How to Stop Fighting on Facebook

In any community, we all want a lot of the same things and in our best moments, we collaborate with others to achieve them together. In our worst moments, we are fearful, hateful and arrogant, and we resort to conflict and competition because, in these moments, we see no alternative.

We experience this when we fight with loved ones, argue with people online, or start real wars with fellow human beings — resulting in tears, divisiveness and bloodshed.

Here’s the thing: there are always collaborative options, even when it feels like conflict is the only option.

History has taught us that humankind has prospered precisely because of our ability to cooperate and think in “win-win” scenarios. The problem is that when we experience emotional stress, it closes our logical mind to the full scope of possible solutions. We start thinking that win-lose must be the only way forward. In Principles, Ray Dalio advises:

“When faced with the choice between two things you need that are seemingly at odds, go slowly to figure out how you can have as much of both as possible. There is almost always a good path that you just haven’t figured out yet, so look for it until you find it rather than settle for the choice that is then apparent to you.”

In these moments, the leadership opportunity in each of us is to recognise when we are not at our best, take steps to consciously bring out our best, and help each other to do the same. If we can all do that, we can choose collaboration over conflict on any given problem, including Facebook arguments that go nowhere, so that everyone wins.

Let’s take a look at why this might be relevant to any group interactions we have with people, what concrete steps we can take to better collaborate with others, and finally, how we might be able to translate these mechanics into product features in the Sphere app.

Here’s the thing: there are always collaborative options, even when it feels like conflict is the only option.

Why does this matter for my group chat?

When someone says something in a WhatsApp chat or a Facebook post that pisses us off and we react angrily, we’re impulsively resorting to conflict instead of thinking about how we could collaborate with that person.

Maybe we’re excited about sharing a thought or idea we have and it doesn’t feel like it’s well received. We feel bad and because of that, our emotional defence mechanisms kick in to protect our ego. Maybe someone shares a viewpoint that we just flat out disagree with. We think they’re wrong and can’t even begin to think how they might have arrived at that viewpoint.

This is how conflict starts in communities. In these emotionally high-stake moments, if we react impulsively with our own anger or frustration, it can have a number of harmful consequences:

• We end up feeling emotionally exhausted
• The emotional drain leads to impaired decision-making (whether in that situation or outside of it — ever had a bad day at work and flipped out at your partner over something menial later on?)
• People in our group feel less united and close to each other
• Some people will be less likely to contribute in the future, because they learn that conflict might arise when they do (in other words, psychological safety is diminished)
• Some people may end up leaving the group and looking for an alternative one where they feel their viewpoints are heard and understood

No matter how small or big your group, these situations always arise, given enough time and interaction. It’s what you do when that happens that defines how collaborative and productive the group becomes.

How can we collaborate more effectively and consistently?

There’s lot of good ways to think about how to collaborate effectively with others (eg my colleague Alexandru suggested Rapoport’s Rules for good discussions, which I love), but I tend to think of the following steps as the most useful to think about for general collaboration.

1. Assume good intentions
2. Align on common goals
3. Understand their emotional needs
4. Understand their logical perspectives on the problem
5. Admire their strengths
6. Help them understand your needs and perspectives
7. Agree and commit to next steps

Let’s talk through each of these in more detail.

1. Assume good intentions

Most people have good intentions. There’s data to show that even those who seemingly have bad intentions have good intentions deep down (even if misguided in how they manifest).

The data also shows that if we extend trust to people, those people typically act as more trustworthy. In other words, seeing the best in others helps to bring out their best.

So when we communicate with others in our groups, we should start with the assumption that other people’s intentions are as wholesome as our own. They will just have had different experiences to us that shape how their intentions are manifesting.

2. Align on common goals

We need to remember what we’re trying to work towards with others. All communities have a purpose and ideally have made that explicit in some way, so sometimes this might just be a case of restating that purpose or goals.

At other times, we might need a discussion to clarify or further refine what the goals are. It’s a good thing if this happens — tightening up goals helps create a stronger foundation for good collaboration.

3. Understand their needs

This is key to building trust with people. The common fallacy with trust is that people believe us the most on a given topic when we have credibility in that area. Having ability and integrity helps, for sure, but they need to be built on a foundation of having the other person’s interests at heart.

