Resolving a Protracted Conflict

When we're locked in a protracted conflict with another person, there's one critical step that's
usually necessary to reach a resolution in which both parties feel a sense of trust and remain
committed to the relationship: The higher-status person must express vulnerability first.

Here's why it's so important, why it's so difficult, and what to do about it:

1. Vulnerability is the key to empathy, and empathy is the key to conflict resolution.

Conflicts are concluded in the absence of vulnerability and empathy all the time. In some cases
the higher-status person increases the pressure or waits until the lower-status person submits. In
other cases the higher-status person gives way due to impatience or a sense that "winning" will
carry a cost. These outcomes end the conflict for the time being, but in the process trust has been
lost and the relationship has suffered, so there's been no resolution--merely a deferral until the
next round. But an expression of vulnerability can lead to a very different outcome.

In most circumstances we reflexively turn toward vulnerability with feelings of interest and care.
This may be a function of evolutionary biology, as an empathic response would have been highly
adaptive in helping early humans work together to overcome challenges. [1] And when we
empathize with another person, we see the world from their perspective; we understand their
feelings; we suspend our judgments about them; and we actively communicate this
understanding. [2] The mutual empathy that results is what enables both parties to be open to the
other's perspective and actively seek a resolution to the conflict. We still may not agree with each
other, but as I've written before, empathy is not agreement:

Understanding someone’s perspective and their emotions while suspending our judgments about
both does not necessarily imply that we agree with that perspective or believe that the resulting
emotions are justified. It simply means that we comprehend their perspective and emotions, and
we are able to envision ourselves experiencing that perspective and those emotions under similar
circumstances. [3]

And yet a challenge is that we habitually fail to "empathize up"--we find it very difficult to
empathize with someone we perceive as higher status, particularly when we find ourselves in
conflict with them. [4] We don't see the world from their perspective; we pay no attention to
their feelings; we make endless judgments and assumptions about them; and we communicate as
little as possible. In these circumstances it inevitably feels less safe for the lower-status person to
express vulnerability, which results in a stalemate that only extends the conflict. This is why the
higher-status person must take the first step.

2. Vulnerability can be profoundly uncomfortable.

And yet the higher-status person may well feel resistance to expressing vulnerability. They may
equate vulnerability with weakness or may assume that an expression of vulnerability will entail
a loss of face, and here the work of Brené Brown is instructive. Brown, a research professor at
the University of Houston's Graduate School of Social Work, has dedicated her career to the
study of such topics as vulnerability, empathy, courage and shame, and she writes,

The perception that vulnerability is weakness is the most widely accepted myth about
vulnerability and the most dangerous... To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that
feeling is weakness... It starts to make sense that we dismiss vulnerability as weakness only when
we realize that we've confused feeling with failing and emotions with liabilities. [5]

Many of us have been conditioned to view our emotions in just this way, and there's no simple
solution to developing a healther relationship with our feelings. But a starting point is
recognizing the vital role that emotions play in reasoning and communication, a topic that has
been studied for decades by USC neuroscientist Antonio Damasio:

Uncontrolled or misdirected emotion can be a major source of irrational behavior...[and]

seemingly normal reason can be disturbed by subtle biases rooted in emotion...
Nonetheless...reduction in emotion may constitute an equally important source of irrational
behavior. [6, emphasis original]

In this context we have to distinguish between emotion suppression--which usually fails, or

renders our behavior incongruous or even incoherent--and emotion management--which is an
essential skill when navigating situations that feel risky or uncertain. [7]

To be clear, at times our caution regarding expressions of vulnerability is well-founded--not

everyone will respond positively, and not all our adversaries can be trusted. But when we're
always cautious and never take risks, we don't learn how to calibrate our emotional
expressiveness, and any experience of vulnerability seems unsafe and out-of-control. Taking the
risk to express vulnerability a bit more fully helps us learn how to do so with greater control and
allows us to discover who we can trust in a conflict. And a benefit of getting out of our comfort
zones is that they tend to expand. [8]

3. Relative status isn't always obvious.

In some cases our status relative to the other party in a conflict is a clear and mutually
understood function of our respective positions in a hierarchy. But because contemporary culture
often seeks to diminish hierarchical distinctions--despite the fact that human beings continue to
rely on hierarchy as a fundamental organizing principle [9]--our relative status may be unclear.
Further, it's not uncommon that when two people are locked in a protracted conflict, each
perceives the other to be higher-status.

A form this can take in organizational life is when one person is perceived as higher status
because of their role or title, and the other is perceived as higher status because of some aspect of
their social identity: age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, physical characteristics, etc. Although our
perceptions of status deriving from these dimensions of difference continue to evolve, the ability
to pretend that they no longer have an impact on our perceptions is itself a privilege of high
status. [10]

So when we find ourselves in a protracted conflict with someone we perceive as higher-status, a

key question to ask is, "In what ways might the other person perceive ME as higher-status?" Our
answers might shift our perspective and motivate us to take the first step.

