleague at work, a family member, a political party or even with other religions the automatic reaction for many of us is fight or flight. We either decide to go on the offence and try and prove our point no matter the result or we choose to ignore the viewpoint. Any conflicting viewpoint we throw into a mental box buried somewhere in our mind, gathering dust with all the other ‘undesirable’ viewpoints. We immediately go into a defense mode because we automatically view the other person’s viewpoint as wrong. We see conflict as transactional rather than transformational. We want to transact our way through an issue while the underlying problem is rather the relationship between ourselves and the other party.
Conflict arises when our self-identity, emotional security or territory is threatened. Attaching a label to someone that threatens us makes it easier to cope with the failing relationship, thus we label them as a liberalist, conservative, environmentalist, communist or capitalist. It is this labeling that lead us to think of people as something unemotional such as a group or a thing. To not attach emotion to a human being is harmful because not only are our brains already susceptible to remember things of other people that we don’t like rather than those things we do like, but we stop viewing people as emotional beings that consist of several identities, have unique beliefs and have values that we might even agree with.
Conflict arises when our self-identity, emotional security or territory is threatened. Attaching a label to someone that threatens us makes it easier to cope with the failing relationship, thus we label them as a liberalist, conservative, environmentalist, communist or capitalist. It is this labeling that lead us to think of people as something unemotional such as a group or a thing. To not attach emotion to a human being is harmful because not only are our brains already susceptible to remember things of other people that we don’t like rather than those things we do like, but we stop viewing people as emotional beings that consist of several identities, have unique beliefs and have values that we might even agree with.
A person expressing a certain view on immigrants, evolution or our taste in music for example, is not a person that simply belongs to a certain school of thought but is made up of a myriad of different identities. These identities include for example being a father to a 12 year old boy, a husband to his wife, a person that contributes to his community, helps out at his local soup kitchen and is part of a soccer team on weekends. The point is we attach labels to people that removes our curiosity to understand a person for who they really are. It is this curiosity that allows us to truly understand a person’s mindset before trying to be understood. It is this very act of great empathy that allows us to not settle for a mere compromise or “agree-to-disagree”, but gain new insights and generate win-win solutions that overcome any conflicting situation we may encounter.
Empathy for another person is born from the true curiosity of wanting to understand a person for all of his/her identities, values and beliefs. It is of a lack of such a curiosity that we often go into a fight or flight mode without resolving the conflict. Author of the 3rd Alternative, Stephen Covey, encourages us to say to the conflicting party “you see things differently, I need to listen to you”. This empathetic listening, understanding before being understood and not settling for “agree-to-disagree” allows us to gain information and wisdom that creates a breeding space for win-win solutions, not compromise, solutions where all party’s involved experience the fact that we all have different parts of the truth.
Perceptual positions in NLP is a state of mind where we consider different points of view and use the knowledge we have gained to apply it to the situation at hand. Perceptual positions consist of three points of view namely the first, second and third person perspective:
First person: Thinking from this point of view allows you to carefully analyze your own perspective and become aware of your own feelings, why you feel them and what is important to you. In a conflict situation for example it is valuable to consider what a successful outcome will look like for you.
Second person: This is where you would place yourself in the shoes of the other person to feel what they feel, experience what they experience, say what they say and hear what they hear. This allows you to deeply understand where the other person is coming from.
Third person: The third perspective is one where you view a situation from a third party helicopter view and only observe. This allows you to consider your own behavior or opinion whilst also seeing the other person’s reactions. It may be valuable asking yourself the question: “What can I learn from this” in this perspective.
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| Finding new ways of doing things is often like using the ingredients you have, and just mixing it up |
People fight against the idea of how a certain group of people might be or not be, they fight against the labels that have been anchored in their frame of mind as wrong, against the beliefs that through their experience cannot be associated with and against the values they believe to be against who they are. However, people do not fight against someone for simply being human, not against an individual made up of parts of the truth and not against those that make them feel valued. Proactively entering different perceptual positions may seem obvious and simple, but the power of recognizing the human dignity and identity of someone else has far reaching possibilities. Not only between people, but even between countries.
