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Peace and heat
In unhealthy peace, nobody ever says the thing, and the most important conversations never get had. In unhealthy heat, conflict turns into dominance, insulting, manipulation, and abuse. Many families and teams oscillate between the two, because there are few examples of healthy heat to learn from.
Fighting as a skill
Conflict is called heat because it is dangerous and relevant at once. Nobody fights with people they don't care about, since those people aren't relevant to them. The skill of fighting well is how teams become resilient, fun, thriving, and connected.
Avoiding conflict loses a lot. It doesn't make a team or group stronger, and it raises the likelihood that the group falls apart. English also has one flat word, fight, for what could use 600 different words for the many kinds of relevant tension.
Why do we fight hardest with people we depend on?
Psychologists Harold Kelley and John Thibaut developed interdependence theory in the 1950s and 1970s. It holds that the more a person's outcomes depend on someone else, the more that person's behavior matters and the more friction their choices can cause. A stranger on a train can do little to affect us, while a partner, parent, or coworker shapes daily life. Their book The Social Psychology of Groups appeared in 1959, and Kelley later expanded the theory for close relationships.
How do people handle conflict differently?
Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann introduced a widely used framework in 1974. It sorts conflict styles by how assertive and how cooperative a person is, producing five modes: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating. The Thomas-Kilmann instrument is still used in workplace training. Their model treats each style as useful in some situations.
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