By Adam Radzik
Management Consultant

Something we need to keep in mind is that anybody who is involved in conflict will pay a hefty price for it.

The price might be physical, such as elevated blood pressure, headache, insomnia, loss of appetite, neck pain, stomach pain, and various other aches and pains. The price might be emotional - such as a foul mood, irritation, nervousness or stress - ruining recreational activities and spilling over into personal and work relationships. No matter how we slice it, conflict is not fun.

And it doesn’t matter if we are right or if we are wrong, conflict will upset us.

And it doesn’t matter if we create the crisis or are the victim of it, both parties will experience angst.

We often are inclined to share our unhappiness with others. As an example, people who are unhappy with a service rendered to them will tell 27 people about it. When we share our annoyance, the negative emotion is enlarged, and some listeners will themselves be aggravated and in turn tell others. Some of those others will share your dissatisfaction with yet more people. The result of this process is that a sizeable group will know of your upset and may very well ask you, “What ever happened with that fiasco you were going through?” And this may cause you to remember that anger and feel it all over again.

Many of these conflicts have a long life in terms of recognizing an offense, stewing over the offense, considering how to deal with the offense, rehearsing various scripts, weighing where and when to confront the offender, seeking the advice of others, accepting or rejecting that advice, etc. Then there is the post mortem of the confrontation: what he said, what you said, what you should have said, what he would have said if you had said what you were really thinking, etc. Afterward everyone has to know what happened in the soap opera, so now you are involved in the retelling of the confrontation over and over again. More unpleasantness will be yours, to say the least.

Now comes the question of what is going to happen the next time you see the offender at a family gathering or at work or at the company Christmas party. What should your wife say or not say to him or his wife? What if the kids say something?

Then there is the long-term impact of the conflict: how the relationship has been forever changed since then, whom you told, whom he told, what everybody now knows, etc. The business of taking sides becomes a big issue: you were surprised that your best friend wasn’t more vocal and didn’t tell him off - after all, what are friends for? Sometimes the bitterness lasts a lifetime.

There are some people who refuse to get upset. They are Teflon people - everything rolls off their backs. They take a position of “What do I care what he says? He’s an idiot. Everybody knows that.” Then there are the open grenade people, always ready to explode over the slightest infraction.

Of course, the nature of the conflict should determine whether it deserves to become a cause célèbre. Sometimes we have to go to war, but too often the provocation is almost nothing.

When counseling clients, I often say to them, “How few are the issues in life that truly merit us getting upset over them.” Remember, readers, conflict extracts a very heavy price from all the parties.