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A Better Way to Handle Disagreements: Mapmaking
If you don’t know everything, you ought to give this conflict resolution technique a try.
Meet in the woods, pull out a piece of paper, learn everything you can about the woods from the other, and leave with a fuller map of reality than when you started.
What was the last argument you won?
If you are like me, you win all sorts of arguments all the time — in your head.
Seriously, when I am arguing with someone else but it is actually just me talking to myself, I’m so good.
In fact, I’ve only lost about six arguments that I’ve had with other people in my head.
Pretty solid record.
Really, however, there is a common progression to actual arguments where the outcomes are never quite as clear as we’d like to think. Most of the time it seems that each person in an argument tells their own tale of victory. Rarely does it appear that anyone wins. Further, it's a mythic encounter that any one side directly changes their perspective as a result of the argument.
At least for me, I’ve never once changed someone’s mind by arguing with them.
Through the conflict mediation approach called mapmaking, however, I’ve watched lots of people grow and evolve their perspectives almost every single time.
An important note — I’m always included as one of those people.
So, what is mapmaking?
A Common Approach to Differing Perspectives (Competition)
Imagine, if you will, that two people encounter one another in the woods. They’ve been navigating the terrain for some time now — one having covered most of the eastern side of the woods and the other having covered the western direction.
Though they had thought they were the only person in the woods that day, they have now unfortuitously made contact with this other traveler.
