Twelve Principles for Verbal Conflict: In the Workplace, at Home, and in a Romantic Relationship

by Brian G. Daigle

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There will be conflict. Welcome to the human theater. Those who avoid conflict affirm its presence. Those who create and seek it out also affirm its presence. Those who do something more moderate and healthy with conflict also affirm its presence. If we want to live upstanding and good lives, lives of high quality relationships, personal and social success, and even lives of professional advancement, we must learn to be better with verbal conflict. If we want healing and health and peace, we must handle verbal conflict well.

       We can look at the history of mankind, at literature, and at our own personal experiences and see that there are many ways of dealing with conflict. There are about as many ways of dealing with conflict as there are reasons the conflict began in the first place. The path a verbal dispute may take depends on many factors: the people involved, the topic at hand, the place where the conflict occurs, the relationship between the parties involved, the habits of language and communication each person brings to the conflict, the timeframe in which the conflict is involved, the reason it has become a conflict at all, the motivations each party has for engaging in the conflict, the end each party seeks, and other circumstances (it is late at night, or it is during a board meeting, or both parties are hungry or tired, etc.).
       Nonetheless, the health by which verbal conflict can be gauged is a continuum, from devastation on one side to flourishing on the other, a kind of continuum from death to vitality. Where verbal conflict lands on this continuum, at any point of the conflict, depends on getting a few key principles right. There are at least twelve key principles for which we ought to aim if we want verbal conflict to have a rightful and healthy place in our own human flourishing.
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1. Avoid it, if possible. The vast majority of verbal conflicts can be avoided, if a few simple questions are asked at the beginning, or if a different tact is taken early on, or if a kind of verbal tone is left out of the situation, or if the question at hand is simply looked at differently. In most cases, either in the workplace or in romantic relationships, and even in our relationships with our children or our parents, conflict is actually not necessary to accomplish what we want to accomplish. Verbal conflict occurs and is escalated for a myriad of reasons, but more often than not, it can be avoided. Avoiding verbal conflict out of fear is no good, and neither is avoiding verbal conflict out of spite. If verbal conflict is to be avoided, it is because both parties have, in a mature and healthy way, found another and more enjoyable way to reach their intended goals, or to reach resolution to the question or topic at hand. In order to do that, both parties must exercise early humility, early creativity, early benevolence for the other, and early consideration of going on a journey with their friend, their “opponent,” toward the truth of the matter rather than seeing their friend as an immediate adversary. Jonathan Edwards, in his “70 Resolutions,” states, “33. Resolved, always to do what I can towards making, maintaining and establishing2 peace, when it can be without over-balancing detriment in other respects. [Dec. 26, 1722.]” 

2. Make it brief, if possible. If you can’t avoid it, then make verbal conflict as brief as possible. One of the surest ways we can make a verbal conflict brief is to consider our individual, and often nefarious, part in it becoming a conflict whatsoever and to immediately throw that to the side, to no longer have any motivating factor in how the path ahead looks. Either due to pride, misunderstanding, past and present hurts, or ineffective communication (or a combination of them all), verbal conflicts often drag on more than they should. It is similar to meetings and reading books.
     We don’t remember most of what we read or most of what occurs during professional meetings, and we don’t remember much of what is said during verbal conflicts. Meetings can take too long, and we can take too long to read books. We can also give too much time to a verbal conflict. And so books, verbal conflict, and meetings should all have the kind of brevity in our hands that is necessary for the most amount of good. One way to do this is to say the truth simply, neither too deeply nor in a way which over-extends ourselves or our friend emotionally or intellectually. Keep verbal conflict brief by staying simply and outright the truth of the matter, and getting to the truth of the matter with as little emotional swirling as possible.Sometimes, however, verbal conflict cannot be brief, because the topic is too big, or the conflict is too complex or deep. In that case, have a clear and simple roadmap by which each topic can be dealt with in a way that is most brief and beneficial. Keep the steps sequential and forward-moving. Avoid the swirl; avoid the tilt-a-whirl.
 
