7 Steps to Resolving Conflict Quickly and Effectively

From: Dr. Frank Gunzburg

My conflict resolution program is a 7 step process. Each step is composed of skills you can learn that will help you keep disagreements from turning into arguments. I will take you through each step and give you examples of how you can implement each skill into your life.

Resolving conflict has a lot to do with communicating better about your problems. In fact, you will find that some of the steps overlap, and integrating the 5 Ground Rules for Communication with the 7 steps you are about to learn will give you a powerful and dynamic way to talk and resolve your problems.

Now let’s start with the first step of conflict resolution.

Step 1: Take a Time-Out

Arguments often occur because people end up in an emotional space where they are no longer able to express what they feel in a calm, rational, meaningful way. You may find this happens in the course of a conversation (as I suggested it might in section 2), or you might find it happens in the moment the way it did for Alexis and Mark in the story above.

If you find yourself in this situation and you see that you (and/or your partner) are incapable of communicating in a calm, rational way, the first thing I recommend you do is employ the strategy you developed in section 2, and take a time-out.

Step 2:  Become a Detective within Yourself

One of the difficult problems you encounter when you are trying to resolve a conflict is figuring out if there is another emotional layer to the disagreement. When you are caught up in your emotions and the details of the argument, it isn’t easy to determine if there is another, possibly more important, underlying problem.

This is further complicated by the fact that there can be more than one problem at play in a given conflict. In marriages one issue often links up with another (or many others) and that can make it hard to fully sort them out.

One activity that might help uncover this is to write about it. During your time-out, after you have done the breathing exercise in step 1 and started to cool down, pick up a pen and paper or a journal and start writing out your feelings and thoughts about the conflict.

Step 3:  Show and Tell Time—Listening to Your Partner and Sharing Your Feelings

Now that you have some ideas of what part you played in the conflict, you are ready to hear your partner’s side of the story.

This may take more than one conversation. And it doesn’t necessarily have to happen at the same time you identify the conflict. But it’s important not to let your negative emotions keep you from having this conversation and hence precluding you from resolving the conflict.

Step 4: Figure out What You Want in This Situation

Ultimately, conflict resolution is a practical event. There’s no magic to it. The basic idea here is to identify a problem, and work toward a solution that you and your partner can both live with. That’s the direction we’re moving in.

The next step on this path is to identify what each of you wants out of this situation. For some conflicts, it is appropriate to consider what could change that would make it so that a conflict of this nature wouldn’t happen again. In some conflicts it is appropriate to consider changes in your relationship, or how you could behave differently so that you wouldn’t have to find yourselves in this difficult situation over and over again.

Step 5: Communicate about Your Possible Solutions

Now that you have some possible solutions on the table, it’s time to sit down and discuss these solutions with your spouse and focus on one you will put into effect to see if it will help you work out your conflict.

Using your own notes, discuss the items on your combined lists. Go through each potential solution and talk about how well you think it would work to solve your problem. Try using the videotape exercises I described above and see whether or not any of the solutions you have come up with so far would meaningfully solve the problem you see playing out before you.

Step 6: Putting Your Plan into Effect

Some couples talk about their problems, argue, and even come up with solutions, but then they don’t act to make that solution a reality.

While talking about your problems is important, DOING something to solve your problems is the only way to make those problems go away. If you don’t, you will be stuck in the same old patterns and you will keep having the same old problems.

Step 7: Have a Follow-Up Evaluation

To make sure the plan you have put into effect is working as well as you hoped, I suggest you have a follow-up evaluation. In fact, I would recommend you check with each other after a few days, then after a week, then after two weeks, then after a month, then after two months.

In these check-in conversations you should address the following:

• Whether or not the solution is working and how practically feasible it is for you to continue doing what you are doing.
• How your spouse feels about the solution and whether or not her desires and expectations are being met.
• How you feel about the solution and whether your desires and expectations are being met.

If the solution continues to work, great! Just keep doing what you are doing and check in at your discretion to make sure things keep working.

Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years.