Conflict management: does understanding the other side's priorities mean giving in?
In a disagreement between departments, asking for more empathy does not specify what anyone should do differently. The useful management question is narrower: can understanding the other side's priorities help build an agreement without abandoning your own?
What the literature establishes
Adam D. Galinsky, William W. Maddux, Debra Gilin and Judith B. White (2008, Psychological Science) experimentally distinguish cognitive perspective-taking from emotional empathy in simulated negotiations. Their findings favour the former for discovering possible agreements and creating value. Understanding what someone wants to achieve is therefore not simply a matter of feeling what they feel.
Looking beyond your position without losing your bearings
Adam D. Galinsky and Thomas Mussweiler (2001, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) show that first offers can act as anchors and influence the final agreement. In their experiments, focusing on the other side's alternatives, their reservation price or one's own target can neutralise the advantage associated with making the first offer. Perspective-taking can therefore help negotiators resist an opening demand, rather than merely find a concession.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that understanding the other side is enough to resolve a conflict, or that empathy serves no purpose. These studies support neither conclusion: they examine negotiation outcomes, not the full range of empathy's relational functions. Identifying priorities sometimes reveals a possible trade-off, but it can also make a genuine incompatibility more apparent. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What simulations leave unresolved
Experimental negotiations do not reproduce the full duration, dependencies and regulatory obligations of a workplace conflict. In practice, imagining the other side's interests without checking them can replace a misunderstanding with a mistaken attribution. Useful perspective-taking therefore generates hypotheses to test with the other person, rather than a diagnosis of their intentions.
A practical check in Bâle
In Basel, SHR's conflict management programme can provide a framework for an exercise involving a scheduling disagreement across pharmaceutical manufacturing, life sciences, Rhine logistics and international R&D. Before proposing a solution, each side records the priorities it attributes to the other, then asks for confirmation or correction, distinguishing negotiable preferences from regulatory constraints. Over a pilot period defined in advance, use dated records to measure the proportion of assumed priorities that the other side corrects. This indicator checks the accuracy of the initial understanding, without claiming on its own to demonstrate better conflict resolution. To go further: explore the Conflict Management training in Basel, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Conflict Management in Basel
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