We conclude our series on practical interpersonal conflict techniques with a brief look at four characteristics of our everyday arguments that generally lead to worse outcomes than what we could have achieved, and practical ways of being better at our own conflicts.
The US psychologist John Gottman calls these four categories “the four horsemen” of couples’ conflict.
The first way of poisoning our arguments is to criticise unfairly, attacking the person’s character and not their behaviour, or the merits of what happened.
A second category is contempt, with eye rolls, sarcasm and moral superiority being reliable indicators of serious trouble in a relationship.
The third category is slightly more difficult to know where the dividing lines run. It is our defensiveness, and of course there are times when we need to, and should, state our side of what happened.
Being just the right level of assertive in conflict is a necessary skill but it can be overdone, it can shut down valuable criticism, venting or an open discussion.
The fourth category is stonewalling, where we seek to, or manage to, shut down a conversation.
This often happens when the argument gets to a difficult point, where we need to have an unpleasant conversation, or hear or admit something that we would prefer to not deal with.
We refuse to talk to people, we leave the room, we create an aggressive diversion, anything but face the unpleasant part of the discussion.
These four categories are prevalent, and we always feel justified in using them, and yet they lock us in poor conflict outcomes, cyclical conflicts and harmful places of pain and discomfort.
Case studies show that contempt is by far the most corrosive of the four conflict errors in interpersonal conflict.
The solutions lie in turning the errors around: deal with the merits instead of attacking the person, show some appreciation, own a small part of a mistake that you may have made, and make time to responsibly face that difficult part of the argument.
Monitor your conversations and arguments for these errors, try to do some work on them, and see how your results start to improve.
You can contact Andre Vlok at andre@conflict1.co.za for questions and comments.