If handling collaboration and conflict is about presence and awareness, what’s that feel like? And how does it help you handle better?
We’re Wired To Solve Problems
Humans are problem solvers. We’re literally wired to spot problems and fix them – as are all species. It’s a survival skill for organisms as simple as single-celled amoeba, to us. Amoeba detect chemical gradients and move away from toxins. Plants adjust growth toward light, roots toward water. The sea slug has a simple central nervous system of about 20,000 neurons – and withdraws its gill when touched[mfn]Aplysia californica has been extensively studied in neuroscience, including by Eric Kandel who won the Nobel Prize with Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard, for work on its learning and memory mechanisms. Go sea creatures![/mfn]. Organisms with and without central nervous systems survive by detecting a current state, comparing it to a target state, and acting to close the gap.
Our wiring is so dominant that when we encounter collaboration and conflict, we problem-solve. Seeing them as problems rather than systems, we reach for a technique or method to apply – but there’s a catch. Techniques won’t help at the system level because they’re not designed for systems. And they’re unlikely to help at the problem level – where they are the proper tool – because they require judgment most technique advice leaves out.
Understanding what goes wrong, and what to do about it, is worth a closer look.
Why Technique Doesn’t Make You Better
The assumption underlying all advice is the same – the right advice will work. I don’t know it now, but I can find it. And when I do, it’ll close a gap. I can handle a situation better.
Unfortunately, that’s a trap. Not because advice is bad or wrong. Bad advice is a problem, not the problem. The problem has to do with how we use advice, not with the advice, itself.
We often follow advice in a way which substitutes it for judgment. The advice giver understands the context in which they would use it – what they’d watch for, if-then conditions, why some move and not another in some moment, for some reason. But when seeking advice, we generally lack the experience which yields that judgment – and tend to implement advice as steps or moves. You apply advice in an algorithmic or scripted way – like you’re solving for X in algebra class.
This is what we hope techniques do for us. Fortunately, there’s a history to technique which tells us what the problem is.
Technique comes from the Greek technē, which refers to an art or craft that’s been mastered. To the knowledge and skill of how to do something well. Ironically, techne assumes you already understand a domain deeply – including techniques – and know when and why to deploy them. Mastery comes first and technique serves it.
Modern usage inverts that – especially in self-help and professional development. In YouTube videos, LinkedIn posts, and podcasts, the assumptions is learn this technique and you’ll do [fill in the blank] better. Where techne assumes you know the craft, marketing promises you can skip that.
To see this in action, think of techniques you know for something you’re very good at. Sewing. Gardening. Grilling. Think of the first time you tried a stitch, draining a soggy garden, or searing a steak. The difference between you then and now isn’t technique. Is it proficiency? Partly.
Experience matters, no question. But repetition develops facility with that stitch, that garden, that steak – bt that doesn’t explain everything. If it did, you’d close any skill gap by practice and not need judgment.
Actual situations make demands on us which practice might not make. The fabric is thicker. Ground isn’t drying fast enough. A steak is leaner. Technique might be learned by practice – but it’s mastered through use to build judgment.
Judgment is the capacity to read a situation accurately enough to know what to do in it. Not just what move to make, but why that move and not another, when it applies and when it doesn’t, and what to do when it doesn’t go as expected. It’s the difference between knowing the steps of a technique and knowing whether to use it, exactly how – and how not – under specific circumstances.
Skillful collaboration and conflict handling requires judgment, not just repetition, and that starts with understanding what you’re looking at in collaboration and conflict situations.
Seeing The Map, Not The Terrain
You’re discussing a memo with collegues – a budget cut announcement explaining that revenues are declining due to temporary market conditions, and the cut is an attempt to ensure fiscal health through a rough patch. What do you see?
Colleagues’ body language and facial expressions match their words and tone of voice – calling it an austerity program to make the next quarterly report stronger… a disinvestment signalling new priorities… a stupid decision by blockheads who don’t understand how it will impact the mission. You’re not sure and take it all in, mulling over what sounds right. Or you’re sure and make your case for what the cuts mean for you and your team.
Is the cut a signal, a risk, an opportunity, a reasonable adjustment? All… some… other?
Meaning is interpretive, and you and your colleagues supply it. I’m not saying you create reality. There is a memo. There will be impacts. You’re seeing some with your very eyes, in the conversation. Or are you?
What do you literally see and hear? Your eyes detect lines, edges, light, shade, color. Your ears detect sound waves. What reaches your brain are streams of electrochemical signals. What reaches consciousness are interpretations of those signals. Judgments about them.
Interpretations and judgments aren’t in the signals your eyes and ears pick up. They’re in mental maps which tell you what those signals mean.
Mental maps are internal representations of the world – representations built from experience, shaped by everything that’s made you who you are, including goals you have for situations you’re in. You have as many as you need, not just one, and they contain important info – what you see in situations, but not other things… the way you make sense of what you see, but not some other way… actions you’d take toward certain ends, but not others.
Mental maps operate fast, automatically, and mostly below awareness. You don’t decide to use maps. They’re already there, working to make sense of data you otherwise couldn’t use.
Cal Tech researchers quantified the speed of human thought at 10 bits per second, while our bodies’ sensory systems gather data at a rate of a billion bits per second – 100 million times faster than conscious thought. [mfn]Jieyu Zheng and Markus Meister. “The Unbearable Slowness of Being: Why do we live at 10 bits/s?” Neuron, December 17, 2024. Also at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39694032/. For reference, a typical Wi-Fi connection processes 50 million bits per second.[/mfn] The difference isn’t just bits lost – it’s data selected, curated, so you can act.
