Sometimes it is the legendary toothpaste tube, sometimes a little late, sometimes great politics: it crashes. Dispute is often considered destructive, but he can have a lot of positive things if you know how.
Stop arousing! Everyone has heard this sentence as a child – and probably passed on to their own offspring themselves. Because dispute is often considered something negative, annoying or superfluous.
However, experts see it differently. “Let’s argue!”, The communication expert and author Birte Karalus appeals. District researcher Christian Boeser from the University of Augsburg emphasizes: “We absolutely need the dispute! Privately, professionally and in the entire society!” But a lot has to be taken into account – not simply tampered.
Terrible or fruitful? The right entry
“It is up to us whether a dispute is terrible or fruitful. The one who starts has it in his hand,” says Karalus. It starts with the motivation (is it about the matter, do I want to find a solution or am I on the injury?) And extends to the right time (do I take peace and time or do I break a giant crash between the fence?).
“But if I am really ready to deal with the other, if you get clarity about what it is about, then it is the power of the dispute that I can get answers, clarify and dissolve misunderstandings,” explains the mediator.
Why dispute often looks negative
But why do you actually think arguments for something bad? “Because, especially if it is an hostile argument, it also has negative consequences, distrust stokes, leaves injuries and always includes the danger that it escalates,” explains Boeser.
Especially then, the better you know each other and the closer you are. “Then you know exactly the trigger points,” said Karalus. “That is the common one, because then I know how I can meet someone personally.”
And often an argument also comes to a head because you simply have a different culture of dispute and biography, a completely different expectation and personality structure. “Then it becomes complicated because people feel different and consider the behavior of a person to be hostile, which is not meant at all,” says Christian Boeser.
A practical example: two people argue and one slammed the door and leaves the room. If you ask people about how to evaluate this situation on a scale from 1 (pure harmony) to 10 (maximum escalation), they usually answer with a value between 2 and 9.
“For some, it is completely ok to leave the room in order to revise and become quieter, and for others it is almost synonymous with a final break in contact,” explains the scientist. The consequence: “If a 2 leaves the room and has a 9 seated and comes back after 20 minutes and asks: ‘What do we want to eat today?’ Then the 9 is of course completely irritated. “
Balance in a dispute: give space and listen
Dispute is also about giving the other room, listening and understanding, but also taking your own position. “Both are important. Depending on the situation, one or the other,” says Boeser.
However, this requires a benevolent interest in the other and facility. And above all: friendliness. “It can have magical effects, is doing well and transformed relationships,” says the author. Anyone who also dominates the ‘royal discipline of friendliness’, listening, has a good chance that a dispute will not escalate, but the other will be taken more seriously and better understood.
And something else is important: “We need an error tolerance to the other and also towards ourselves,” said Boeser. In other words, deal with errors with a certain generosity. “Otherwise it is enough for one to only pull the eyebrow up – and the other is right.”
Absolute no-gos
And of course there are also absolute no-gos, says the researcher: “If I consider the other to be destroyed, something has gone wrong. In his opinion, prerequisite for being able to argue well is one: appreciation. “I have to see the other as a person who deserves that I treat him with respect.”
You can and should also look at yourself, if necessary, critically: “It is important that you stay to be conversed and try to make it clear to the other, why is that important to me. And at the same time is interested in why some are not important for the other,” said the dispute.
Because apparent trivialities like are not the real cause of the dispute, but only the trigger, a symbol for other problems. Most of the time it is more about the question: Do you respect me and my needs? And often also about self -determination according to the motto: do you seriously believe, you can tell me what I have to do?
Behind the conflicts: what it really is about
In order to be able to perform appropriately and friendly towards the other, I have to start with myself, says Birte Karalus. I have to take the time to reflect on myself and to question what is important to me. And also why I am so triggered by the other and then have two sentences that I can no longer get under control. “Because in reality it is about my identity and things that are important to me – and then I overreact.”
It would be ideal to be so strong in such a situation that you do not let an escalation depend: “If I know that I need time, because otherwise I say things that I can no longer take back and hurt, then I should cancel the dispute,” says the communication expert. So postponing such a personal discussion to a later point in time can make sense – and has nothing to do with fundamental avoidance: “Team Harmonie is not the solution. It is only as if you cover a carpet over the problems.”
Avoidance of dispute can harm
Christian Boeser is also convinced that avoiding disputes only causes further difficulties and, like hostile disputes, destroys social relationships in the long term. “Because then you automatically get to the point that you burst at some point.”
Then, as now, the request is: “Stop arising!” So definitely wrong. “The statement that only those who are evil are lied,” says Birte Karalus. “They are the good ones who argue – because they want us to get together together.”
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