3. If it can’t be avoided or kept brief, keep it proportionate. “Well, that got out of hand,” or “Well, that got bigger than it should have been,” is often enough said after verbal conflict, when people are exhausted. If you can’t avoid verbal conflict, and if you can’t keep it brief, then keep it proportionate. That is to say, let the magnitude of the conflict match what is most beneficial and healthy for the parties involved, for their relationship moving forward, and for the placement of this conflict amidst all the other good happening between friends, family members, or colleagues. There are distinct moments in a verbal conflict when the thing becomes much bigger than it should be. This is often due to hurt feelings and relational confusion. Nonetheless, don’t let the verbal conflict have more space than it should. If it was conflict about a minor policy, make it proportionate; don’t let it drag out the whole meeting or the rest of the week. If it was conflict about where to eat lunch, don’t let it drag out the entire road trip. Edwards states, “60. Resolved, whenever my feelings begin to appear in the least out of order, when I am conscious of the least uneasiness within, or the least irregularity without, I will then subject myself to the strictest examination. July 4 and 13, 1723.” 

4. Listen. Listening is difficult. This is true mechanically, emotionally, and intellectually. Mechanically, we live in a busy and loud world, and so slowing down in quiet to listen is not an easy practice or habit for us. And this, at a surface level, makes listening difficult. We literally cannot hear well what those around us are saying, and often times verbal conflict arises in the “heat of the moment” and that means in the noisiness of our day, and so listening is hard.Furthermore, listening is hard because it is not just a physical activity but an intellectual and emotional one as well. We must not only listen to the words but hear our friend as they speak to us. We must hear what they are saying and what they are not saying, and we must hear it amidst our own internal conversations, the ones occurring in our minds. I am convinced that in any verbal conversation, there are always twice as many people as can be seen in the conversation; those others include the deliberation and conversations that take place inside our own minds. We hear our friend, and then we talk about it to ourselves, perhaps even while they are still talking, and no doubt they are doing the same thing internally. And that means in a verbal dispute between two people, there are actually something like four people. This also makes listening difficult.
       Stack onto this the very real fact that listening, of all the five academic competencies (reading, speaking, writing, thinking, and listening) is taught the least. That is, we have the least formal training in learning how to listen well. So, not only is listening complex, we are not well-equipped to do it with high success. Therefore, we must make an even greater effort in verbal conflict to listen well. What would this look like?
       Get in a place and posture where you can hear well, with your ears and your eyes. Slow things down. Find a different location to verbally share. As you listen, repeat back to your friend what they said so you ensure you heard them well. Give them a chance to correct you in whole or in part so you can hear what they are saying. Engage with what your friend said and not what you think they said, and if you are unclear, ask for clarity. Respond in an understanding way, with both emotional understanding and intellectual understanding, first to the big picture and then to more specific parts, if that is most helpful. Seek clarity before you respond. Seek to understand before being understood. Take turns sharing. Stay on topic. Don’t blame them for not listening, if you don’t feel they are, just try to find clarity as kindly and patiently as you can. Consider looking at the topic a multitude of ways, both of you, and confirm the truth of the matter at each turn, even if it casts one of you in a worse light; it will be an opportunity to apologize and seek forgiveness. Be fair. Listening well requires openness and conviction. Be open to hearing and be convicted enough to respond to your friend with honesty and vulnerability. And remember, raising one’s voice doesn’t ensure a greater success rate at listening; quite the opposite. Keep the volume and emotional tenor at an honest and helpful level so as to promote in yourself and your friend the best path to listening well. And don’t forget to hear yourself: hear how you sound, hear how you are coming across. It is one thing to listen to your friend in verbal conflict; it is quite another to hear yourself and what you are bringing to the situation, for good or ill.
 
