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On a beautiful sunny day in Washington, DC recently, I spotted a sale rack outside of a used bookstore and immediately beelined to it because two of my favorite things are books and sales. It didn’t disappoint. For just $4, I walked away eager to start reading Conflicts: A Better Way to Resolve Them by Edward de Bono, whose writing on “thinking hats” delighted me last year.

The very notion of conflict, in the interpersonal sense, has been a tricky one for me over my years working with leaders at all levels, around the world, who often lament their perceived lack of conflict management skills or flatly state that they hate conflict. In my newly acquired book, written in 1985, de Bono defines conflict as “A clash of interests, values, actions or directions.” The clash part is what I think so many people anticipate, equating conflict with fighting or arguing. If this is what we expect, it’s hard to see conflict in other ways, yet we must.

Four of the twenty-three chapters in de Bono’s book begin with, “Why do people disagree?” He does not suggest that we should avoid conflict or diminish its value for the sake of our comfort. Instead, he invites us to look at what is driving the disagreement, answering his question, “Why do people disagree?” with:

1. “Because they see things differently”
Each person arrives at the conflict with their own experiences, perceptions, information, etc. Initially, that’s simply the way it is. We can only know what we know – until we learn more.

2. “Because they want different things”
It is true that differing values, principles, and beliefs can drive conflict in powerful ways, and my experiences tell me that at the core, people often want the same thing: to resolve the conflict. Of course, how each party defines resolve can also be a point of conflict. (Does it mean we agree, in part or in whole? Have we resolved the conflict if we’ve expanded the number of possibilities rather than narrowed them?)

3. “Because their thinking style encourages them to”
Conflicts are often positioned as either-or. We have a hard time conceiving of how two opposing things can both be true. We find it challenging to look beyond my position and your position to find an alternative position that doesn’t yet exist.

4. “Because they are supposed to”
The structure of society, according to de Bono, encourages conflict. Different nations. Different religions. Different ethnicities. Differences abound, and difference is at the root of conflict. Sure, we can look for similarities and common ground, but we should not discount difference; it is the lever needed to pry open the door to a new way forward.

I used the word pry intentionally, because working with conflict (rather than against it) takes effort. We should expect discomfort yet never allow disrespect.

For de Bono, conflicts are issues in need of redesign, especially if we don’t want to address the same conflicts again and again. Rather than just dealing with available concepts and perceptions, we need to create new ones. Together.