My mad is better than your mad

Why other people are so weird about conflict

Intellectually, we understand we are all different. When and how you work best, your talents, skills, tastes, your personality, family, privilege, culture, can all impact how you work and your expectations of your co-workers. We know this. Many of us have been “typed” by some tool used in a corporate or academic setting – ENFJ or Hedgehog or whatever.

And yet. We often have that surprise, that moment of disbelief when faced with the difference. Wait, there are people who get energy from being with others, says the introvert (me). You don’t like chocolate? Cilantro tastes like soap to you?  

What surprises people about me is that I like to fight. I think a good argument clears the air and builds intimacy and connection. I am a yeller. The madder I get the quicker my brain works, and all the words line up like soldiers and move in devastating unison.

Plenty of people I love can’t stand this way of arguing, so I’ve spent years modulating, metabolizing, and reframing how I navigate conflict. I study it, write about it, do trainings about conflict and anger.  

After the surprise, after the moment of disbelief there is often a narrative, and it is usually negative. I see this all the time with different conflict styles at work. Instead of understanding that Liz is more analytical and less emotional and that’s why she sticks to the facts in a disagreement, someone might label her as shut down or callously unfeeling.

I’m doing some trainings in the next few weeks, and have revisited this content, yes, I am repurposing part of a training I’m doing here. Freebie for us both, then. I want to show it not as a definitive assessment, but as a quick framework that might help in team situations where conflict is an issue.

This is a quadrant I learned about in a course on intercultural competence. (I can’t find the source documents, so please add that information in the comments if you know where these came from so I can give proper credit.)

The horizontal axis goes from emotional restraint to expressiveness, the vertical axis from indirect to direct.

Each quadrant has a name. In my experience, each one has a complaint, a narrative, that is leveled at it by people who are surprised by the difference from their own particular style, and each one has a positive role to play in team dynamics.

I am in the Engagement Quadrant. I’m direct and expressive, to the point, comfortable with conflict, prone to big feelings. The complaint is that we can be confrontational, too direct. On the plus side, we’re comfortable with conflict and emotions and can say the thing that needs to be named, and get issues on the table.

Those with the Dynamic Style will show emotion freely, but are less direct and might not be specific or clear about what they want or need. They can be called overly emotional or irrational, but their big feelings can make them empathetic.

The Discussion Style is direct, but less emotional. They tend to be analytical and can be strategic thinkers who engage with data. The complaint about them is that they are too analytical, and those in the more expressive quadrants might find them cold or unfeeling. In a strong team, their direct communication style and focus on data or process can be a useful balance.

The Accommodation Style is indirect and more reserved with emotion. Some find this style to be conflict avoidant, but in the best teams these types can be a peacemaker who will work for compromise and stay calm and connected when others don’t.

Each style can be employed skillfully or unskillfully. No approach is inherently better than another. The intercultural competency workshop I took showed data that said entire countries and cultures hew to a quadrant. Italians are expressive and direct; I am Italian American. Work environments also have specific cultures and can favor one approach or another.  

Where are you? Where are the people you work most closely with, or with whom you have differences of opinion or conflict?

This is one of many tools that you can use to highlight differences. The specific type of tool is less important than the exercise of recognizing, again, that we are all different, and doing the work as a team to jettison stereotypes or negative narratives and instead invite an appreciation of the ways that different approaches can, with the right skills, enrich and strengthen a team’s abilities to thrive.