5. Choose your words wisely. We can never have enough wisdom, and this is most especially true in verbal conflict. Verbal conflict requires all kinds of decisions to be made, chief among those is what words we should say and how. If we want a quick, happy, and beneficial resolution to verbal conflict, we must choose words which lend themselves to that direction. And this means avoiding all kinds of grammatical grenades; it means choosing true, good, and beautiful words, in a way which honors myself, my friend, and the topic at hand with the utmost truth, goodness, and beauty. It means thinking before we speak. It means counting the cost of each word before we sling it into the arena to promote our friend as either an adversary or an ally. In the economy of verbal conflict, words and emotions are the goods exchanged; they are the transactional artifacts. Words and emotions, along with non-verbal communication and ideas, cause the whole thing, quickly and mysteriously, to go one way and not another. Choose words and rhetorical style which tend constantly toward the true, the good, and the beautiful. Do this despite your pain or frustration. 

6. Avoid sarcasm. In modern times we cannot learn deeply enough that sarcasm comes from the Latin sarcasmus and the Greek sarkasmós, which mean to “cut the flesh,” or “to strip off the flesh” or “to sneer in anger.” Let this sink in for a moment. What then becomes of a son whose father or mother are consistently sarcastic with them? What becomes of a daughter whose father or mother are consistently sarcastic with them? Do you remember when your grandmother made that sarcastic comment to you? Have you ever had a sarcastic teacher? Do you see what comes of the classroom culture and the students’ self-worth? What becomes of a beloved spouse whose spouse is regularly sarcastic with them? What becomes of you when you are sarcastic with yourself? Sarcasm is not neutral; it is not light. It is not, even in its nature, jest and jollity. It is deep and cutting and destructive. This is built into it, because it is founded in anger. In verbal conflict, when sarcasm enters in, even in the slightest, the whole mood changes. Swords are pulled. Walls are erected. People grab for their daggers, for they have just been sliced. It is a mere flesh wound, but our bodies matter. And so sarcasm should be avoided in all verbal conflict, full stop. Even if one were to say, “Yeah, but the conflict was over, and in jest and flirtation, I wanted to make light of it.” If we could but see that such an act at the end of the conflict, where resolution had been found, did nothing more than create another wound (even if our friend laughed), we would see the wisdom in keep sarcasm far afield from all verbal conflict. The cost to sarcasm is never an increase of love, an increase of intimacy and friendship and agreement. The cost of sarcasm is always increased personal distrust and personal pain, even if slight. 

7. Avoid universals. Unless something truly always happens, universals such as always, never, every time, everybody, forever, etc. should be avoided. Painting with universals, when they are not realistic, creates a spirit of confusion, opposition, and complaint. Furthermore, it paints with broad strokes a picture that is inaccurate and unfair. Additionally, universals are often emotionally charged and cast an even greater negative light on our friend, our “opponent.” It adds confusion to what are already typically complex and confusing situations. This is why we must choose our words wisely. We must choose words that are accurate, effective, and enjoyable. If something happens often, we could even be more specific than that, and we can do so without betraying our own feelings or the truth of the matter. “Most weeknights I feel I get home from work and you do not wish to engage in meaningful conversation with me and are not interested in hearing about my day,” is quite different than, “You never listen to me.” It is rarely the case universals are going to be the best words to choose during verbal conflict. See them coming down your emotional and intellectual pipe before you open the spicket to speak. Doing so will help both parties, yourself included, see the points of friction and fuss with greater accuracy and speed. 

8. Avoid name-calling. Another way of saying this is that we should attack problems and not people. We should avoid the logical fallacy of ad hominem (to the man). This is where we attack the person and not the argument or problem. This is a simple principle and should be stated simply: don’t call people names during verbal conflict. Find another way to say what you would like to say, to present what you would like to present, even if it is a flaw in your friend. Edwards states, “16. Resolved, never to speak evil of anyone, so that it shall tend to his dishonor, more or less, upon no account except for some real good.” What is your reason for calling out the vice or character flaw in the other? Is it for some real good? It is for their good? Edwards again: “36. Resolved, never to speak evil of any, except I have some particular good call for it. [Dec. 19, 1722.]” 

