Most conflict isn't a clash of positions

Bring to mind a disagreement you've been trying to resolve for a while.

Not a one-off argument. The kind that keeps coming back whether with a colleague, a family member, a friend, a partner. The kind where you've laid out your reasoning more than once, and they've laid out theirs, and somehow neither of you has moved.

Got one in mind?

Sometimes, when a disagreement won't resolve, it isn't because someone is being stubborn. It's because both people have been trying to persuade each other when neither has actually understood the other. The argument has been running on the surface while the actual driver of the disagreement sits underneath, untouched, on both sides.

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Here's an exercise that helps surface what's actually underneath.

It takes ten minutes and a piece of paper.

Step 1. Write down the position you've been arguing. One sentence. "I think we should X." "She should do Y." "He's wrong about Z."

Step 2. Now answer this: what would be true for me if I gave up that position? Be honest. What would you lose? Status, respect, fairness, the feeling of being right, the sense that your concerns matter? Write down everything that comes up, even the small or embarrassing things. This is the need underneath your position. It's what you've actually been defending.

Step 3. Now do the same exercise from the other person's side, as faithfully as you can. If they gave up their position, what would they lose? What are they actually protecting? Not their argument but the thing underneath the argument.

Step 4. Look at the two answers next to each other.

For most people, the surprise isn't that the other person has a need. It's how often the two needs aren't actually in conflict.

You might both be defending the same thing, it could be fairness, respect, being taken seriously, from opposite sides of a position that made the underlying agreement invisible. You might be defending two different needs that could each be met if the conversation moved off the position and onto what's actually underneath. Or you might find a real conflict, but at least now you're arguing about the right thing.

This is one of the patterns I write about in my upcoming book, The Zero-Sum Illusion. The book is built on a simple idea that takes a long time to actually live: most conflict isn't a clash of positions.

It's two people defending needs they've never named, in a fight about something that isn't the real disagreement. The book walks through where the pattern comes from, why it's so hard to spot, and crucially, what to actually do about it in real conversations, with real people, in real time.

The book comes out in August. If you're someone who's spent time in disagreements that don't move, and the exercise above has surfaced something for you, reply “ME” to this newsletter and I'll send you a pre-order link the moment it goes live.

Best wishes Grant

​ P.S. If you'd like a head start on the book itself, the manuscript is not with proofreading, and I'm happy to send an excerpt. Just hit reply and ask.

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