The best way to turn a disagreement into a constructive possibility.

Using Empathy in Conflict Resolution.png

Introduction

An unfortunate situation that regularly occurs is one where I set off the religious sensibilities of certain strains of Christianity.

As it goes, I work at a strange, unordinary, yet quite orthodox rural church. Occasionally, I will say something that theologically rubs someone the wrong way.

These are often people I know and have relationships with. After all, rural communities are known for their desolate populations and small-town gossip where everyone thinks they know everyone else. Yet cordial smiles do not prevail against cognitive bias and such folks will proceed to approach me with what feels like boxing gloves on. I’m not a good boxer. In fact, I hate confrontation, arguments, and debates. I usually just check out when I sense their arrival.

But these are folks I know and will definitely be seeing consistently.

Sure, I could probably use my academic background to out-argue them and win. I could enter the debate, compete, and try to have superior rhetoric so as to come out of the disagreement on top.

Yet, not only do all indicators of conflict resolution emphasize the relational negativity of this approach, it’s actually a terrible way to solve a disagreement in the first place.

Especially when it comes to disagreements with our perspectives, the normal course of arguing almost certainly assures that no good outcomes will result.

Unless, of course, you consider antagonizing someone, defeating them, or showing them the truth (which is actually just your subjective, phenomenologically specific version of truth) good outcomes.

Slight problem, most people never accept defeat from arguments (both sides always seem to think they were the victors), and showing them the truth assumes that you have the full, objective truth (which, epistemologically, is quite impossible).

So, what can be done instead?

Mapmaking, of course.

However, if there is not enough time to internalize that concept, the primary function to pull off this conflict resolution technique is empathy.

Part One — Empathy Versus Arguing — How Does This Work?

Let’s assume that our default mode is to attack and defend. In the midst of a disagreement, then, the counter-intuitive approach would be to start by understanding where they are on the map.

Empathy is the psychological, conscious attempt to see, feel, and experience the world as if you are the other person.

The Problem of Incomplete Perspectives

When you are in a disagreement, it can be quite helpful to realize that this person has a perspective (just like you) that does not exist in a vacuum (just like yours). There are an almost infinite set of factors that have brought them to where they are.

Everyone, including yourself, have a perspective composed of a variety of influences, situations, histories, backgrounds, nuances, and complexities that have brought them to the current place and situation. People are not two-dimensional characters with a static, surface-level composition like NPC’s in a role-playing video game.

If this is true about people, there are two important considerations for the next argument you find yourself in:

They aren’t working with all the information.
Neither are you.

Arguing, then, amounts to who is swifter with the proverbial sword.

An argument could tell us who is more right than the other, but it won’t ever amount to what is right.

Start, then, with an awareness of the incomplete perspectives involved.

The Benefit of Unique Perspectives

Once we’ve settled the epistemological reality that neither person has the objective truth — that there are phenomenological verisimilitudes impacting a given moment in time and the perspectives therein — we can now use the different perspectives to our advantage.

The complex composition that has congealed as their identity at the moment might be able to help us with our limited perspective.

So, instead of two incomplete perspectives wrestling around, we need to ask how their perspective could help our perspective move toward completion.

Because the reality of your perspective is that it is composed of different components that are unique to the specific experience of the person. The reason that we have different perspectives is that we have seen the world in different ways.

If both of our perspectives are incomplete, we now have the opportunity to take their perspective and add it to our own.

If you choose to argue, then that will never happen.

Someone will win, someone will lose, but both participants will cognitively remain right where they are.

Using empathy will take us further into the world than we were when the apparent conflict began.

You start by seeing that you don’t have all the answers. Your experience is limited and your mind is finite. Then, you see the world from an experience and mind that is not yours. Now you have seen more of the world than you did before.

We must see their unique perspective as a possible benefit.

Part Two — How to Use Empathy in a Disagreement

As the person approaches me, wielding angst concerning something I’ve said, my response is to focus on doing two things:

Listen.
Ask questions.

If empathy is the process of entering their perspective, I first need to find out as much information about it as I can.

What are their underlying interests and why is this topic important to them?
Where does this perspective come from?
Why do they think the way they do?
What experiences have brought them to this place?

There is a posture of explorative learning where you assume that there is something we can learn from this different person with this different perspective. Doing so may even bring us closer to a more full perspective, too.

Literally, in psychological research on empathy, this is called perspective-taking, and employing the technique allows you to contextualize the contents of what someone thinks and why they think it.

Can you discover the story that brought them to this place? Can you have an open disposition that sees a disagreement not as a battle to win but an opportunity to learn and grow?

This doesn’t mean that you are not right — it just means that your perspective, too, is incomplete. Instead of looking at this as giving up the foundation of your identity, see it for what it is — exploring the world, learning more than you did before, and growing as a human being.

For me, in the variety of disagreements I experience, this practice has been valuable. I now take the opportunity to learn whenever I find myself in a position of tension and, honestly, this is just a good practice as a human being interacting with other human beings. In fact, this is a staple of intercultural communication and conflict resolution.

As a result, I end up finding a plethora of insight from the other’s persons eyes that might just help me understand the world a little better while also allowing the relationship to maintain unity even amidst the disagreement.

It is my belief that any addition that we can mutually disclose to each other’s limited perspectives is not only worth the endeavor, it is more promising and constructive than us, at best, agreeing to disagree, and, at worst, wielding verbal swords in a battle that is destined for unnecessary animosity.

At the least, I’m more likely to end up working with more information by gathering as much insight as I can from the world around me.

Which happens through an open posture of learning through empathy.