Sue Elias, EVP of Parks & People Foundation in Baltimore, MD, uses the Optimal Outcomes method to learn to sit with her challenging emotions, then transform those emotions to master conflict.
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For several decades now, this advice has helped millions of people reach “win-win” agreements. The only problem is: this assumes that we know what we ourselves want, and why we want it. Which is not always true.
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The world today is increasingly polarized. People who once identified with the center have shifted towards extremes. For example, in the US political arena, those who once identified as Republicans or Democrats have now shifted towards the “alt-right” or “left-wing activism”. This means there may be no shortage of bitter debates in the coming years, whether we’re at a dinner party, at the office, or working to influence those in elected office.
Difficult conflicts are typically caused by multiple interconnected factors, but our tendency is to view the situation in much simpler terms. Our minds are always searching for certainty and clarity, causing us to see things in black and white rather than to remain aware of the many detailed nuances of a situation. This evolved over millennia as a way to enable us to successfully adapt to a world of overwhelming data, but one of its drawbacks is that it can severely limit our ability to see complex situations clearly. For example, we typically see complex conflict as occurring between two people or between two groups when it actually involves many more people and groups than that. Because of this limitation, in order to master conflict, it helps to start by not doing anything at all. It helps to simply observe who the players are, how they’ve behaved and how they’re connected to one another.
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