How Value, Ego and Relationships Affect Conflict

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

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Topics: Communications Management, Risk Management, Stakeholder Management

Throughout my career, I’ve facilitated and been a party to disagreements or conflict more times that I can possibly count. Sometimes things worked out okay, and those affected were satisfied with the outcome.

Other times, things didn’t turn out as well. As I’ve thought about both the good and not-so-good outcomes, it caused me to dig deeper to find the underlying factors that helped drive the outcomes. The three factors I found are:

1. Value
2. Ego
3. Relationships

Before moving further, let’s lock on VER terminology:

• Value – There is a real or perceived benefit a person is trying to achieve.
• Ego – There is a feeling of “needing to win,” independent of value derived.
• Relationship – There is an understanding of how important—or unimportant—the relationship is between the parties.

I believe that how value and ego are demonstrated during a disagreement or conflict can have a very real impact on relationships, and that relationships can influence how value and ego are throttled. How these factors are prioritized can influence not only the outcome, but can damage a relationship—sometimes permanently.

Let’s take a simple example that most have experienced at some point in their life: buying a car from a dealership. When I was younger, I took joy in the negotiation process. During …

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