The Surprising Power of Shared Values

Wrestle with Conflict

It will make you a better negotiator

I was having a tense conflict-laden conversation with a friend of mine that was going badly. From my point of view, the conversation turned for the worse when he challenged me to stop fighting like the adversarial trial lawyer I will always be and cautioned me to follow my own principles.

As framed - accusingly - this appeal to shared values turned my irritation into actual anger.

So why do I say that appealing to shared values is powerful? In this instance, it didn’t do anything but increase the temperature in the room.

Somebody Has to Give

Let me admit that de-escalation is not my strength. I’ve been working on my inner justice warrior since I began conflict resolution studies way back in 2004. I’m still working on her, that argumentative trial lawyer. Sometimes the collaborative negotiator rises to the occasion but often not. In this instance, I just continued to fail, shooting back

You’re being pretty damn adversarial yourself.

And that’s when my partner in conflict seized the moment by taking the narrow road to resolution.

You’re right. Let’s approach this as a problem to solve. I know we can do that.

With that, the temperature of the conversation dropped from boiling to cool. We were, after all, equal partners with shared values, not opponents sparring over who was right, who was wrong, who should be ashamed of herself and who shouldn’t. We were, and are, friends with similar missions. So when I was invited rather than cajoled into a cooperative endeavor based on shared values, I immediately abandoned my opinions and adopted the suggestion that we problem solve.

Calling All Angels

I thought about this moment all day yesterday and woke up thinking about it this morning. I recalled the persuasive power of shared values and higher missions while at the same time realizing that this power can be wielded like a cudgel or waved as a white flag of surrender.

When I say “surrender” I do not mean giving in to an adversary. I mean calling your apparent adversary to the field of resolution that you’re as willing to occupy as you’re asking him to. In this case, that person was my friend. The moment he re-framed his accusation as a call to mutual surrender to shared values, the conflict we were having was instantaneously resolved.

We continued to have different positions and opinions but we’d agreed to talk about the relative benefits and detriments of those positions and opinions in a mutually advantageous attempt to solve the problem that led to the dispute in the first place.

That’s the power of shared values when they’re proposed as a mutual undertaking rather than an accusation.

You can apply this to the partisan divide as well. In an election year, that’s a worthy challenge to us all.