Alternative to resolutions
Could you summarize in a sentence what you’ve learned from your life’s work, or a relationship, special interest or hobby? I decided to try writing mine instead of pretending to make New Year’s resolutions. I also want to read your sentences, so please share yours. And, happy 2020 writing about what life taught you.
What I learned from life distilled to one sentence:
Thinking about Conflict Mental Maps
is a core conflict competency.
Okay, admittedly that is not self-explanatory. So, read on …
A Conflict Mental Map is a straightforward idea that takes a while to describe, but not as many years as I took to understand it.
During 25+ years as a Conflict Manager, researching conflict analysis and management, I dipped into small world networks, critical and strategic thinking, conversation analysis, complexity science and chaos theory, neuroscience, crisis and risk theories, theory of mind, mindsets, decision-making, problem-solving and a few more.
Not the quick and direct route.
Mental maps represent thoughts
As I teach and practice, I observe large differences in how people in conflict think. Everyone follows a unique mental map, which only that person’s mind accesses. Like operating systems for the mind, personal mental maps organize values, beliefs, and convictions about what should be.
Yet – we rarely think about how we think – yet.
Maps represent ways of understanding territory. Mental maps, also called mental models or mental landscapes, represent a person’s understanding of what’s possible and proper and fair, according to that person. A regular mental map has a dormant Conflict Mental Map standing by. If conflict brews, flares or is anticipated, the Conflict Mental Map activates and may even override the regular mental map. When that happens, a person can behave differently than how they regularly operate.
Mental maps and Conflict Mental Maps specialize. If your Conflict Mental Map activates in a regular setting you can be ghosted or arrested. Relying on your regular mental map in a conflict setting can get you beaten (physically, legally, financially etc).
Conflict Mental Maps also specialize with a range of defensive and offensive settings, depending on context, expectations and motives. Defence hoards your capacities, protects your resources and ensures your safety. Offence lets you argue for pleasure or compels you to demand your opponent’s destruction.
I notice how varied the threshold, the tipping point, between regular and Conflict Mental Maps. Some people dread crossing the threshold. They’re willing to suffer on one mental map rather than use both their regular and Conflict Mental Maps. Others straddle their threshold, ready to tip either way. And everything in between.
Thinking about thinking about worldviews
My worldview stems from being a middle-class woman in a developed country. And yet, I think my mental map is correct. I’d guess that everyone thinks their mental map is correct. That’s a reason we have conflicts.
Our worldview constantly informs and directs our decisions. I admire Adam Shoalts’s description of natural, political and cultural maps with specific and general glimpses into values and worldviews:
Thinking about how we think about conflict opens the possibility of conflict awareness. Mental maps reflect our changed awareness over time.
Conflict Mental Map’s routes, shortcuts, and codes
Thinking about and understanding mental maps is a conflict competency. Stroll my personal mental map from the west and to east.
In the West (left), my earliest mental map and Conflict Mental Map overlapped, a cultural artifact from my high conflict family’s home battlefield. My worldview was narrow and threatened, so I crept on my regular mental map with weapon drawn for defence, alert to harm, one toe over my Conflict Mental Map’s threshold. The instant my Conflict Mental Map activated, I used the weapon, no questions asked.
My route turned after high school, going East (right). My Conflict Mental Map reacted to research and my mental map responded to life experience. When my regular mental map realized that most people are goodhearted, it overrode my Conflict Mental Map. After grad school, my Conflict Mental Map caught on that other worldviews matter.
Now, I can’t recall when I last tipped across the threshold onto my Conflict Mental Map.
Here’s an example of how Conflict Mental Maps work.
Imagine a meeting between Connie, a conservative developer, and Lily, a liberal biologist. They agree on facts and know their science. Both want their client to approve their joint report on the feasibility of developing a tract of land.
Connie’s regular mental map is coded to freedom and individual rights. She believes people are logical and rational, development damage happens and market pricing takes damage into account. Client approval is a straight route to developing the land for a fair return. The client doesn’t seek profit at all costs, so Connie expects Lily to support recommending the development proceed as proposed.
Lily’s regular mental map is coded to social justice and collective rights. She believes people are caring and rational, development damage should be avoided and profit doesn’t compensate for community losses. Client approval is a straight route leaving land in a natural state because of its intrinsic worth to people’s enjoyment. The client doesn’t seek profit at all costs, so Lily recommends the development not proceed as proposed.
Connie views Lily’s recommendation as betrayal. Not only does Connie believe the science supports her, she values loyalty and judges Lily for undermining their shared client. Connie codes their disagreement as conflict, triggering her worldview consisting of winners and losers, which activates her Conflict Mental Map. It directs her convictions about how conflicts should or should not unfold.
Connie’s Conflict Mental Map also defaults to shortcuts based on past experiences. She hears Lily and thinks, ‘oh no, Lily’s another of those who puts frogs ahead of people.’
Meanwhile, Lily’s regular mental map codes Connie as open to negotiation, which shortcuts to reaching consensus through further discussion. Her Conflict Mental Map doesn’t activate because she expects that Connie will read her recommendation to scale back the development and see its wisdom.
Lily and Connie have different thresholds. After they read each other’s recommendations, Connie meets the client alone. Lily, still using her regular mental map, is blindsided when the client terminates her contract.
Connie believes she acted in the client’s best interests and was true to her values. Lily believes she acted in the client’s best interests and was true to her values.
Both are correct, based on their worldviews and differing thresholds to tipping between their specialized mental maps.
Conflict Mental Maps make sense of conflicts and that’s a conflict competency.
So, the one sentence distillation of what I think about, is thinking about and trying to understand my own and others’ Conflict Mental Maps.
What’s your learning in a sentence (or more)?
I’d like to read it.
Happy 2020 to all, with wishes for a peaceful year.
