What is the key to conflict resolution? Is conflict always to be avoided? - Podcast Episode 82

Got Questions podcast. I don't know if you've been observing the world recently, but here at Got Questions, we have, and we're seeing a lot of conflict. At Got Questions, this may surprise you, but we get a lot of people who don't necessarily agree with some of our answers, and that results in conflict.

There's conflict culturally with COVID, with race relations. There's conflict in the world, even as we speak, major conflict breaking out in the world. So I thought it'd be super helpful for us to have an episode where we discuss conflict resolution.

Why Jay Payleitner Wrote About Conflict Resolution

So my guest today is Jay Payleitner. He's the author of Don't Take the Bait to Escalate. So Jay, welcome to the show.

Shay, what a delight. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

So Jay, what led you to write a book on conflict resolution?

Well, you've already touched on it a little bit. This world we live in, it seems every time you turn around, there's a little more conflict, whether it's COVID-related or political-related or the world situation.

And as an author, I'm going, okay, how can I, in my own little world here, as I sit at my desk here outside Chicago, Illinois, how can I help bring that to a conclusion? So I was struggling with that, kicking around some ideas on what kind of book I would write without a book contract of any kind, just seeing if I would put something together.

It's a God thing. At the exact same time, at a marketing meeting at Salem Publishing, they were just in conversation, and one of the marketing managers says something about, you know what, we shouldn't, boy, we don't want that to escalate.

We shouldn't take that bait. We shouldn't take that bait, something like that. And Tim Peterson, the publisher there, said, wow, that's a great name for a book. And so they laughed about that. And then not long afterward, they said, you know what, I bet you Jay Pay Lightner could write that book.

So the title, Don't Take the Bait to Escalate, was not mine. That came from the publisher who tracked me down and asked me to write the book. And I thought, wow, we're going to join forces on this project.

And suddenly I had a book contract, and we made it happen. I wrote it last fall in the end of 2021, and suddenly it's coming out at the exactly right time as Putin is invading Ukraine. Holy cow. Again, it's a God thing that made this work.

Don't Take the Bait to Escalate, what an amazing gift that was to me, and hopefully to the world. We'll see.

How Conflict Can Produce Good in Marriage, Competition, and Negotiation

So what makes you particularly passionate about conflict resolution?

Well, because that is exactly the world we live in. But what was so amazing to me was that when I approached this whole thing, I thought that conflict was a bad thing. I mean, in general, it's got this hard, complex, it's got even the edgy kind of words to it, the pronunciation.

But when I dug into it, I realized that, wow, conflict can be a good thing. Conflict, I look back at when my marriage hit bottom, that conflict led to a stronger marriage. So conflict and competition is a kind of conflict.

Competition between companies or rivals, athletic rivals, that develop respect and friendship, and creativity comes out of competition. Negotiation, honest and honorable negotiation kind of leads to a synergy between organizations.

Without conflict, there would never be any heroes, or mentors, or empathy. Without conflict, there wouldn't be any rules, and rules are good things. If there's never a conflict, there would never be any apologies, or uncovering the deeper truths.

I mean, it's conflict in our life that draws us to God. And what is it, James? Trials of many kinds, they test our faith and produce perseverance. So confidence is a good thing. And when I started writing that book, I didn't know that, but it became so clear as I was digging into the topic.

So whenever I've taken a personality test, a peacemaker always comes up high for me, that bringing two sides together, like kind of ending a conflict, it's kind of hardwired into me. And if it was on one of the biblical spiritual gifts lifts, it would probably be a spiritual gift of mine, but definitely an interest, a very passion of mine.

But in our service at GotQuestions, obviously we deal with some controversial issues that often result in conflict, as I said at the very beginning. But when you transition the conversation more towards like a Christian focus, is conflict within the church, is conflict among Christians a bad thing, a good thing?

And what are some of the examples you've seen of how.

God has used conflict in the Christian realm? Wow. Well, yeah. You can imagine how church elders, I mean, very specific examples would be church elders wrestling with a theological issue or a personnel issue if a pastor makes some bad decisions.

Ultimately, if they do it right, if they approach it with love and respect and empathy and biblical application, the church, that church body is going to come stronger. And of course, there's all kinds of biblical admonitions for when you have conflict with someone, you go to them, somebody who made a mistake, you go to them.

And I cover it in the book a little bit, of course, you can't get away from it. If someone wrongs you, you go to them and you give them a chance to make it right. And if they don't make it right, then you go to some elders.

