Earth and World are not same things. You might have heard people discussing their world view, and not the earth view!
Oh! you are confused? Works well for me. After ages, I am writing a non-tech article solving softer problems in this diverse tech industry. Let’s take a purely fact-driven objective take on this issue, no personal takes. Any personal opinion from me will pollute the theme of this discussion.
Earth vs World
Okay, let’s clear up this one first. First, a quick definition to set baseline context and ensure we all are on the same page. Don’t disagree at this point, otherwise, I’ll find you and have a word, the old-fashioned way.
- Earth — A planet on which we live. It looks blue, blue is beautiful.
- World — A consolidated model of everything someone “knows about”, covering the earth and beyond.
Now that term, world-view makes sense. The key takeaway is that “The Matrix” is real and everything is a mere interpretation of someone trapped in it.
Nothing is absolute truth if more than one person is involved in the context. Even this very sentence depends on your prejudice.
Bold Take! I get it, let’s break it into digestible chunks.
Conflict — The Origins
Most of the time, I witness conflicts either professionally or personally circle around the root cause of identity crisis. We work our entire lives to gain an identity in society and make sense of our existence. Psychologically, it is understandable that we can’t gain that identity if we compromise every now and then, we’ll be wiped off. After all, we are what people perceive about us.
We defend what we stand for because they define us. Without that, there are billions of similar human bodies occupying the earth, who gives a crap.
As you would have guessed yourself, conflicts rise when contrasting identities collide. Seems right, as long as something is scientifically justified, I’m cool with it. Now that raises the question, “If it is so normal, then why does it feel so piercing at times, is there a crack in human anthropology?”
The answer seems straightforward to me. It is a well-architected negative feedback loop. You lose an argument, you feel inferior, you work on it, win the next one.
Well now that we have established that we are not fighting but our opinions are, let’s look at how to fix it. Without a solution, this whole discussion will be a sham.
Perception — The problem
Perception is the root cause of each conflict. Take the example of the cover image of this article. Both are fighting because one perceives the digit as 6 and the other as 9. This is a little evened out, let’s give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe an office scenario, where two colleagues are fighting over which solution fits better as in the case of a competing project proposal. This seems more relatable. Ain’t it?
The way every person lives in this world is totally unique and hence the viewpoint. No two people ever can perceive the same thing/event in exactly the same way. So, by our Many World theory, both are right. If someone is wrong at all then it’s the person who thinks “only” he/she is right.
Example: Two people fighting over which is better SUV or Sedan. X says SUVs are best because it is for all terrains. Y says Sedans are best because they look the best. One common issue that will follow after the sane argument above is defensive-offensive justifications. This point beyond perceptions overtakes facts and people start influencing and imposing their opinions so that the competition starts thinking in their favor, eventually folding towards his/her point of view.
Perspective — The solution
To understand the gist of this term it takes a lot of maturity and experience. How many times, you have seen a conflict resolution with your colleague ending in, let’s do whatever is good for the project, or Here are 3 pros and cons of my approach?
Ain’t that relatable? Some workplaces do encourage such good outcomes, including mine, but at the end of the day we are humans and our perception goes ahead of us. Perspective is like glasses that you can wear and see what another person might be seeing. Seems trivial in the text but takes a lot of courage to compromise own identity and adopt others’ even for a short while.
Steps for resolution
- Detach: Detach your identity from the problem at hand. Exclude all your relevant experience from the “decision” part. Example: For me as a programmer, my first language java always makes a tiny vote in deciding how a system should look, maybe subconsciously. As expected, for two equally good proposals I’ll subconsciously choose one that is in harmony with my experience. Maybe between Java and Ruby, I decided on Java. I know both, no problems for me either way, but on the flip side maybe the other guy only knows Ruby and is going through a nightmare thinking about the Java behemoth he’ll have to deal with if this one gets approved.
- Objectify your thoughts: This is extremely important as in any conversation, conversation skills play a bigger role than the underlying points. We should even that out by looking at things objectively first before going into subjective explanations. Make a bullet list of why your idea is good and what problems it has. Writing or even thinking about the second part will clean up half the malice. I bet it will be just a smooth discussion thereafter because you yourself have attested to where you(your idea) win and lose.
- You are not the only right one: Start the discussion with one clear goal that you are not the right person in this discussion or your idea is not the right one. It changes everything when you open yourself to walk in another’s shoes and see things as they are thinking. On a positive note, you can find a flaw in other people’s thought processes and can give feedback rather than being dismissive at the surface level.
If you start losing to yourself. Repeat the following:
I, a well-educated rational person, can’t even listen with an open mind to someone who maybe comes from a different culture, upbringing, education, experience, work style, goals and more. I am awesome !!!
Funny but works. An instant dose of humbleness gets delivered. Never involve yourself. Let those 5 bullet points shoot each other. Whatever survives the battle, go with that.
If everything is based on perspective, how can mine be the absolute one?
This sheer fact changes everything as long as you are courageous enough to compromise your identity for the duration of the discussion.
I landed in such a conflict with one of my friends last month while deciding tech stack for his mobile application. For reference, he is a hardcore native mobile developer and I just know a little bit of Flutter. I vouched for Flutter, he went for Kotlin. We shot each other for an hour and later realized how stupid we were and the idea for this article came.
Even he laughed when opened a notepad and started noting figures for usage volume and access patterns. In the end, we went for react native after salvaging a significant chunk of business logic from the main React web application.
Give it a shot, feels good!
Top comments (2)
Love this article! Conflict resolution is an essential element of mental health!
Always appreciate a good read!