That’s why I start almost all of my meetings with asking other people how they are. I believe in getting to know people’s “whole selves”, asking them what they’ve been up to and how they’re feeling about things (and really listening to the answers and being willing to engage). Bill Campbell, one of Silicon Valley’s most famous executive coaches, was known for doing the same thing.

There are a bunch of universal human needs that may be worth thinking about for this step. A lot of this really comes down to realising that behind every human behaviour is one or more emotional drivers.

4. Understand their perspectives

The arrogance trap is thinking that we understand all there is to know around a given problem. The reality is that what we don’t know is infinite and what we do know is finite.

When collaborating with others, we need to fully understand their perspectives in order to gain a greater shared perspective on the problem we are trying to solve.

That means being curious and saying things like:

• Tell me about the challenges you’re facing
• Help me understand how you’re seeing this problem
• I’m curious what your perspective is on this

Repeating your understanding of someone’s perspectives back to them is a particularly good way of ensuring you’ve completed this step correctly.

5. Admire strengths

If we’re going to collaborate with someone, we need to be able to show them alternative perspectives they might not have considered yet. Yet, we can all be prideful and it is hard to open our minds when we are feeling defensive and unsupported.

Once we’ve shown people that we care about their needs and understand their perspectives, if we can make them feel good about themselves by validating at least some of their perspectives, it helps open their minds to other perspectives.

In other words, before you suggest something constructive to someone, it’s helpful to highlight what you appreciate and admire about them or their arguments.

6. Help them understand your needs and perspectives

Finally, after we’ve done the work to establish trust with and understand the other person, we can share our own needs and perspectives.

Some of this may have come out along the way, but we want to make sure to air what we are feeling and thinking about the problem at hand. If we keep any strong feelings inside, they may ultimately surface later.

That said, we can’t always get through everything in one conversation. That’s ok. Sometimes getting to optimal collaboration takes more time, like when peace talks take months or even years.

But the goal is still to share your needs and perspectives and to feel heard by the other person.

7. Agree and commit to next steps

If the above steps have been done well, all parties should now be in a position where they see the best in each other, have trust and respect for each other and want to collaborate (if not, rinse and repeat!).

Now we can brainstorm options, discuss the tradeoffs for each and finally agree on the next steps we’ll take.

The journey doesn’t end there of course. As we execute on the commitments, we may experience stress (particularly if some things don’t work as expected or otherwise fail) that leaves us prone to biased thinking, swinging us away from optimal collaboration.

But the more we learn about this process, how to trigger it in ourselves and in each other, the better we can get at it.

How will the Sphere app help us collaborate?

What if when someone chose conflict instead of collaboration, when they acted at their worst, the first button that appeared over their profile was “Help” instead of “Ban”?

Now that we understand how we can collaborate effectively, how we can we use technology to help us?

There’s so many ways that we can build features into the Sphere app to do that. A lot of this next year is going to be about figuring those out. It sounds like an ambitious task for a product, but we’re already starting to see some of this stuff emerge.

Some features I’ve seen in existing platforms that I think can help are:

• Awareness-generating features like Twitter’s trial of humanisation prompts, which shows what you have in common with other users before you reply to them
• Communication assessment systems like Grammarly’s tone checker, which helps you craft a message that has the impact you intend it to
• Encouragement systems like badges on Discourse, which reward desired community behaviour

What if the Sphere app prompted you, as the founder of a community, to establish not just guidelines, but specific goals for your community and helped you create a clear reference point for them for everyone in your community?

We could then make sure that new members see these and that every so often the community is encouraged to revisit and review them to see how well they are being achieved.

What if the input box for chat messages prompted you to check in with your fellow community members and ask them how they are, before saying what you want to say to them? What if a sentiment analyser warned you when you or the other person’s tone indicated stress or frustration, and suggested you take the time to better understand their needs and perspectives?

What if every time we admired someone, helped someone to be at their best, or successfully collaborated on something awesome, other people were encouraged to give us recognition for it in the form of specific, individualised praise (not just a like or a heart)?

Finally, what if when someone chose conflict instead of collaboration, when they acted at their worst, the first button that appeared over their profile was “Help” instead of “Ban”?

If any of this stuff interests you and you want to chat more with us, we’ve love for you to join one of our live events, our community forum or just tweet us.

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How To Stop Fighting On Facebook