Avoiding the Conflict Cycle

This blog is a direct result of a question asked via Twitter by Tom Harper. Yes, after much denouncing of the tool/media I have joined the world of the twitterers (tweeters perhaps?). And, I find myself having virtual conversations with people that I otherwise never would have spoken with (or heard from), so I have to say that I have been pleasantly surprised to this point.

The original question that I am answering had to do with why so many people seem to live in a continual state of conflict... and make no move to change it. I am defining conflict as an argument that is generally fueled by emotion rather than reason and that attacks a person instead of an attitude or a behavior. I believe it is a cycle that we get ourselves into when we do not operate on a model of Clear Expectation, Regular Evaluation, and Early Confrontation. I will go ahead and make this a three part series and begin today discussing Clear Expectations.

Clear Expectations are something that first became real to me shortly after I was married. It did not take me or my wife long to realize that we had some very unrealistic expectations about what it would be like to be married. We were one of those couples whose first night together was our wedding night. I soon realized that my expectation of going to sleep with my beautiful wife in my arms was quite unrealistic... I need my space when I sleep (and so does she as it turns out). So, order the King size bed and make sure there is plenty of room.

I wish that we had so easily discovered all of the other hidden expectations that we carried into our marriage. Expectations about things like how much money we would be making by year 5, how it would be spent, who would make those decisions and how, what kind of house we would be living in, what kind of house we would be aiming for, what type of job(s?) we would have and what types of jobs we would be aiming for. Those things (and many others) were constantly in our own minds, and rarely in our conversations. Until, that is, one of us saw the other living in such a way that went against our expectations.

Now when we do pre-marital counseling (or just talk to young married couples) we constantly talk to them about expectations. We spend some time on making sure they are realistic, but much more time making sure they are shared. The fact is you can even deal with impossible expectations if they are shared expectations. The expectations that lead to heartache are the ones that stay hidden and undiscussed until the explosion comes.

I have learned this lesson again raising my (now 4 year old) son. In the early days we would simply say something like, "Jared let's go we need to go to the store". That left Jared free to decide how we would go, when we would go, and in what way we would go. Sometimes he thought that going in the car, now, directly to the store was good... and everything went great. Other times he thought we should first visit the rock pile, run around the front yard a few times, and then dig through tools in the garage. You see in his mind part of "going to the store" involved going outside (where the car lives), and his expectation of going outside was much different than mine. I learned that it was much easier on us both if I would say things like, "Jared, now we are going to go outside, get in the car, get in our car seat, and drive to the store."

Amazingly enough I have found that employees often like that same level of courtesy in a work relationship. Instead of giving vague (or no) job descriptions and living under the assumption that we both know what is expected, it is often better to be overly specific and clear up front about what both sides expect to give and receive from the partnership/relationship at the beginning. The first few weeks of a working relationship often set the tone for the next few years, so it is important to be clear about expectations (from both sides) from the start. This is a continual thing as well, something that happens every week in staff meeting. When an idea gets presented and accepted we quickly define expectations by asking who owns the idea, what their next step(s) is, who will need to help them, and when it will be accomplished.

Setting Clear Expectations is the first step to avoiding Conflict. But, expectations are often powerless without Regular Evaluation, which we will discuss next time.