And if that doesn't make it right, you go to the entire church. And then sometimes you have to wash your hands of them and turn them loose, turn it over to God's ultimate judgment, I guess is a good word, judgment.

The Four Factors for Resolving Conflict

So in your experience, we've done a really good intro here of introducing conflict in the sense of it happens and positive things can result from it. But don't want to summarize too much of your book for you, but what are, maybe give a basic outline.

What is the right approach to conflict.

Resolution? I came up with the four factors, I call them, that you want to use in approaching any conflict. I didn't start the book with that idea. I started the book with the idea of I'm just going to create right based on my experience and on conflicts in film, conflicts in books, conflicts in real life, conflicts in politics, in business, conflicts at Thanksgiving dinner table, Shay, and in marriage and friends and neighbors.

I just wanted to work through some real life scenarios and some fictional scenarios even in how those conflicts were resolved in a positive way. And it became so clear after a while that, wow, in every case there was four factors that had to be, whoever wanted to resolve the conflict, whoever, whatever character or whatever situation wanted to resolve the conflict, they had four factors that always, excuse me, that always came into play.

And they are decide what you really want, not what you want, but decide what you really want, which is different sometimes. Know the risks because when you enter conflict there are some risks involved.

And then a little empathy. Empathize with your adversary because we know the world could use a little more empathy. Empathy, looking at, walking in the other person's shoes and even the golden rule, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, that idea that understand what the other people need.

So just decide what you want, know the risks, empathize with your adversary, and finally, and this is where maybe the world doesn't come together and get this point, expect the win. Be optimistic. The idea that God's going to work it all out for good ultimately according to his purpose, of course, Romans 8 .28.

So those are the four things, the four factors, and it's stunning the way they apply to every, if you apply those to any conflict, you got a good chance of working it out.

In a positive way. So just to our audience, when I read Don't Take the Bait to Escalate, it's an excellent book. I really learned a lot and I especially appreciated the stories, the illustrations, whether fiction or a real world, that really helped me to understand or think through this.

But what I'd like you to do is maybe go through and with each of the four factors, elaborate on each one and maybe this, I know we don't have a ton of time, but briefly give an illustration that fits each one of those so people can get a good idea of what they will experience.

When they read your book. Thank you. Well, I'm thinking about the most obvious one that comes to me is early in my marriage, I've been married 40 some years now, to the lovely Rita. And early in our marriage, one of our conflicts was that, oh my golly, it was just tragic and terrible and horrible.

I liked crunchy peanut butter and she liked creamy peanut butter. What a terrible conflict. I'm with you on this one. And so let's apply the four factors. Decide what you really want. Okay, I wanted crunchy peanut butter, but what I really wanted was my wife to love me and respect me and trust me and build our marriage.

So I mean, I wanted that crunchy peanut butter, but what I really wanted was a healthy, strong marriage. Know the risks. If I make a big deal about my need for crunchy peanut butter, we're not going to get along.

There'll be less romance in the marriage, probably, if I can put it that way. And then empathize with the adversary. It's like, wow, she likes creamy. I need to have some empathy for that need she has.

Now it's a minor small point, just creamy peanut butter. And then expect to win. Let's expect to win. Let's see how God works this out. Okay. So what we did decide was to compromise. Sometimes compromise is a terrible idea.

Sometimes it's a good thing. And what we did was compromise. Every other jar was creamy, then crunchy, then creamy, then crunchy. But one day we were at the grocery store together and we still had a half a jar of creamy peanut butter.

And I went and bought a crunchy jar because it was my turn. And suddenly we had two jars of peanut butter in the house. What a brilliant idea. So God worked that out. So after that, we bought two jars of peanut butter in the cupboard.

What a brilliant, fantastic idea. The bigger lesson here might be sometimes conflicts, Shay, have really easy answers if you just kind of take a breath and let them happen. That's the four factors applied to a pretty easy, low-key conflict.

But could have gone over the edge. If I would have made a big deal about that, could have done some serious damage.

Yeah. That's interesting. That story really reminds me. So recently our youth leaders at our church asked most of the adults in the family to share with the teenagers a video describing lessons they've learned for healthy relationships, whether it's marriage or whatever.

And one of the older couples in our, who shared a video, shared that one of their, I really don't know how big a conflict it was, but they have very different ways of handling the toothpaste tube. Like the one person squeezes from the middle and the other person squeezes from the back.

