You need to understand these 2 types of conflicts
Many conflicts arise as we live on this planet and there are 2 ways of thinking about it or at least split them apart. Relationship Conflicts and Task Conflicts. Relationship conflicts are the conflicts that cause the most harm and the greatest effect on someone. Relationship conflicts are especially dangerous, occurring quite often, can be and should be avoided. But, the problem is, we avoid conflict all together, both types. We think conflict is bad. “The absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy”. What needs to be more popularized is more conflicts that engage both sides to present their ideas (with all the BMM’s of disagreements), argue and whoever negotiates the other at the end, the “losing” side must learn.
Relationship and Task Conflicts have intersected many times in our lives in a way we wouldn’t expect. You would start a conflict thinking you would negotiate with the other person, but instead a task conflict quickly turns into a relationship conflict.
Relationship conflicts are generally bad for performance, but task conflict is beneficial, linking to higher creativity and smarter choices. An example derived from Thinking Again by Adam Grant, says there is evidence when teams experience moderate task conflict early on, they generate more original ideas. Relationship conflicts are destructive because of one main point, it blocks rethinking (more on this in a later thread). When a clash gets personal and emotional, we become self-centered preachers of our own views, spiteful prosecutors or single minded politicians who dismiss opinions. Task conflict brings diversity of thought, preventing us from overconfidence, helping us stay humble, surface and acknowledge doubts, and make us curious of what’s missing. This is what we need.
Moving closer to the truth without damaging our relationships.
But you know what, we are so bad at having task conflicts. Even as one starts out, constructive turns sour very quickly. Here are some things we do:
- Baseless arguments
Have you taken the time to see how much you know? Arguing without any base is useless and that’s sometimes what happens leading to relationships which often starts as task conflict. When someone misunderstands, mishears, or miscommunicates in a way where it seems moronic, we are quick to say something. This act of ours causes the other person to say something along the same lines
and there goes the relationship. It causes so much relationship conflicts that destroy relationships in a way where it makes no sense to argue.
2. Quick quirky comments
You’ll see it time and time again where people are quick to comment, and after blame it on the other person. We lose relationships like this. If you’re in this situation and someone says something like that, don’t comment. It’s more helpful to stay calm, then to take any sort of “action”.Sometimes, the person goes on and on talking about various things in the past and the future, which we might‘ve wanted to forget.
3. Past incidents
One of the worst things about relationships is conflicts that might bring up past disappointments, and future anxiousness. People might criticize what you’ve done and doubt our future choices. Bringing up past events even if they were solved and everyone related to the matter has forgotten, people with these attitudes always bring them up. They seem as if they made a good point about an incident 2 years ago. It’s awful that people bring up past mistakes, despite an individual learning from that experience. It’s different when someone mentions your progress from nothing to something, then full on poking holes in everything you did. They somehow find it as a strong point.
We’ve discussed the 2 types, pros and cons of each, and how they occur in our daily lives.
If you were really submerged you would be asking yourself: I now know the transitions from a task conflict to a relationship conflict, but what about a relationship conflict to a task conflict?
To be real, I’m not sure. I believe you can escape a relationship conflict, but you cannot make it a task conflict, just my thinking. I haven’t heard or seen any method specifically. Say you start a task conflict with someone. As the conversation proceeds, say you forgot to do something, and the other makes a comment about it. And, like it always happens, past instances. You see when you’re in the workplace or office, there is a low chance the other will make comments about anything personal, but a high chance professionally. It can also happen where you share something personal, in which the opposition picks up and uses it against you, without understanding maybe you learned something from this experience
But, when you do try to tell the significant other to get back to the original conversation, there is a high chance of denial. They’re on the run, and they won’t stop. When you decide this is it, you get up and start arguing, with some experiences they might have shared with you, or you might’ve started with something right in front of you, their appearance. And you both go back and forth, deviating from the original conversation.
I’m sure if the relationship conflict is serious enough, it prolongs throughout the months, personally might affect the quality of your work, and most definitely will ruin your reputation.
It takes a lot of effort to build up your reputation, but takes a few minutes to ruin it
This affects relationships. Just because of a small error causes massive holes in relationships and should be avoided at all costs. You need to recognize this and back out of it. Admitting to your mistakes is hard, but I believe it’s an automatic sign of respect.
Admitting your mistakes is a sign of respect, not a sign of weakness
The bottom line is to stop arguing after you realize you’ve been caught. Admit and accept. When you admit, the person you have admitted to might feel the superiority complex, but stay calm, you’ve done the right job. When you admit and accept, you’ve just saved your reputation, and most likely the quality of your future work.
Admitting your mistakes, and solving them correctly will save your reputation and will strengthen it
