Mapping Conflict Before It Costs More
- Katie Kolon
- Oct 27
- 7 min read
What to do when they won’t meet you halfway — and why mapping it now saves trust, time, and energy later.
A few years ago, I hiked the backcountry of Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland. There’s no official trail, only open tundra, ponds, and rock broken by pockets of soft ground. You navigate by map and compass, checking your direction against the land. The surface looks solid until it isn’t. Hidden sinkholes of mud can swallow you to the waist in a second, so you learn to probe ahead with your walking sticks before taking a step.
A couple of days in, one of my friends went ahead exploring and disappeared up to his chest in a cold, murky bog. We got him out quickly, but it was a shock — a hole in the earth where the ground had looked safe.
That trip taught me something about how easy it is to misread the ground beneath you, and how much harder it becomes when conditions change. Conflict isn’t all that different.
When They Won’t Meet You Halfway
You can’t make someone engage in good faith before they are ready. You can’t control their willingness to talk, to listen, or to take responsibility. But you can stop losing yourself in the process.
Mapping helps you find clarity even when the other person will not meet you halfway. It separates what’s yours to carry from what isn’t and gives you a way to see what’s driving the tension beneath the surface.
When you map a conflict, you begin to understand what’s really important to you and start to think about what matters to them. That understanding is often the first real step toward resolution, and sometimes it begins with only one person deciding to look more closely.
What You Don’t See Still Costs You
Most people think of conflict as an event that erupts out of nowhere. In reality, conflict is a process. It starts long before the argument, in subtle misalignments of values, expectations, or priorities.
When those early signals go unaddressed, we don’t avoid conflict; we just delay it. The real cost isn’t the disagreement itself but the trust that erodes, the decisions that stall, and the creativity that fades when people begin to protect themselves instead of collaborating.
Before our trek across Gros Morne, we heard about a storm brewing far to the south, a hurricane moving up the East Coast. We knew it would rain, but hurricanes rarely hit Newfoundland. They usually die off before they reach the island. So we pressed on, unaware of how wrong we were.
Ignoring early signs in conflict can feel the same. You see the clouds but assume they’ll pass. You keep moving, confident the weather will hold.
When you finally stop and really look, that’s when mapping begins.
How Conflict Mapping Changes What You See
Mapping conflict means getting it out of your head and into view. It isn’t about who’s right or wrong; it’s about understanding the terrain you’re operating in.
In the article “5 Conflict Resolution Strategies” from the Harvard Program on Negotiation, three ideas stand out that are central to mapping conflict: emotion, bias, and values.
Emotions. Emotions are like soft ground. You can sense where something might give way, yet you have to probe deeper to know how far it goes. The feeling itself is a signal, not the source. Beneath it are the needs and values that give the emotion its weight. Mapping helps you see those layers instead of reacting to what’s on the surface.
Bias and perspective. The first strategy highlights how easily we distort fairness when we see only from our own vantage point. That is where triangulation becomes essential. In navigation, you find your location by taking readings from multiple fixed points. In conflict, perspective works the same way. You cannot understand your situation by looking from only one angle. Mapping gives you the structure to step back and view the conflict through several lenses at once—yours, theirs, and the perspective of someone outside the conflict who can see the broader terrain.
Sacred values. The article also refers to “pseudo-sacred” issues, values people treat as nonnegotiable. I see those differently. Labeling someone’s belief as “pseudo” anything isn’t helpful and can easily offend. The real work is to understand why it matters. In this way, values are like the natural elements that make up the ground beneath us. What we stand on may change, from rock to grass to water or sand, but the terrain is still recognizable. Mapping your values helps you express what matters to you in ways others can understand. When you do, you often find a value that’s widely shared—respect, loyalty, integrity, belonging. The details vary, but the essence rarely does. Mapping helps you uncover those core values for yourself and consider what they might be for others involved. When you can distill what truly matters, understanding becomes possible.
When I guide people through a mapping process, we are not solving the conflict yet. We are charting it. That means identifying:
What matters most to each person, including their needs, fears, and priorities.