​9. Assume the best. Conflict has lots of muddy parts, and verbal conflict especially is wrought with all kinds of haze, fog, and misunderstandings. It is often the case that, in conflict, our anger and bitterness fill in those missing pieces or parts with an image which casts our friend in the worse light. We do this for many reasons. Maybe we feel it gives us a leg up in the debate. Perhaps we feel it justifies our own feelings. Perhaps, and genuinely, we do it because we are having a hard time separating how we feel from the real things at hand. When we assume the worse of our friend in a verbal debate, we do quite a few incredibly unkind things.First, we make them worse than they probably are, and so we cast upon them a character that is neither balanced nor just. Second, we set up in our own minds a worse adversary than is actually there, and so we will likely respond to that false adversary in a way that is too strong. Third, we cast doubt in our friend’s mind that we are in this verbal conflict for the right reasons: to love them, find the truth, and be better together. And fourth, we block ourselves from seeing the truth of the matter, for we assume we have already filled in the blanks to give us the truth of the matter. We are then not open to learning; we have become the worst dogmatist. We will not proceed in listening well. And we have probably become that out of hurt and revenge. Edwards states, “14. Resolved, never to do anything out of revenge.”
      If something is unclear in a verbal conflict, either situationally or personally, we should not be afraid to ask. Ask if this is what they meant by what they said, or ask if their action was caused by this, or ask if they saw the implications of what they said or did before they said or did it. Or ask if you have misunderstood something they can help clarify. Can you see into the other person’s heart? Truly? Can you see all that surrounded your friend’s life and ideas at the time of the friction or situation or idea which caused this verbal conflict? Do you really know your friend and the situation as well as you think you do? Seek to understand before being understood, and you will find that as you assume the best, even in the gaps, things probably were not what you thought, at least in part, and that clearer and brighter path will be much easier and more enjoyable to travel with your friend.
       Furthermore, consider you do assume the best (and what you assumed was wrong, but you or your friend never correct it); you have done something incredibly gracious and merciful: you have painted with more radiant light something that otherwise could have had more shadows, and by doing so your friend will sense in you a divine mercy that is beyond this world; your friend will see a kindness they did not deserve, and that kind of love is indescribably and mysteriously healing. Edwards’s words strike deep: “58. Resolved, not only to refrain from an air of dislike, fretfulness, and anger in conversation, but to exhibit an air of love, cheerfulness and benignity. May 27 and July 13, 1723.”

10. Be fair. Verbal conflict takes an awkward and impassible turn when one or both parties are unable to be fair to what the other is saying. That is, when either or both parties cannot affirm an obvious truth of the matter or affirm something true the other has said, then it will be clear that conflict rather than resolution is the aim. Another way of saying this is that there should be no double standards. In verbal conflict, if I am asking my friend to admit their faults in the situation or conflict, I should be ready and willing to do the same. I should also be willing to consider if my friend sees faults in me that I do not see or have not yet admitted. Furthermore, we should be accurate with our words, just in how we paint pictures, and balanced in how we present our ideas. Verbal conflicts are fueled to raging fires when either or both parties lack the ability to be judicious and honorable in what they say to, about, or alongside the other person in the conflict. Emotional balance and accuracy during verbal conflict is perhaps the most important advocate to being fair. If we feel our friend always does this, we should check ourselves and consider whether it is actually the case and what words and tone we should choose to ensure we present our feelings in a way that matches objective reality. This is not to say our feelings aren’t real or that we should dismiss them. It is only to say that mature adults should be great masters at being able to separate their feelings about something from seeing the thing as objectively as possible, and then presenting that in a way that is fair to one’s self and fair to the other person. Furthermore, go one step further, rather than just be fair, seek objects of charity and friendly freedom for both yourself and your friend. Edwards states, “13. Resolved, to be endeavoring to find out fit objects of charity and liberality.” And again, “59. Resolved, when I am most conscious of provocations to ill-nature and anger, that I will strive most to feel and act good-naturedly; yea, at such times, to manifest good nature, though I think that in other respects it would be disadvantageous, and so as would be imprudent at other times. May 12, July 11, and July 13.”  