Imagine a city map the size of the city. You couldn’t use it. Maps reduce scale so you can use them – but that leaves things out. You lose detail to gain utility. A map maker decides what to include in a city map – learning does that with your mental maps. Not just formal learning, but what experience has taught you to notice, expect, and do to accomplish your intent.
What’s this mean for collaboration and conflict?
First, collaboration and conflict aren’t “what happened” – events external to you and colleagues, like an object or specimen to examine. They take their shape by what maps make available – which means what they contain, and don’t.
Second, to know your map gives you a chance to validate interpretations and judgments. To discover colleagues’ maps gives you the chance to learn not just what they think but why – and that opens up problem solving possibilities.
Third, with everyone in the room mapping a situation, handling is about engaging maps – understanding the content within and between maps, and checking the fidelity between them and events.
When you understand that everyone is orienting and navigating from their own mental maps, you realize handling means discovering their content first. Everything important for handling follows that.
The Handling Moment
To handle a situation – really, to handle yourself in one – requires presence. You need to be present for your mental map to engage with what’s happening. If your mind is elsewhere, signals reach your eyes and ears but don’t register as meaningful. Nothing is available to notice, reflect on, or act on. “Say that again, please” brings you back to the interaction of the moment.
This seems too obvious to mention – but I want to point something out. Presence is when your mental map goes to work. By simply paying attention, your mental map engages – it processes data to give signals meaning, and do what maps are designed for – to orient and navigate. When this happens, I call it a working model.
Mental maps contain structure and content. Working models process signals against that structure and content for you to act. It’s the difference between having a mall map in front of you, or a city map in your hand, and moving. You use information from the map to make your way from a current location to your destination. I call it a working model because it’s provisional. It can and should change as you update your mental map with new information.
Mental map and working model are metaphors – constructs I use to explain what I think happens in collaboration and conflict handling. They’re plain language for what neuroscientists and cognitive scientists study under various names – internal representations, mental models, predictive models, schemas, embodied cognition, and more.
We’ll look more closely at these in What Does It Mean To Handle Collaboration And Conflict Better? For now the important handling point is that awareness of mental maps and working models is where you exercise agency and authorship – or not.
Agency is the capacity to act intentionally. To choose your response rather than just have one. To act rather than react. Authorship is the willingness to write your part in what happens next – and be accountable for it – rather than be written by what follows.
When you’re aware of the structure and content of your mental maps, and aware of them at work, you maintain agency and authorship. If you acted as fast as signals come to you – in a conversation, reading an email – you could relinquish both.
Think about a time you acted on a hunch before you knew what it was. You said something you wished you hadn’t. Shut down when you should have stayed engaged. Maybe you made a comment that was a flash of insight and deepened conversation. Looking back you can see that moment – but could you see it coming, at that time? Looking back, can you say you felt a hunch, intution, gut – your word – as it arrived? Before it arrived?
That moment – between signal and action, between hunch and response – is where handling collaboration and conflict happens. Not in the technique you reach for. But there, in that instant where your working model predicts possibilities and moves you to act. Self-awareness catches that moment. Judgment examines it – is this prediction accurate, does it fit what’s actually happening? From that reflection, agency and authorship become possible. If you’re not self-aware, your working model moves you before judgment gets a chance, and agency and authorship go with it.
Handling yourself in collaboration and conflict through presence and awareness is not the handling most technique advice teaches. What you do with that presence and awareness is what we’ll look at next.
Test Drive Collaboration And Conflict Handling
Here are some things to try, to test drive ideas in this blog:
- To notice your problem solving patterns, ask yourself if – based on your training, expertise, roles and responsibilities, etc. – you intuitively see situations in certain ways. Do you see readily certain types of problems or solutions – technical, people, risk, etc. Contrast yourself with someone you know well, who regularly sees situations a certain way, and you have clues to patterns.
- To notice your move to seek advice, reflect on the kinds of questions you ask friends, family, colleagues – even AI – and what you do with answers. Do you routinely look for information to handle difficult conversations, explain yourself better, understand others better? Are you curious about, like to learn more about, certain thing? There’s no right or wrong answer – you’re looking for patterns.
- To notice your mental maps at work, can you spot patterns in what you see and how you size-up what you see related to your role and responsibilities? Related to your training and expertise? If you spot patterns, do they apply to how you see and size-up work collaboration and conflict? Again, there are no right or wrong answers. Patterns clue you into mental maps at work.
- Can you think of a time you were aware of a handling moment? Of the moment an intuitive response felt triggered – but before you acted? Can you recall a time you were sure what something meant – but got it wrong? These are clues to the signalling we talked about – pre-conscious made concious by reflection.
- Reading about agency and authorship, does it feel different to act intuitively, perhaps impulsively, than it does to notice an intuition or impulse and examine it before acting? Do they feel the same or does examination, reflection, somehow feel more agentic? If you notice a difference, do you sense a difference in what it feels like to author and co-author what comes next? Does is feel more intentional?
A test drive isn’t a test. There’s no passing or failing, only trying and noticing. Sometimes you’ll have an ahh-ha! moment. Sometimes you’ll raise more questions than your answer. Both are the point.
The stance this series invites is different from the problem-solving, technique mindset most professional development offers. The goal isn’t to apply a technique correctly. It’s to better understand your relationship to work collaboration and conflict – so that you know what you’re doing with technique, and why, not just how.