Where assumptions are distorting communication.
What values are in tension, and where there is still shared ground.
Which paths forward are possible, and which will only deepen the divide.
You cannot navigate what you have not charted.
Mapping turns conflict from something abstract into something you can see and work with.
But even with a clear map, many teams still rush ahead, mistaking speed for progress.
The Rush That Leads You Off Course
In organizations and partnerships, people often skip this step because it feels inefficient. I’ve heard people say, “We don’t have time to talk about feelings,” or “We just need to make a decision and move on.”
But skipping the map doesn’t save time. It hides the detours.
We made that mistake too. Rushing to reach our next campsite before dark, we took a path that led us up a steep rock face above a pond we hadn’t meant to find. We lost hours, burned energy, and added unnecessary danger. We should have checked the map again, compared what we were seeing, and listened to one another more closely. Instead, we pressed on and paid for it.
The same happens in conflict. When urgency overrides reflection, we make decisions that cost more to repair later. The rework, the turnover, the missed opportunities: those are the real inefficiencies.
Mapping doesn’t slow you down. It keeps you from heading in the wrong direction. It helps you uncover what the disagreement is really about and what a path forward might look like for everyone involved.
Seeing the Emotional Terrain
Even with a map and compass, there were moments when we couldn’t see far enough to tell where we were going. Nearing the end of our hike, we met a group of hikers who had left after us. They’d learned that Hurricane Dorian was now projected to make landfall on the island, and the park was expecting hurricane-force winds. The park would close the following day. Since we were already deep in the backcountry, the only difference this made was that any emergency satellite call for help would likely take longer than the 24 hours we’d been warned about. This group also had GPS, something we didn’t. They warned us and offered to guide us out before the worst of it hit. The next morning, we broke camp at 5 a.m. and hiked through driving rain, high winds, and near-zero visibility for ten hours—cold, soaked, and exhausted but grateful to have found them when we did.
I remember not just the fear but the disorientation, how impossible it was to see, and how much it mattered to have others beside us who could.
Conflict can feel the same. When tension builds, visibility drops. You lose reference points. You may have tools and good intentions, but in the storm of emotion, everything starts to look the same. Having a map helps, but perspective and connection help even more.
And sometimes, even when the path looks clear, unseen forces still pull you slightly off course. It’s like navigating by magnetic north instead of true north. You think you’re heading straight, but pride, fear, or fatigue pull you just slightly off course.
Mapping helps you correct for those distortions. It reveals where trust has eroded, where misunderstandings piled up, and where values collide. That awareness changes how you show up. You stop defending positions and start expressing what truly matters.
When You Map Early, You Lead Differently
Mapping conflict early doesn’t just prevent escalation; it strengthens relationships. It equips you to lead future conversations more productively and models how you want others to show up through tension. It also builds a shared language and confidence to handle future challenges with less strain.
Even if you’re the only one mapping, your clarity shifts the dynamic. You communicate from steadiness instead of frustration, asking better questions. Over time, others begin to match that steadiness. The tone of the relationship starts to change.
That’s the quiet power of mapping. When you’re the one holding the map and the compass, you become the leader. You can’t control the storm or the terrain, but you can orient yourself, and that orientation can help others find their way too.
And sometimes, what you discover while mapping tells you it’s time to bring in more help. When visibility disappears completely, when the emotions are too strong or the history too complex, that’s when mediation or facilitated dialogue can make the difference. It’s like those hikers with GPS who found us in the storm — people with tools and perspective that help you reach safety faster.
Before It Costs More
If you sense a growing gap between what’s said and what’s meant, that’s your cue to pause. Don’t wait for it to get worse. The earlier you map it, the less costly it becomes for everyone involved.
The Mutual Conflict Map is a 90-minute process that helps you step back, clarify what matters most, and visualize your next move before the cost of inaction grows higher. Click below to learn more about how the map could help bring clarity to your current conflicts!
Coming soon: Recognizing Early Conflict — how to catch the subtle signals before they ever need a map.
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