The fourth mode of conflict is collaboration.
In this mode we are interested in the other person but also keen to assert our own view. I want you to know what I think but I also want to know what you think. Knowing that we are disagreeing I become interested in the difference rather than getting stuck into the offence-defence plays of convincing each other who is right and wrong.
Collaboration is the opposite of avoidance, wherein there is no interest and no assertion.
In design, we are engaging in change. The aim of the designer is to taking existing situations and improving them. Since the situations we inhabit usually involve other people, we are likely to discover our views are in some ways in conflict with another’s.
To avoid engagement is to avoid change. To compete is to overrule. To collaborate is to discover the shared interest and create a new way forward. All of which I think can be shown with a free-body diagram – tomorrow.