Taking a Look at Conflict Resolution

There are different conflict management styles, the dictatorial style, which insists that things are addressed their way and the low self -esteem style, which just allows others to have it their way. It is up to the individual to decide which way works for them. Additionally, the abdicator handles conflict by bowing out or walking away. This method is unhealthy because it robs the offended growth opportunity, which results from working through issues (Pegues, 2009, p.49). Another style is the collaborator, which often involves cooperation and pulling together to reach a common purpose and are emotionally balanced.

In team settings, individual team members generally handle conflict in five key ways as identified in an adaptation of the Thomas-Kilman Conflict Inventory (1976): Avoidance, Accommodation, Competition, Compromise, and Collaboration. All five conflict styles can be both beneficial and/or costly to individual and team success. It can also be argued that all five conflict styles may be useful to resolve conflicts under certain circumstances. Please review the five conflict styles listed below:

Dr. Rekha S. Rajan writes about how she implemented a twenty-minute structured dramatic play into class time to encourage children to learn to solve conflicts on their own. She first does this by gaining insight on the children’s feelings with a personal story time. Each child tells a story that made them particularly sad, mad, upset, or happy. She then takes those experiences and creates a pre-determined scenario to which, the children will play different roles, share ideas, and come up with a solution.

Separate assessments of my conflict style reveal that I have become primarily attuned with the integrating style of conflict management, which came as no surprise to me, as I found the results of the assessments to be accurate. However, the assessments also showed that I was nearly equal in the compromising style, leading them to be a near tie. I would be the first to admit that his has not always been the case. It has taken a fair amount of life experience and focused effort in order to move away from the predominate style of compromise

Places value on individualism, self-assertion, and competition. Not common in cultures that prioritize cooperation, keep others from failing, finding areas of agreement

Finally, the last conflict management style is called collaborating. Collaborating involves discussing the situation and arriving at a decision that is beneficial to both parties involved. This style can be used in situations where the goal is to learn or when both issues are too important to compromise on. Collaborating requires both parties to be honest and open when discussing the problem. Because both parties are opening up and exchanging information, collaborating can lead to better working relationships between employees (Nelson and Quick).

In a dispute, it's often easier to describe how others respond then to how we respond. Each of us has a predominant conflict style that we use to meet our own needs. By examining conflict styles and the consequences of those behaviors, we can gain a better understanding of the impact that our personal conflict style has on other people. With a better understanding, you then can make a conscious choice on how to respond to others in a conflict situation to help reduce work conflict and stress.

What is conflict? Even something as basic as a universal definition for the word conflict seems to vary from source to source. A literature review focusing on conflict defined it as “the interaction of interdependent people who perceive incompatibility and the possibility of interference from others as a result of this incompatibility” (Brinkert 2010). Often times the disagreement results not from a concrete difference, but rather a difference in perception (Ellis & Abbott 2012). One of the most important factors effecting conflict management is the resolution style used. The most often used tool for classifying how conflict is managed is the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (Iglesias & Vallejo 2012).

There are four distinct conflict styles which are the levels of assertiveness and cooperativeness that are employed by a person in a conflict situation. Everyone has their own individual conflict style; my own style tends to be accommodating. This means that I am not very assertive and I am very good at cooperating with those I am in conflict with. In this essay I will examine each conflict style and my own choice of style and why I tend to default to this style. I will also examine whether or not my choice of the accommodating style is the best approach to resolving conflict, and discuss the advantages of learning to use each of the styles in specific situations.

Conflict is a stubborn fact of organizational life. Regrettably, it is an inevitable when organizations incorporate individuals with such diverse scopes of life. As conflict is identified in organizational work teams, an analytical approach to conceptualizing conflict is the first step. Further development will then focus on the different sources of conflict and how it can compromise the common goal of the team if it is not handled correctly. Searching for ways in which to manage conflict and avoid conflicts in work teams will bring together the underlying focus of this paper.