4. Vulnerability and empathy are learnable skills.

Vulnerability can take many different forms, and there's no one right or wrong way to express it.
That said, it's essential to cultivate the ability to convey vulnerability in ways that are likely to
evoke an empathetic response. Because we can feel unsafe in the midst of a conflict, we may
make what we believe to be a vulnerable disclosure in a sterile, non-emotional way, dampening
the facial expressions, tone of voice and other cues that help others truly sense our feelings. This
is a two-way dynamic, of course--if we're not actively looking for the other person's expressions
of vulnerability, we may miss them, and our own empathetic feelings may not be triggered by
their comments or non-verbal expressions.

But we can strive to improve our skills in these areas--a process that has been one of the central
themes in my work in the MBA program at Stanford since 2006, first in Interpersonal Dynamics
and later in a number of other courses (including The Art of Self-Coaching, which I launched in
2015). And my empirical experience as a coach and teacher is amply supported by a growing
body of research from the field of health care that indicates that our capacity for empathetic
communication is an eminently learnable skill. [11,12,13,14,15]

So what does this look like in practice?

• Slow down, which helps us regulate our own expressions of vulnerability, heighten our
sensitivity to those of the other person, and counteract the impact of stress on our ability
to communicate effectively.
• Recognize that hearing isn't listening--the goal isn't being able to accurately transcribe
the other person's comments, but insuring that they truly feel heard.
• Cultivate conditions of safety and trust, which are essential foundations for vulnerability
and mutual learning.
• While doing so, don't mistake psychological safety for a lack of directness: As Harvard
Business School professor Amy Edmondson has noted, in a safe environment,
"individuals feel they can speak up, express their concerns, and be heard. This is not to
say that people are 'nice...' What I am advocating is candor. Being open. And sometimes
that might mean being direct to a fault." [16]

Finally, while engaged in this process it's important to be mindful of the surrounding culture--not
only the larger organization, but also the "culture" of our relationship with the other person--and
to "translate" vulnerability appropriately. As I've written before,

Each culture has a set of norms that define acceptable expressions of vulnerability... If you
deviate too far from these norms, the culture won't be able to accommodate your behavior--and if
all you do is conform to those norms, you'll fail to help the culture evolve and will miss
opportunities... The key, as always, is to conform just enough. [17]

5. Mistakes are learning opportunities.

Our efforts to employ these concepts in conflict resolution will involve taking some risks and
getting out of our comfort zone--so mistakes are inevitable. We can seek to make smaller
mistakes and recover from them more quickly, but rather than strive to avoid errors at all costs,
we're better served by openly acknowledging them and their unintended impact on the other
person. I'm not suggesting we should act heedlessly but, rather, recognize mistakes as a natural
part of any learning process and as signs of potential growth. This allows us to loosen the hold of
the self-consciousness and embarrassment we may feel when we do make a mistake--and it's also
one of the best ways to practice expressing vulnerability.
Footnotes

[1] Recent evidence suggests that humans evolved to work together cooperatively in larger
groups than other primates, and this may have been our critical advantage as a species. For
example: Forget Survival of the Fittest: It Is Kindness That Counts (Dacher Keltner interviewed
by David DiSalvo, Scientific American, 2009)

[2] A Concept Analysis of Empathy (Theresa Wiseman, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 1996)

[3] The Difficulty of Empathizing Up

[4] Ibid.

[5] Daring Greatly, pages 33-35 (Brené Brown, 2012)

[6] Antonio Damasio on Emotion and Reason

[7] Taking the Leap (Dealing with Risk and Uncertainty)

[8] Comfort with Discomfort

[9] Organizational Preferences and Their Consequences (Deborah Gruenfeld and Larissa
Tiedens, Chapter 33 in the Handbook of Social Psychology, 2010)

[10] For more on social identity, see Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination (Henri Tajfel,
Scientific American, 1970), Social Identity Theory (Gazi Islam, Encyclopedia of Critical
Psychology, 2014), and Getting to "Us" (George Halvorson, Harvard Business Review, 2014)

[11] Empathy in Medicine: A Neurobiological Perspective (Helen Reiss MD, Journal of the
American Medical Association, 2010)

[12] Empathy Training for Resident Physicians (Helen Reiss MD et al, Journal of General
Internal Medicine, 2012)

[13] Can Doctors Learn Empathy? (Pauline Chen MD, The New York Times, 2012)

[14] Can compassion and empathy be learned? (Dorrie Fontaine RN, The Daily Progress, 2013)

[15] Does Taking Time For Compassion Make Doctors Better At Their Jobs? (L. Carol Richie,
NPR, 2019)

[16] Make Your Employees Feel Psychologically Safe (Martha Lagace interviewing Amy
Edmondson, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 2018)

[17] Conform to the Culture Just Enough

For Further Reading

Better Working Relationships

The Importance of Slowing Down

How Great Coaches Ask, Listen and Empathize

Safety, Trust, Intimacy

Learning How to Learn

Conscious Competence in Practice

Adapted from What I Learned in Touchy Feely (This Time).