{"id":4779,"date":"2026-09-11T19:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T17:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/?p=4779"},"modified":"2026-09-11T19:22:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T17:22:18","slug":"winning-the-argument-does-not-solve-the-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/?p=4779","title":{"rendered":"Winning the Argument Does Not Solve the Conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Just recently I read an interview in DER SPIEGEL with Matthias Schranner. He started out as a police officer, trained as a negotiator with the police and the FBI, and for the past 20 years has advised the UN, global companies and political parties when negotiations get difficult. When I read it, I felt like this guy lacks empathy. His advice for a manager whose employee insists on time off during the school holidays because of the kids is to answer Okay, noted.<\/em> And his goal in hard negotiations is that the other side feels it has won while in reality it has lost. But he has a point, and he made me aware of something I had never used consciously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winning the argument is not the same as solving the conflict<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It sounds banal, and I still had not been acting on it. Schranner describes the pattern like this: the will to convince leads to argument, then counter-argument, then a fight. At the end you tell yourself I have really tried everything, but he is just too stupid<\/em> (my translation). Look at where that sentence leaves you. You may have had the better arguments, you may even have won the exchange, and the conflict is exactly where it was before. As Schranner puts it, a conflict does not dissolve on its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why we try to win instead of resolve<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We tend to try to win a conflict instead of resolving it, and a few well-known biases push all of us in that direction. There is naive realism, i.e., we believe we see the situation as it really is, so anyone who disagrees must be missing information or not thinking clearly. This is one thing I explain over and over in conversations with clients. Your perception or evaluation of something might be different than the one from your discussion partner. A simple example: you might perceive a task you have done 100 times as easy. A student who has only done it once or never might feel completely frustrated. Same thing, different reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confirmation bias lets you collect the arguments that support your position and skim over the ones that do not. And once you have said something out loud in front of others, backing down feels like losing face, even when the other idea is better. That is why we tend to turn disagreement into a contest you have to win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also have even worse news for you. Academics get extra training in this. As a reviewer (of course unpaid), your job is to find the weak spot in someone else’s argument. As an author, you always have to defend your work and your results. This is simply a part of the scientific process. It is absolutely necessary and it needs to be done. The trouble starts when the same reflex shows up in a discussion with a postdoc about which project gets priority, with a collaborator about author order, or with your chair about teaching load. Two different opinions in one room are already a conflict, even when nobody raises their voice. And a conflict needs a solution that both people can live with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, there is a second way to get this wrong. Instead of fighting to win, you avoid the conflict entirely, because you want to stay the nice PI. Schranner has little patience for that either. When the interviewer mentioned that many people shy away from negotiating hard because they want to be liked, his answer was short: that is an excuse for not addressing the conflict. What helps in both cases is to treat the disagreement as what it is, a negotiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stefanie and I know the first pattern from our own work. We sometimes discuss where to take GLIA-Leadership or what to do next and have different opinions, and we are both strong at arguing. Two people who are good at arguing can keep that up for a long time. What I realized after reading the interview is that in those moments we defend our own opinions against each other. If we looked for a resolution that fits us both instead, one that settles the conflict our different opinions create, we would simply move faster. Do not get me wrong. Stefanie and I disagree, but we do not fight. In our five-plus-year business partnership, I cannot remember a heated discussion, but from time to time we differ on what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leave with your heads held high<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So instead of trying to prove the other person wrong, there is a better question to ask: How can we both leave this situation with our heads held high?<\/em> Schranner would probably find that question too soft, since he says win-win is over in confrontational negotiations. In a research team, though, you sit across from the same people again next month, and that makes it the right question to ask. It also changes the pace. An argument keeps going round in circles, while this question moves the conversation toward options, and options lead to a decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schranner’s own example in this article shows what that looks like in practice, once you get past his coldness. Two people want the same week off, one of them with children. When the parent says But I have kids,<\/em> the manager does not argue, and he does not say I understand you<\/em> either. He says Okay, noted,<\/em> explains that several people have asked for the same weeks, and offers an option: take the middle two weeks off and work in weeks one and four. If the answer is no, he thanks the person for being clear and states what he just learned, that weeks one and four matter to them. With that, the other two weeks are back on the table, and the negotiation continues until there is a solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word to listen for<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schranner also names a warning sign, and it is a single word:\u00a0but<\/em>. Once someone says\u00a0but<\/em>, he says, they are justifying themselves, and the conversation is now about being right and about moral high ground. If you have been reading my posts for a while, you know my Tiny System #8,\u00a0Yes, and\u2026 instead of But\u2026<\/em>.<\/a> Schranner arrives at the same word from the negotiation side. It works in both directions. When you hear it from the other person, you know they have moved into defense, and when you hear it from yourself, you know you have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody gets to make you angry<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also liked something else he said. Schranner does not allow anyone to make him angry: I do not give that power to anyone in the world. It is not people who make me angry. I make myself angry.<\/em> That is also something strong to make yourself more relaxed because this perspective gives you self-control over your anger. The moment you get angry, you are back to defending your position, and every bias from above takes over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, standing your ground is sometimes the right call, but sometimes it is to look for a solution to the conflict. So the next time you have a conversation with someone, ask yourself: Do I need to stand my ground here, or do I want to have a fast negotiation outcome?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is the link to the article, but you need a subscription you probably don’t have: Verhandeln im Job: Wie sich das Fairness-Verst\u00e4ndnis ver\u00e4ndert – DER SPIEGEL<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just recently I read an interview in DER SPIEGEL with Matthias Schranner. He started out as a police officer, trained as a negotiator with the police and the FBI, and for the past 20 years has advised the UN, global companies and political parties when negotiations get difficult. When I read it, I felt like…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4779"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4782,"href":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4779\/revisions\/4782"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glia-leadership.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}