And at some point there was some level of conflict. I'm just like laughing. It's like, I've never cared enough about, as long as there's toothpaste in the tube, I don't care how my wife got it out. So eventually they did what you guys did and just, you know, why don't we just get two toothpaste tubes?

So it's, yeah, coming up with solutions and like going for the win. Okay. What can we do that would actually end this conflict permanently? So we never have to deal with again, stuff like that, that seems simple, but the principles can apply from a very trivial situation.

The same principles apply to a major one. So maybe share another one. I really liked your being a baseball player. Tell us about your high school baseball rivals.

I have five kids and all four, all five of them played baseball or softball. My four sons played baseball and some of their best friends still to this day are, were rivals on a baseball team. You think of, you know, middle school, two boys show up, the two best kids in the team, they both want to be shortstop.

That's part of the deal. You want to be shortstop and maybe bad cleanup. That's the goal. And you can imagine that that's conflict. There's rivalry there. But if you decide what you really want, the four factors, again, applying the four factors, they both want to enjoy the game, to win some games, to be the best team you can be.

And to, you know, build some relationships. The risk, if you're a real jerk about it and you, you pour Gatorade on his glove or, or you, or you want to complain to the coach, bad things happen. The team doesn't gel.

And then if you think of, empathize with your adversary, and sometimes an adversary isn't this mean spirited adversarial role. It's, it's just the guy, the person you're in conflict with, conflict with.

If you think about what the other person needs and how to help them be a better ballplayer, then if you expect the win, you go into it with hope and, and joy and, and passion for the game. Excuse me. Suddenly those two boys, they probably ended up being best friends because they're the ones who are lifting up the team and leading the team together.

So that's another example of when competition, conflict, rivalry, both wanting to, both wanting to have the same role or, or, or the same role as a shortstop or batting cleanup. Suddenly, the conflict turns out to be a win-win for.

Everybody. So let me ask you this. In my experience, the vast majority of people do not enjoy conflict. They don't, they're not typically actively searching it out, but I have a few friends. And then in our experience that got questions, we have a lot of people who have contacts where they are just itching for a conflict.

So when you're in a conflict with someone who's actually really enjoying it, what's, what are some principles to how to steer that conversation towards resolution when the other person is actually enjoying the conflict itself rather than enjoying trying to reach a amicable solution?

Yeah. Well, you're framing this now as conflict as a negative thing. And I'm, after writing this book, I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around that because, because I see conflict as this good thing that good stuff comes out of it.

I think what you're describing here is kind of a jerk. How do you deal with, how do you deal with guys who are just kind of, they don't, they're not in the conflict for a win. They're in the conflict just for the sake of, of, of stirring things up and, and being, being pains.

So I think what you got to do going into that kind of relationship is, you know what, see the big picture, see that God's in charge, even though you can't, you can't influence this, your adversary in this case, and maybe have a sense that you're going to listen.

Maybe this person does have a good point, be ready to forgive as need be, and also bring some calm to the situation, maybe take a few steps back. Again, that's see the big picture kind of thing. But, yeah, there are folks out there who, who will drag you down and it might be time to, you know, time to, to turn them loose and get out of the situation.

But there are quite a few instances in the book, while I do talk about that, the ways to de-escalate, there are ways to escalate, and those people want to escalate the conflict. The whole point is there are strategies to de-escalate the conflict.

Yeah.

Conflict, Trust, and Stronger Relationships

One of the things that your book focused on, and as you talk about the positive aspects of conflict, very true in my life, and most of the very close friendships that I have now, at some point there was a conflict and there became that choice, okay, is this conflict going to end the relationship or is this something we're going to resolve?

And then when it's resolved, the relationship is stronger than ever because there's a deeper level of trust between you and the other person when they know, oh, this person really has my best interest at heart and they really want conflict to be resolved rather than just, they're not going to abandon me the next time we have a disagreement.

So I've definitely seen it in my own personal life that when conflict is resolved in a godly way, that it results in stronger relationships.

Mm-hmm. For sure. As I said, hitting bottom, I lead marriage conferences on occasion. I've written a few books on marriage, and I will look out in the audience and I'll say, how many of you, it might be 50 couples out there, how many of you have hit bottom in your marriage?

And about half the people raised their hand. And then I'll say, yeah, ain't it great? And they all laugh, they know exactly what I'm talking about, how conflict in marriage, get past it, it'll make your marriage stronger.