There are five conflict-handling styles: Forcing Style, Collaborating Style, Compromising Style, Avoiding Style and Accommodating Style. The compromising style “refers to behaviors at an intermediate level of cooperation and assertiveness. (Hellriegel, Slocum pg. 392) ” The person using is style tries to meet a goal by give-and-take. The accommodating style “refers to cooperative and unassertive behavior. (Hellriegel, Slocum pg. 393) ” The person using this style tries to accomplish a goal by using unselfish acts that will promote cooperation in others by complying with their wishes. The collaborating style “refers to high levels of cooperative and assertive behavior. (Hellriegel, Slocum pg. 391) ” The person using this style is using a win-win approach to working with others and handling conflict. When the CEO of General Hospital, Mike Hammer first attempted to control physician-driven cost he used the collaborating style by trying to convince the Director of

The third form of Conflict management is Accommodation. When the task at hand is more important than the conflict that has arisen and when relationships may be damaged putting the entire project in jeopardy. With this method a team member may minimize the conflict in order to protect the relationship and ultimately the project. Some of the negative aspects in using this

Some people attempt to avoid conflict by postponing it, hiding their feelings, changing the subject, leaving the room or quitting the project. Sometimes, doing nothing is a smart thing to do, providing the decision to do nothing is well thought out and based on an analysis of the situation. Although avoidance might appear to be a “cop-out,” it can sometimes be the most appropriate response. A common means of avoiding conflict is to be secretive. This can be done by employees and managers. The notion is that if no one knows what is being done, there can be little conflict. By being secretive, one may delay conflict and confrontation, but when it does surface it will have far more negative emotions attached to it than would have been the case if things were more open. It may be wise to avoid a conflict if the issue is minor or if the potential conflict partner is a formidable opponent. Not every conflict justifies your attention. One should not routinely withdraw from conflicts because it provides only a temporary fix and sidesteps the underlying problem.

In trying to resolve the conflict between Reece and Patel, Edwards used an avoidance strategy. Instead of speaking directly about the root causes, or sources, of the conflict, Edwards focused on the behaviors and treated Reece and Patel like children. Edwards scolded them, and sent them off without bothering to find out what was bothering the two. Of course, this type of conflict resolution is ineffective because it fails to address the underlying issues. As Anderson (n.d.) points out, addressing the problem is key to conflict resolution. "When a conflict does happen, a manager needs to focus the conflicting parties on the issue and have them leave out any personal problems they may be having," (Anderson, n.d.).

Conflict is inevitable and occurs all around us all the time. Conflict is not about whether something is good or bad, but what is important is how we deal with this conflict. There are many types of conflict and one prominent conflict that I remember in my life is an intragroup conflict. This was in grade 10, when I and three others were working on a Business ED project. The conflict was that I had a really good idea and I was expressing my opinion, but my groupmates were not listening and kept constantly interrupting or calling my idea stupid. This led to a buildup of a lot of tension between us and therefore affected our teamwork as we ended up not working efficiently towards our goal of a good mark. The resolution style I used for this particular conflict was avoidance. This is because eventually, I just let my idea go and just did as the other people in my group said and suppressed my own opinions. This conflict was left unresolved and resulted in us getting a lower mark than expected in the project. At this point, I was thinking of just submitting to their wants and letting my opinions get put to the side. Although I did not act like I was angry on the outside, like most other avoiding individuals, I built up my anger by not releasing it, which in the end just went away. Also, I became less verbal and let the other three lead rather than taking an active role in this project. One advantage of avoiding a conflict is that for a short-term, it allows us to delay solving and facing the issue, giving us time to think about solutions. Another advantage is that individuals that avoid conflict tend to help calm the atmosphere down and realize that the conflict will most likely resolve itself, which was also what I believed for my conflict. However, this tends to make these individuals deny and avoid the conflict entirely, sometimes making it even worse. Also, avoiding a conflict leads to the opinions and needs of those individuals get suppressed, which also happened to me. Avoiding this conflict led the situation to never get resolved, and because of this, I still do not really talk to those individuals. So, for this intragroup conflict scenario, I used the conflict resolution