Top Five Reflections on a Low Stakes Conflict (Part One)

A little summer experiment in deconstructing conflict

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July daisies blooming in my “what was I thinking? this is a huge project” cottage garden.

This is really a “top three” but I promise it’s substantial! I was involved in a minor, annoying but not overly emotional conflict last week and as it was unfolding, it occurred to me that this is the perfect kind of conflict to analyze. Your emotions aren’t fully engaged, clouding up the joint, and the stakes, in the scheme of things, were low. And it goes to show how complicated a small conflict can be and how if you don’t exert a little energy to clear it up, it can easily fester and become something bigger that requires either more energy to resolve or you end up walking away from the other party entirely (which takes more energy than I think we realize).

I usually write about conflict from the perspective of the school administrator, where a parent, who is paying for the service, is the person with the complaint and the admin is figuring out how to manage the situation. And I thought it might be interesting to look at it from the other side of the desk, so to speak. We all pay for services of some kind!

Spoiler alert - this situation went from having a sort of happy ending (what I like to describe as OK/OK) to having a true happy ending (win/win). It did take some time for everything to unfold. Another lesson to take away!

In Part One today, I’ll lay out the situation and outline the top three reasons why both sides were set up for opposition rather than cooperation and something was bound to go, as the Brits say, pear-shaped.

So with that, here is Reflections on a Low Stakes Conflict, Part One (illustrated)

I try to hold up my end of the bargain with anyone I’m hiring for a service. I know they have to put up with a lot. Way back in the day, I used to visit an esthetician every 6 weeks or so to shape up my eyebrows. She would always tell me I was one of her favorite clients and she seemed to mean it. So I finally asked her - it was always pleasant to see her, but I came a handful of times a year to have a low priced service done that took about fifteen minutes, tops - how could I be one of her favorites? She said, “Because you don’t complain and you always say thank you.” And I thought, wow, that bar is LOW. And also, oh, yeah. I can see that, unfortunately.

Unless you’re using a drive-through window on a road trip, there is an interpersonal aspect to our service relationships, even though we’re paying for something. Very few things are 100% transactional in nature.