Resolving Conflict When You See the World Differently

Conflicts are part of being human. We work with people who do not see what we see, who do not value what we value in the same order. So we clash. And while clashing is never pleasant, the way we work through a conflict often determines whether the relationship ends up stronger or quietly weaker afterwards.

Many Singaporeans have asked me how CliftonStrengths can help with conflict resolution. My answer has shifted as my own training has deepened. CliftonStrengths still gives us a powerful entry point - language to talk about why we see things differently. But my work in ontological coaching has shown me that strengths alone do not explain the full picture. Conflicts are not only clashes of talent. They are clashes of observers. And resolution is not only about understanding each other's themes. It is about shifting the way we see, the way we feel, and the way we hold our bodies in the conversation.

This article, written onon April 2026, is an updated take on a piece I wrote 8 years ago. The earlier version was useful then. This one, I hope, goes a little deeper.

1. We are not just clashing perspectives. We are clashing observers.

CliftonStrengths gives us empirical grounding for why we clash. Gallup's research has shown that the probability of two people sharing the same top five themes in the same order is one in 33 million. So when two colleagues look at the same situation, they are almost certainly seeing two different situations.

The ontological discipline takes us further. Strengths are one stream that shapes how we see. They are not the whole stream.

Each of us is an observer. And what we observe is shaped by three inseparable domains - language, body, and emotion. The words we have available to us. The way our chest, jaw, and shoulders are organised in the moment. The mood we are living inside. All of these shape what we see before we have even formed an opinion about it.

So when a Strategic and an Empathy theme clash in a meeting, it is not just a clash of cognitive lenses. The Strategic person may be living inside a mood of urgency, holding a language of options and trade-offs. The Empathy person may be living inside a mood of care, holding a language of impact on people. Both are seeing accurately. Both are seeing partially. And neither realises how much their body and mood are doing the seeing for them.

This is the deeper reason why most workplace conflicts are not really about office politics or personal attacks. They are observers colliding, each unaware of the soil their seeing grew from.

2. Ask sharper questions when you have been triggered.

When emotions rise, our first instinct is to look outward. What did they do wrong? Why are they like this? The work of self-awareness is to turn that question inward, gently, without self-blame.

CliftonStrengths gives us some clues. Which of my talents got triggered? And how? My Analytical is triggered when an accusation is ungrounded. My Discipline gets thrown off by surprise. My Consistency flares when I sense unfair treatment. Each talent has its own pattern of being activated, and naming the pattern is the first step to taking responsibility for it.

Ontology adds another layer by linking emotion and talent together. Try sitting with these:

• What distrust was I already carrying about this person before our conversation even began?

• Which of my talents, and the emotional state connected to it, could be hindering me from resolving this conflict?

• Which of my talents, and the emotional state connected to it, could help me resolve this conflict?

These questions move us from describing what triggered us to noticing the observer we became before the trigger arrived. That is a different kind of seeing. And from that seeing, different action becomes possible.

3. Conflict avoidance is not the same as conflict resolution.

Many of us, especially in Singapore, are quietly trained to keep the peace. We sweep things under the carpet. We tell ourselves the relationship is fine. We hope time will do the work for us.

It rarely does. What gets buried tends to compost into something else. Resentment. Cold professionalism. A subtle withdrawal of trust the other person can sense but cannot name. The relationship does not break. It just slowly stops being a relationship.

Real resolution asks more of us. It asks for humility. And ontologically, it asks for something specific. Forgiveness is not a feeling. It is a declaration. We declare ourselves no longer bound to the past act, no longer waiting for the other person to fix what cannot be fixed. The body releases. The mood shifts. New action becomes possible.

This is why I often tell clients that the individual is more important than the issue. When we hold the person above the dispute, we make space for a declaration of forgiveness even when the issue itself remains unresolved. That move alone can rebuild trust where logic and explanation cannot reach.

4. Debrief together, and look for what was underneath the storm.

Once the heat has settled, a good debrief can turn a clash into a deepening of trust. The simplest question is still the one I have used for years. Which of our strengths do you think were colliding?

Years ago, I had a heated argument with Jason, a former business partner. At one point I said to him, "What you did does not build trust." I thought I was making a fair point. He went quiet. The conversation cooled, but something between us had shifted in a way I could feel for days afterwards.

When we debriefed, I learnt something I had not understood. Jason has Relator in his top five. Trust is the soil his relationships grow in. To use that word as a weapon, even unintentionally, was to strike at something foundational.

I read that story differently now. The ontological lens shows something more. I had made a public assessment - a statement about him, in a charged moment, without grounding it in shared standards. I had called something "untrustworthy" without first declaring what trust meant to me, what evidence I was using, or what I was actually asking him to do differently. Ungrounded assessments are one of the most common ways relationships break, and most of us do not even know we are doing it.

We agreed afterwards that "trust" between us would only be used as a word of affirmation, not accusation. We also built a small practice. When one of us had a complaint, we would name it as a complaint, ground it in something specific, and turn it into a request rather than a verdict. That small linguistic shift saved us many future arguments.

A good debrief is not just about understanding which themes clashed. It is about asking together: what assessments did we make about each other? What standards were we each holding that the other did not know about? What request was hiding inside the complaint?

5. Settle yourself before you start the conversation.

This is the piece I would have missed in the article I wrote years ago, and it may be the most important one.

Most of us walk into difficult conversations with a body that has already decided how the conversation will go. Shoulders up. Jaw tight. Breath shallow. From that body, almost no good conversation is possible, regardless of how carefully we have prepared our words.

Before any difficult conversation, pause and ask yourself two simple questions. Am I tense or relaxed right now? And if I had to name what I am feeling in one word, angry, resentful, anxious, hopeful, what would it be? You are not trying to fix anything. You are just noticing. Five minutes of walking, breathing, and naming the feeling out loud will change the conversation more than another hour of rehearsing what to say. From a calmer body and a clearer mood, the same words land differently. And often the words you no longer need to say become obvious.

A closing thought

CliftonStrengths gave me my first language for understanding why people clash. Ontological coaching gave me the deeper layer underneath. Both ideas helped me understand that we are observers, shaped by language, body, and emotion, and that real resolution involves shifting the observer, not only exchanging information.

Tools are only as powerful as the person using them. Both work best when something more fundamental is at play. A genuine valuing of the relationship over the rightness of one's position. A willingness to take ownership of how we are showing up. And a quiet trust that the other person, like us, is also seeing something real, just from where they stand.

If you find yourself in a season of unresolved conflict, perhaps the invitation is not to find the perfect words. Perhaps it is to first notice what kind of observer you have become around this person, and ask whether you are willing to shift.

That noticing, quietly done, is often where the real resolution begins.

Written by Victor Seet
Activator • Communication • Strategic • Self-Assurance • Command

Victor coaches teams to leverage their collective strengths, get clear on ways of engagement and ways of working to strengthen team and interpersonal dynamics. He intentionally integrates the strengths-based approaches and emotional agility into his team and 1-1 coaching and facilitation workshops.