Innovative Conflict Resolution

I love to hang out at Starbucks and write – in fact, I’m sitting at Starbucks as I write this.  As I left the house, I joked to my wife, “I love going to Starbucks because everyone there likes me.” My son, a marketing major, has been telling me about commercial friendships and marketing. Apparently Starbucks, as well as other retailers, trains their employees to get to know their customers, to learn names, favorite drinks, and a few simple details about their lives.  Like the old TV show Cheers, Starbucks has become a place “where everyone knows your name.”

The downside is that apparently people can become confused, and forget what real relationships are like.  Much of my life was working in a company were many of the people I dealt with wanted to sell me some service; I was routinely offered lunches, dinners, baseball tickets, and so on.  Would these people invite me home for dinner?  Aside from one or two people I did actually become friends with, no.  These were “commercial friendships,” friendships developed with a business goal in mind. I could tell the difference – and besides, many of them I wouldn’t have chosen to be friends with anyway.

However, this kind of consistent attention can be deceiving.  When someone seems genuinely interested in your life, your family, your likes and dislikes, it’s hard not to start to think they actually care about more than just getting your business. Perhaps they do really like you; but would they invest in a relationship even if they wouldn’t profit commercially?  As depicted brilliantly in an old episode of Seinfeld, the real test of friendship is being asked to drive someone to the airport. Who would you call – your mechanic who tells you jokes every 3 months when you bring your car in for an oil change, or perhaps the girl who makes your extra-hot lattes every morning?  What about your family doctor, or  your accountant?  If you did ask any of these people, you’d soon find out just what “commercial friendship” really means.

As my son has related to me, a common consequence of these wonderful commercial friendships (they are not necessarily bad things;  certainly better than dealing with mean, unfriendly people) is that people then tend to get frustrated when they have to deal with “real” life.  Kids will argue and disobey, spouses will disagree with you, and neighbors will continue to be un-neighborly.  Real 3-dimensional relationships – those which also include conflict – are often not as pleasant as those shallow but peaceful commercial friendships we develop.   If we lose the ability to distinguish between or confuse the expectations of “real” and “commercial” friendships, I have a feeling our ability to maintain a healthy relationship of any real depth will suffer.

Conflict, you see, is foundational to every real human interaction.  In commercial relationships, any sense of conflict is downplayed.  If “the customer is always right,” what happens when the customer is really wrong?  No one but a friend is going to tell you that you have a goofy haircut.  The car salesman won’t tell you that you really can’t afford the car you’re buying.  Your waitress won’t tell you to order the low-calorie plate.  Only people who care about you will step into that area known as conflict – an uncomfortable area for most people – for your own good.

There is no personal growth without conflict.  Commercial friendships are like the Magic Mirror who tells us we are “the fairest in the land,” even when it knows darn well we’re in need of a makeover.  We all like the Magic Mirror; but, in reality we need people who will risk a bit of conflict so that we are challenged and stretched.

But what happens when people – enchanted by the proliferation of magic mirrors in the land – forget what little they knew about handling conflict?

Analogous, perhaps, to the breakdown of the family (where the deepest relationships, and the most conflict, generally resides), the loss of conflict management skills has a very negative impact on society.  How do we resolve differences if we are unable, or unwilling, to deal with them?   Without engagement on more than a surface level – i.e., conflict – we will cease to grow as individuals, and as a society.  If non-conflict relationships become normative in the workplace, business itself will eventually suffer.  Without conflict, any team will become less productive.

As I have written before, interpersonal conflict is natural.  Conflict will happen, whether we like it or not. However, without developed conflict skills, conflict will tend to move into the unproductive category, and may actually be destructive, where outbursts of pent-up frustration and anger become the norm.

If it’s true that commercial friendships are eroding the overall quality of relationships and we are losing our ability to deal with conflict productively, then those who understand and are not afraid of conflict will be well-poised as leaders, and organizations who can instill productive conflict management skills in their members will naturally find themselves ahead of the pack.  This, I believe, is true at any time, but even more so in an age dominated by commercial friendships.