Relationships and disagreements

There are two things you can do to make a relationship succeed:

• build its value
• handle its disagreements

Relationships fail when the costs of disagreement exceed the value the relationship delivers.

Here’s what I’ve learned about handling disagreements:

• Don’t waste resources on irrelevant disagreements
• If it’s not a deal killer, you can settle it quickly.
• If it is a deal-killer take time to resolve it while building value

Don’t waste resources on irrelevant disagreements

Resources are always limited. The more you put into handling disagreements the less you have for building value. So deal with disagreements efficiently and build value.

Disagreements don’t happen in a vacuum— they exist in the context of a relationship. A disagreement is irrelevant if it has nothing to do with the relationship’s purpose. You need to decide what relationship a disagreement is part of and know the relationship’s purpose.

Governing the nation is probably not part of your family’s purpose unless your family name is Clinton or Bush. Political disagreements are irrelevant to most family relationships and most business relationships. Don’t waste resources on irrelevant disagreements. Build value instead.

If you don’t agree on the relationship’s purpose you’re likely to have lots of disagreements about other things. If you don’t agree on purpose, you need to identify that fact and work on it. If you don’t have an agreed-on purpose it’s a deal-killer. You need to work on that first.

Different people will always have different purposes for their relationship. How could they not? They’re different people. Some of their purposes overlap. That’s their agreed-on purpose. If the common purpose is big enough, they can resolve disagreements about the non-overlapping parts. If there’s very little overlap, it might be a good relationship to get out of. If the overlap area is large many of the non-overlapping parts might turn out to be irrelevant. If so, drop them.

So:

The first steps in dealing with a disagreement are:

• identify the relationship it’s part of
• decide if it’s relevant.
• don’t waste time if it’s irrelevant

If it’s not a deal killer, settle it quickly

Say, Bob & Carol (the canonical crypto counterparties) are in a relationship. Bob wants one thing, Carol wants something incompatible. That’s your basic disagreement.

When Bob and Carol both insist on having their way and both threaten to declare war—or their relationship’s proxy for war—if they don’t get what they want that’s a deal killer. The proxy depends on the relationship means canceling a contract, filing suit, quitting a job, firing someone, or suing for divorce. They might hold off war if they’re negotiating and feel they are making progress. But the threat of war is always there if they both insist on incompatible outcoimes.

If either Bob or Carol can live with not having their way, then the disagreement is a not a deal-killer. It’s a detail. And details are easy to solve. One way is by changing the game.

Most animals, including humans, are sensitive to dominance signals. We keep score. When we’re in conflict with someone, it matters who wins. In a disagreement, people tend to fight for what they want because winning matters. But unlike most animals, we humans can change the rules of the games we play and how we keep score.

In a business setting, you play the dominance game in two ways: the generosity game and the power game. When you have lunch with your boss, the boss usually picks up the check. That’s the generosity game. The boss shows dominance by picking up the check. In the power game, the dominant one requires that the supplicant to pick up the check. When I did business with New York banks, even though I was the vendor and I would have paid, I never even had a chance to pick up the check. And I was treated to some pretty pricey meals. That’s dominance through generosity.

You can settle disagreements that aren’t deal killers by changing your game from power to generosity. Make the winner the one who is first to show generosity or who shows the most generosity. If you’re in a relationship based on goodwill and if you can afford to be generous, why not be as generous as you can?

It’s a fast way to settle disagreements and it releases the resources that you might have spent playing the power game or nursing resentments to build value or work on deal-killers.

If it is a deal-killer take time to resolve it while building value

A disagreement is a deal killer only if it’s a deal killer for both parties. If one party can accept not getting their way, then settle the disagreement quickly and save the resources for something that matters more. Reserve your resources for building the relationship’s value, for dealing with real deal killers, and then with more important details.

In a healthy relationship, there aren’t too many deal killers and once you’ve gotten them out of the way you can decide whether to deal on the near killers or not. Near killers are disagreements that don’t rise to deal-killerdom but are close enough to cause problems. Enough near-killers and you might have a deal-killer on your hands.

Dealing with conflicts, especially killer level conflicts is hard and it deserves a post of its own. Or several.

Meanwhile, don’t waste time on irrelevant disagreements. Settle detail disagreements quickly. Build value. Make things better.

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