The Purpose of Conflict

By Lehi Drew - Nov 24 , 2010

A few days ago, I was in a chat room with a diverse group of intelligent people.  I’d like to share a couple stories I hope will yield some insight into book publishing and online networking.

In this chat room, I noticed that there were some people with what seemed like irreconcilable difference.  I won’t go into details, but two people with very different perspectives had an argument.  Emotions got involved, ignore buttons were used, and they parted ways for the night.

I don’t know if they’ll ever reach an agreement.  In fact, I don’t think it’s important that they do.  Some people just aren’t compatible to work together. I learned that their conflict was necessary to discover that they likely can’t work together in any meaningful capacity.

My other story deals with the book publishing industry.  Long after the first big argument, I ran into a smaller argument about the book industry.  I was trying to demonstrate that books are a means to an end, which plays a big role in where the industry is going.

One of the points of contention was over people making money with books.  I was trying to point out that because of torrents and market saturation, books are not a good way to make money in and of themselves.

The conflict in the argument came when this person tried to argue that people would still be able to make money, selling books, because of all of the safeguards in place to protect from piracy.

The argument didn’t address my original point that books are not a good means to making money in and of themselves.  Media saturation would still keep authors from being noticed.

The person I was arguing with was focused on a minute detail while I was focused on the bigger picture.  While not necessarily an irreconcilable difference, it was telling of how each of us communicates.

My point in all of this is to demonstrate that it’s important to have conflict.  We need it to qualify our colleagues.

It also demonstrates how different people communicate.  Be mindful of your communication style. Take the Myers-Briggs personality test to see what I mean.

Does anyone have any stories they’d like to share about their conflicts?  What did you learn?