I was sitting in the cafeteria listening to a colleague go on about her horrible day. Her morning had begun with a phone argument between her and her ex-husband that had somehow spilled over into an argument with her current husband. Then, she went outside to find her car blocked by the neighbor’s trash cans. Later, someone cut her off in traffic. She received a work assignment that she considered a waste of time, and the book she was reading for a class she was taking was stupid.

I looked at her over my juice box and thought, “You gotta get a shorter list of things that make you mad.”

Something to consider when thinking about conflict at work is whether what you are fighting about is worth the fight. Pediatrician Marvin Gersh, in his very funny and wise book How to Raise Children at Home in Your Spare Time, tells of two parents who were concerned about whether it was better for their child to sleep with the bedroom door open or closed. They took this problem to the doctor who reminded them that the open or closed door decision was not exactly a moral question.

A good question to think about before engaging in conflict with another person is: “Why does this matter so much to me?” Asking this question isn’t about being lazy or cowardly; it is a question that can help us to decide whether we are fighting out of habit or tradition, or whether this is a difference worth engaging.

Borrow a page from process improvement and root cause analysis to ask yourself why five times.

. . . and so on. As the manager from our example drills down into the cause of her concern by asking why five times, she may discover that it is important to assert herself to get the new computer monitor or may just as well discover that it is not important.

If the difference in question is worth engaging, having asked ourselves why five times will help us to clarify our position and its importance. We will also have learned about what matters to us as we edit the list of things that we are willing to stand up for.

The manager in our example says that not having the new type of computer monitor makes her look bad. Nobody wants to look bad, so it may seem reasonable to be angry about not having the new monitor. As we continue to ask why, we may get to a deeper issue:

Why does it make me look bad? Or, why do I care about this?

“The new monitor was distributed to all managers, and people are talking about them as if they are a perk. If I don’t have one, then I don’t have the perk that all of the other managers are getting, and it sends me and others the message that I am not as important.”

See how quickly asking why gets us into an analysis of what matters? In this case, the manager is finding out or acknowledging that she considers the new monitor to be a sort of badge of her rank and an indication of her relative worth. The next why question could go in several directions, and our manager may need to try a few in order to get to the core of what is bothering her.

Why do I care what others think? Or, why do I think that the monitors are a symbol of being a manager? Or, why do I think that I would be left off the new monitor list?

By the time we get to the fifth why, the examination of the issue is getting close to what may really be bothering us. Our manager in the example will now have to challenge herself to honestly investigate a little of what makes her tick. She may decide that this is something worth pursuing or something to be left alone. She may also find that there is something more important to work on—either by herself or with others in her company.

Five is not a magic number, but it is a good guideline. Five whys will usually get us to a point where we begin to really need to think about what matters. Depending on the issue and how we ask and answer the question, you may get there in four, or it may take more than five. When I am working with someone and asking why five times, the person usually starts to get annoyed by about the fourth why. You may find that that is the case when you do the exercise by yourself. It often means that your analysis is getting somewhere.

Try this exercise: Think of a conflict you are engaged in. Begin by asking yourself, “What do I want?” Then ask yourself, “Why?” Be strict with yourself, and challenge your answer by asking why again, then ask why about that answer, and so on. Write your five answers out to be sure that you are taking the time to truly think this through.

Each time you answer the question why, refine your answer and dig a little deeper into what matters to you. If my friend in the cafeteria had worked through her list by asking why five times, three things may have happened for her. First, she would have had to calm down enough to give her issues some thought. She would also have begun to refine what really matters to her and what does not. Finally, if she identified differences that she chose to engage, she would have thought through the beginnings of an intelligent message she could send to the other person about what she wants and why it is important.

Describe a difference that is on your mind:

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1. What would you like to happen if this conflict were positively engaged with the other person?

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2. Why does that matter to you?

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3. Now continue to ask why four more times, and write your answers here.

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