Some people like conflict. Other people stay away from it.
Some people attempt to engage constructively in conflict. The opposite is also true.
For me, conflict is simply when two people discover they have different views on a subject. The key is what happens next. How do they engage with one another?
It’s important to think about how we engage in conflict in design because disagreeing is a crucial part of the design process. It’s part of taking an idea from ‘mine’—an idea in my head—to an idea that exists in the world and fits well within the ecosystem it inhabits.
Without conflict, the ideas we have risk only serving our own needs.
In his excellent ‘Leading and Influencing’ course, Nick Zienau teaches four modes of conflict, based on a model called the ‘Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Instrument.’ I now teach these modes to engineers (and other humans) as part of managing a design process. The modes are: competition, avoidance, acceptance, and collaboration. These will be the subjects of my next four posts.