11. Handle their failings (and your own) with severe mercy. In verbal conflict, it is likely both parties will have some things to own, in how the conflict goes, how it gets resolved, and in how the conflict started. When your friend’s failures and sins come before your eyes and their eyes (or maybe just your eyes), what is your plan? What response will you have? This matters greatly to whether or not the conflict becomes worse or better. Consider taking Edwards’s advice first, before you condemn your friend to the court of your own mind: “18. Resolved, to act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God. Vid. July 30, [1723].” I suspect if we were to do this first in conflict, when our friend’s failings come to light, either by our own admission or theirs, the magnitude of human empathy will lead to deep gratitude and healing for both parties. I once had a mentor who, when dealing with verbal conflict with parents in the school, would say, “If when you see their failures and vices you consider it is coming from a deep place of pain, you will be much more likely to shepherd them and the conflict toward a happy conclusion.” He was right. In such situations you will likely win the man and the argument.  

12. Seek the same good. Elevating your own pride and victory cannot be the purpose of the conflict. Edwards states, “12. Resolved, if I take delight in it as a gratification of pride, or vanity, or on any such account, immediately to throw it by.” This is the kind of thing that can be confirmed at the beginning of the conflict, especially if it is to happen in a formal setting (like a formal meeting at work or a designated sit-down place and time in a romantic relationship), but an end, to which both parties have mutually agreed, should be set and seen. That is to say, the goal of the conflict is not for someone to win and someone to lose. It is not for someone to conquer and someone to submit. The goal is, at least, a meeting of the minds, and then it is to seek the same good, a good to which both (or all) parties can commit as their intended aim. “What would you like your goal to be in this conversation?” is a good and simple way to get at the “same good” to which both parties could aim. The most basic and objective goal should be for both parties to stand side-by-side, so to speak, and look together (facing the same direction) at an objective and tertiary thing (the conflict or question at hand). This means that even if we physically sit across from or face our “opponent” in a verbal conflict, we should not see them as our opponent. This is why I have wanted to use “friend” throughout this article. If there is to be an opponent in the conflict, our opponent should be a mutual opponent, one which both my friend and I can look at and “attack” together, rather than attack one another. That is, we should both seek the truth together, and agree to truth, no matter who states it or which “side” it comes from. If our goal is to seek the same good, the conflict will feel like a journey with a friend (no doubt with some friction and tension) rather than a battle, a fight, a matter of conquering an enemy.
       There is and will always be an adversary in conflict. However, the adversary should be the problems inside each of us, lies and falsehoods, hate and bitterness, and whatever else keeps me and my friend from reaching the same good we seek in this verbal conflict. If the same good cannot be determined, then, well, that is a different matter altogether and will take an added degree of grace and patience on both parties. But start with seeking the good of the other, the good in the other, and the good alongside the other, and you just may find that, even if a “same good” could not be established at the beginning, the conflict ends in a mutually healthy place.
     
​Verbal conflict may be the spice of life, or it may be the elixir of death. It may be perfume or it may be poison. It may adorn relationships with greater depth, respect, and intimacy, or it may adorn them with greater shallowness, bitterness, and rejection. What comes from verbal conflict depends on how well both parties can, together, follow the above twelve principles, in an ever-growing human capacity for one another and the situation at hand. Additionally, each of us—before, during, and after verbal conflict, no matter if the conflict “went our way or not”—have an obligation to ourselves and our neighbor to follow Edwards’s deep words of wisdom: “47. Resolved, to endeavor to my utmost to deny whatever is not most agreeable to a good, and universally sweet and benevolent, quiet, peaceable, contented, easy, compassionate, generous, humble, meek, modest, submissive, obliging, diligent and industrious, charitable, even, patient, moderate, forgiving, sincere temper; and to do at all times what such a temper would lead me to. Examine strictly every week, whether I have done so. [Sabbath morning, May 5, 1723.]”