Conflict is inevitable. Indeed, if there's no conflict, we may be deliberately avoiding it – perhaps due to fear. In fact, avoiding conflict could be a key reason for our stalled progress, which – far from being a virtue (as it's often portrayed) – makes avoiding conflict a low-level form of self-sabotage.

I hate conflict, which may surprise many people who know me – not least because I can seem continually embattled. But that doesn't mean I like fighting. Just that I'm keen to make progress and often fly into conflict unawares.

This makes me clumsy and negligent. Yet it doesn't mean I should steer clear of tussling with others. It means I should deal with personally-competitive issues more effectively. Certainly, when I've dealt with conflict well, I've been able to recruit people to my cause. But when I've poured petrol on the flames, I've annoyed people unnecessarily – causing me to lose battles as well as collect enemies.

Don't be a conflict coward

Dealing with conflict is therefore an important part of getting things done: a skill we cannot ignore in our pursuits. But what if we are what lifecoach Tim Ursiny calls a ‘conflict coward’? How can we cope – and even prosper – from something we're so afraid of?

In his popular 2003 book The Coward's Guide to Conflict, Ursiny confirms that our hatred of conflict is, indeed, fear: of the unknown, of losing, of being humiliated, of being manipulated by others. This makes our only rational-seeming response a fight-or-flight choice, he says, with all the negative consequences that entails.

‘True conflict cowards know that fearing conflict is not simply a matter of choice,’ says Ursiny. ‘In other words you can't just decide one day not to be afraid.’

So we need to analyze fear. To understand it.

Ursiny points to 10 fears:

The fruits of dealing with conflict

Ursiny empathizes with our fears, of course. But he also suggests a focus on the upside – what he considers the ‘fruits of learning to deal with conflict’.

These include:

• Understanding how conflicts arise, which can help us better judge when avoidance is the stronger option.
• Being able to calm others within a conflict.
• The ability to pull-up or confront others without ramping up the conflict or hurting others.
• Being able to manage conflicts with colleagues both above and below us, as well as alongside us, in the hierarchy.

So what's the magic ingredient that helps us overcome our fears, while still being able to cope with conflict and potentially come through it well? According to Ursiny, it's listening. Ursiny's convinced: in all circumstances, listening is a better way of solving conflict than talking, especially if we can apply the right style of listening.

He lists five types of listening:

Get our listening right, says Ursiny, and we're turning conflictual situations into a positive experience. As to knowing what type of listening to employ, the answer is obvious: we should listen for the clues.

Classic conflict errors

Certainly, conflict dogged my early career. I was just too insecure, too fearful, too defensive. Even now, I can find myself making some classic errors – including:

• Responding emotionally. Just about every fight I've ever been in has triggered an emotional response. In fact, many became conflicts purely because my reactions were too emotional.
• Focusing on the impact on me. Another classic error. It was always my feelings that mattered, meaning I'd no idea how my actions and statements were impacting them. No wonder it so often ended in trouble – with both sides quickly in their corners shouting ‘listen to me’. Only now can I see that, while both sides were always responsible, it was my responses that made things worse.
• Not caring about the details. Facts matter. They're usually at the root of the problem, and often the way out (once the emotions have dissipated). So why would I so often dismiss the details? Was it because I didn't have a strong handle on the nitty-gritty, or worried the facts would show me in a poor light? Too often, I fear, this was the case.
• Prejudging people and situations. Walk into any negotiation with a prejudice – perhaps that all men are selfish – and you'll almost certainly have it confirmed. Yet that's all you'll achieve because that's all you've set out to achieve. This is a common failing for the conflicted, and explains why the two genders battle away generation after generation. Yet my prejudice often went deeper: it involved prejudging their view of me, which is an inverted form of prejudice (prejudging that I'm the victim) – and often a self-fulfilling one,
• Looking for solutions that prove the prejudice. Wanting the result that proves our prejudice is not uncommon. For instance, if a project goes in a direction we dislike, it's hardly unusual for us to wish it ill, as well as gain some satisfaction when it goes wrong. Yet what about engineering such a result? That takes conflict to a different level, although – I must confess – that's been my ambition on occasion.

