Handling Conflict When the Other Doesn't Want to Engage
How to reach out to others, build trust, and avoid making them defensive
Hi! I'm Yue. Chief Product Officer turned Career Coach. My personal mission is to support more women and minorities in ascending to the C-suite. Subscribe to get access to these posts, and all past posts.
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Last month, I wrote a popular post about how to escalate well. It raised another interesting question for the readers: what happens if the other party doesn’t want to escalate and prefers to avoid confrontation?
Most people think the primary emotion that governs conflict is anger. But anger is always a secondary emotion, covering up another more sensitive emotion. In the case of conflict, fear is often the primary emotion. This fear comes from a perceived lack of safety and a lack of trust. There is a fear of losing resources. There is a fear of a loss of time. There is a fear of arguments triggering unresolved traumas. Therefore, if you want another person or team to engage, it is about managing past the fear and building trust with them on their terms.
Here are 5 time tested steps to help you draw another out of their protective shell and engage with you sincerely:
Be curious about who they are. Start with understanding them — professionally and personally. Let them take the lead on where they’d like to dive deeper. Some people love talking about their kids. Others prefer to keep it professionally. In all cases, stick with questions that start with How, Why, What.
How did you get to your current role? How does this compare to past roles?
What is the goal of your team? How is progress this quarter?
What are your biggest challenges at the moment? What can you use help with?
What do you like to do outside of work?
The goal here is to get them to talk to you about whatever they love talking about. Your goal is to show genuine interest in the topic they prefer and to make them feel heard. Listen and give encouraging responses (e.g. nodding, reacting with small empathetic comments — “yes” “ oh wow”, “oh that is not good.”). Don’t be in a hurry to get to the conflict you’d like addressed. Ask at least 5 of these open questions, more if you’re starting from a tense situation. They are not dumb — they know you’re reaching out because you want to talk about the conflict. Either they’ll bring it up in time or you can try transitioning to it after 15 minutes to see their reaction.
Avoid Yes/No questions: It’s natural to want to start with assumptions and to check your assumptions. However, this can easily put the other party on the defensive. Avoid any question or phrasing of the question that they can answer with a yes or no. These can lead to dead ends and most likely include assumptions. Here are some common examples to avoid:
Are you afraid to do an escalation? Do you think we should do an escalation?
Are you avoiding this topic with me because you’re too busy? Have another priority? Because you believe this isn’t important?
Did you receive my email? Have you looked at my document I sent across?
These yes/no questions tend to trigger defensiveness and also do not give you any more information to work with if they simply answer a yes or no.
Ask open questions about the conflict to hear their viewpoint
Once you’ve established some rapport with the open-ended general questions in question 1, move on to open questions about the situation. Stay broad. If they start to get defensive, find a way to go back to the more general questions if you sense them closing down again. Some examples of open questions:
What do you think of this project we’re working on to increase users?
Now that we know each other a bit more, I’d love to connect again about Project X. What are your thoughts on it?
I know it’s been tricky to discuss Project X. Tell you more about your concern around X.
The goal here is to be broad in the phrasing and then to listen. You want them to give you the full context from their perspective. Follow up with “Tell me more about X” or “Why do you think x” a few times — not unlike a toddler asking “Why” repeatedly — until you get them to the heart of the issue. Hopefully, they start getting into what is bothering them or why they think it won’t work.
Have a follow-up meeting, and mention 2-3 things you remember and learned from the previous conversation. Many people are pleasantly surprised when you remember what they say. Make it a point to write down a few notes from each meeting and start the next conversation recapping what they said.
The last time we met, you mentioned XYZ and it was a great point.
How are your kids/pets/travels?
I gave what you said about X last time a lot of thought afterwards, and I’d love to discuss it more today.
It’s a small gesture but it goes a long way to building up trust in the relationship.
Plan for at least 2-3 discussions. Don’t be frustrated if you don’t get to solutions in the first one or two conversations. Building trust takes time and is done on topics that are NOT the topic of conflict. But if you do it right, it'll take a shorter amount of time than playing cat and mouse with conflict avoidance or going through a long escalation process. When the conversation has good continued rapport, try going into potential solutions together, again with open questions:
What might you propose as a next step for project X?
What might a solution look like for this debate?
How do you think we should move forward?
By asking them to propose a solution, you are asking them to take the lead and on their terms. It’s also very awkward to simply say “ I have no solution” and most people will try to come up with something, especially if you’ve built a good rapport. Sometimes, I’ve found that the person may talk themselves into agreeing with me when they sit down and think about it without fear. Hence, the way to get someone to engage in a conflict is by getting them to talk about themselves and other topics they care about first so you can build trust, not diving head-on into the conflict.
There are work cultures where facing conflict directly is valued. However, even in those places, some light amount of rapport building is necessary as human beings are wired to favor those we connect with. While confrontations feel more efficient in the short term, they may build hostility in the long term and make work feel very transactional. This leads to lower retention of high performers and a “cycle-through” culture.
Finally, there’s no replacement for in-person interaction. If you’ve tried to establish rapport with them virtually multiple times but haven’t made progress, then consider an in-person visit. Just the fact that you are making the effort to travel shows them that you value them and their input. Good luck!