But I need to challenge anybody listening right now, you are in conflict with somebody, probably it's a sibling or a good friend, and you need to make that call and not be, oh, I'm so sorry for what we've gone through, but do the, hey, man, you know what, I gotta tell you that I'm missing us, I'm missing us.

You and I used to be good friends, used to hang out, or used to, I was thinking about you the other day, and just open the door for some positive memories and maybe separate yourself from the conflict, because there's a good chance you don't even remember what the conflict was about.

We all know folks who haven't talked to their brother or sister in decades, it's like, are you kidding me? Maybe parents too, call your dad or your mom this Mother's Day or your dad this Father's Day and say, hey, don't expect a big apology, but take down those walls.

And you'd be glad you did, you'd be glad you did. Absolutely. So let's do, I really like what you shared about John chapter eight. So what do you learn from that passage about conflict resolution?

Well, that's a classic. When we think of Jesus and conflict, people go right to, well, yeah, Jesus had righteous anger and he turned over the tables in the temple, excuse me. But my favorite moment when Jesus entered into a conflict was when the Pharisees had gathered to stone the adulterous woman.

And Jesus walks in and into that situation, John chapter eight, and he doesn't use a lot of words. He asks, he starts drawing in the sand, which has taken a moment, which is really good, a really good model for us.

Sometimes we're in conflict, don't jump right in with a shouting match, take a moment and draw in the sand. Now we don't know what he drew in the sand there. It could be the sins of the Pharisees. It could be something from some Old Testament law.

It could be just some little hieroglyphics that he wanted to give people time to think about what they had done. And he said, you know, you are who without sin cast the first stone. He didn't say that what the woman did was, there's nothing wrong with it.

That's what people forget. He didn't let her off the hook. So what happened was he draws in the sand, he gets up a couple of times, and you can picture that scene where he brings peace and calm and the Pharisees kind of drop their stones one by one.

Interestingly, the more mature, the older Pharisees left first because they probably had more sins in their life to think about. The Bible doesn't tell us, but imagine going, wow, and probably the younger ones, the younger ones are going, I'm going to stick around.

I'm going to stone this woman. Well, no, and they finally all left. Then Jesus turned to the adulterous woman who by law deserved to be stoned and said, paraphrasing, they don't condemn you. I don't either.

Go and sin no more. So he gave her an assignment, go and sin no more. So that whole scene there, John chapter eight, is a real model for deescalating a nasty, nasty moment of conflict.

A Book for Anyone Who Faces Conflict

Yeah. So again, this is the Got Questions podcast with J .P. Leitner. We're discussing conflict resolution. So again, your book is excellent. I highly recommend it. There will be links to where people can purchase the book and learn more about you at podcast .gotquestions .org when this episode goes live and also in the show notes for this episode and on the description on YouTube.

Jay, let me just give you a final opportunity. So who ultimately is this book for and who do you think who would find this book particularly helpful? And you can't just say.

Everyone. Well, most people will pick up this book because they think it's a business book because there are quite a few, you know, pretty nice books on conflict resolution and they get psychology and the philosophy.

This is a book for anybody who ever has conflict in their life, which is everyone. But no, you know what? It's almost a kind of almost a devotional of sorts in that you go through and you get a chance to consider more than 20 different times when conflict might enter a life and that could be, you know, a union negotiations.

That could be when some drunk driver backs into you in a parking lot. That could be if you're arguing with your neighbor about some tree that dropped sap on his car. There are strategies we need to do use in everyday life for, well, de-escalating conflict or drawing people close.

And that's the only way that you can share the gospel, Shay, is by admitting that there's conflict in our lives. And sin is conflict. So you have to admit that there's conflict in our lives, that there's a battle between light and darkness.

Satan is there rooting us on to conflict that is unresolved. And of course, we need to build relationships. So any authentic Christ follower needs to have the principles of how to resolve conflict, to draw people close.

And the last thought on this topic would be this. In relationships, you can finish any conversation by pushing people away or you can finish conversations by drawing close to you. And it's especially important in families,.

Of course. Agreed entirely. The thing I like most about the book is it's simple and there are four steps to decide what you really want. Know the risks, empathize with your adversary, and expect to win.

But then you also go into depth in each of these points and use illustrations to help us see how these things actually work out. So again, highly recommend the book, Don't Take the Bait to Escalate by Jay Paliner.

So Jay, thank you again for being on the show today. Shay, God bless. I so appreciate your time. And this has been the Got Questions podcast. Got questions? Biblize answers,.

And we'll help you find them.