Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

Targeted Audience: Entrepreneurs, Students, Recent Graduates.

Background:
Renowned leadership expert and author John C. Maxwell describes how
anyone can improve his or her relationship skills with 25 principles in
his book Winning With People.

I  plan to cover each of his principle in this series.  Please read more principles here: Winning With People

John Maxwell’s The Confrontation Principle

Caring for people should precede confronting people. Conflict is like cancer: Early detection increases the possibility of a healthy outcome. While intellectually it’s simple to resolve conflict, emotionally it can be difficult.

It requires honesty, humility and dedication to the relationship. Take these steps when confronting someone:

• Confront a person only if you care about that person. It is more productive to go into a confrontation keeping the other person’s interests in mind.
• Meet together as soon as possible. Putting off confrontation only causes the situation to fester.
• First seek understanding, not necessarily agreement. The person who gives an opinion before he or she understands is human, but the person who gives a judgment before he or she understands is a fool.
• Outline the issue. Be positive, describe your perceptions, state how this situation makes you feel, and explain why this is important to you.
• Encourage a response.
• Agree to an action plan that clearly identifies the issue and spells out concrete steps that will be taken.
• The action plan should include a commitment by both parties to put the issue to rest once resolved.

Believe it or not, we face conflicts almost daily, in every other situation. With our boss, with our family members, with our friends, or with our partners. We may not be in a position to avoid a conflict, as we know – many heads lead to many minds. The key may be not to avoid conflicts, the key may be to win these people by confronting these conflicts.

John Maxwell has superbly explained the importance of confrontation and how to do it. Every single point is worth memorizing. You might argue that such principles sound good in theory, but when you are in a conflicting situation, you don’t think these principles, all you think is to win the conflict.

Agreed. All I suggest is – don’t remember these few principles. Just remember one thing –

Your goal is not to win the conflict, your goal is to win the people.

I’m sure if you decide to focus on winning people, then you will remember these principles automatically, even in the middle of a conflicting situation.

Have a cheerful weekend ahead!

Note: To read more principles from this series, please visit: Winning With People.