Don’t ever:
Tell someone complaining of chest and upper abdominal pain: “It’s just gas.”
Tell someone feeling short of breath: “It’s just anxiety.”
Dismiss workplace conflict with: “It’s just a personality conflict.”
Carl Jung first wrote about personalities and conflicting opposite types. The famous Myers-Brigg’s personality test uses pairs of opposites:
Extroversion/Introversion,
Sensing/Intuition,
Thinking/Feeling,
Perceiving/Judging.
But the concept of conflict gets twisted to explain all persistent conflict between two people. Why do we think personality conflict can explain so much?
Did Churchill and Hitler have a personality conflict?
Are personality conflicts holding back world peace?
Dr. Russel Watson says personality conflicts are not the true source of conflict in the work place. He describes personality:
“The word itself is complex…unique constellation of one’s consistent behavioural tendencies…Terms used instead of ‘personality’ include: type; behavioural style; preferences; traits; and temperament, among others…closely describe work behaviours…how one does their job, or goes about their normal day-to-day activities.”
Instead of personality conflicts, Watson suggests that we fight over value conflicts: differences in ideology.
“While behavioural style describes how one does their job, Values illuminate why one does their job, ie, their wins, drives, and rushes as they perform their duties.”
Lencioni tells us to ‘mine for ideological conflict‘ in his book, “Death by Meeting”. He says we need to debate how our ideas differ or meetings are a waste of time.
Wrestling with conflicting ideas and values seems odd to a post-modern leader. Post-moderns put weight on opinion, context and environment; everyone’s opinions are equally valid; you just have to be tolerant and get along. We’ll dig into this in another post.
Do you find yourself relying on ‘personality conflict’ to explain difference of opinion? Are you avoiding the hard work of digging into the real issues? I’d love to hear what you think by clicking Leave a Reply or # of Replies below. Thanks!