Cognitive dissonance

So what's going on in my head? Well, apart from all the emotional baggage of my childhood, one problem – according to many social psychologists – is what's known as ‘cognitive dissonance’, a notion explained by Stanford psychologist Leon Festinger in his 1957 work A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.

However acquired, I'll have developed strong beliefs, which have become the prism through which I evaluate the complexities around me. Yet these beliefs are sometimes challenged – perhaps by people with different beliefs presenting evidence that contradicts mine. Strong evidence will discomfort me – perhaps throwing me into a state of ‘cognitive dissonance’, in which doubt and confusion have polluted my previously pure belief system. If I accept the evidence, I'm potentially undermining further core beliefs, which could bring the whole edifice down. So, instead, I find ways to make the new evidence consistent with my existing beliefs.

Of course, this is often by refuting it, which will only deepen the conflict. Or it may be by looking critically at the person – or even the organization – offering the evidence (which explains why media organizations are so routinely accused of bias), all of which goes to prove how disturbing cognitive dissonance is to our sense of self.

Bringing it to work

So is there a practical way out? According to family therapist Sylvia Lafair in Don't Bring It to Work (2009) there's at least a way in – usually by recognizing the role we play in generating conflict.

As with other writers, she states that the belief systems we hold in the workplace are likely to be generated by our situation at home.

‘Conflict runs rampant in the workplace because of our natural and universal tendency to bring our families with us to work’, she writes.

This is true even in ‘healthy families’ in which members take on invisible roles such as the ‘good girl’ or the ‘smart one’ or the ‘joker’, says Lafair. Indeed, we can even find these roles comfort­­ing – our natural state perhaps – meaning we'll seek them out when thrown into a new group or situation (such as a new job). And while, for those from healthy families, this is unlikely to generate conflict – quite the opposite – the chances are that the person getting into fights hails from an ‘unhealthy family’, in which those early-life roles can encourage conflict.

So if we accept that our backgrounds may have done some damage – but we're also aware of our practical need to reduce, rather than inflame, office conflict – what can be done? Lafair offers the following suggestions for reducing the flammability of conflictual situations (with my usual added thoughts):

• Striving for balance. Too much openness can lead to chaos and anxiety, says Lafair. Rules are a good alternative, although – where possible – these need to be agreed. That said, seniors that hide behind rules can also create conflict.
• Promoting expression. Not wanting to be labelled troublemakers, workers – and even entire workplaces – can suppress issues. Meanwhile, other workplaces can seem like a soap opera of continuous drama. A happy medium, says Lafair, is a structured setting (such as a weekly meeting) for people to raise issues.
• Reducing stress. Office tensions are often created from external pressures such as too much or too little work, or because layoffs are in the air. It's important that organizations recognize these issues and try to reduce their impact on the team. Of course, such pressures may be forcing underlying tensions to the surface.
• Structuring communications. Emotional responses often emerge from frustration – sometimes because we feel we cannot express ourselves within a formalized structure. Teaching communications skills – perhaps by holding workshops – can help teams express themselves in an unemotional way, says Lafair.

Choose to defuse

Lafair's idea of a communications workshop is a sound one, though hardly practical for individuals struggling away with their own issues. If we're in conflict with a senior person or significant other, for instance, we may face high stakes, stubborn opponents and few resources for ‘conflict workouts’. What then?

For a start, we can ‘choose to defuse’ – as recommended by conflict resolution specialist Sybil Evans in Hot Buttons (written with Sherry Suib Cohen in 2000).

‘It's your call’, she writes. ‘Attitude is a choice. If you choose to react to your own pushed buttons with an attitude of blinding anger, you'll get nowhere. If you understand why people incite your rage and what you need to do to turn off your (and their) anger, you'll react another way and find a solution.’

Evans offers a five-step formula, which she thinks applicable to nearly all conflicts. She also thinks the steps reasonably obvious, which should help make them ‘second nature’.

These are (with some thoughts of my own):