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(…continued from last week)

Beginning to Manage Conflict

In all human experience there is the potential for conflict. There are only two forms—conflicts inside of you, with yourself, or conflicts between you and other people. No matter what the conflict is, part of it is controllable and part of it is not, and the only part that is controllable is you, how you manage yourself, what you do, what you say.

The 4 Types of Conflict

There are only four types of conflicts you can have with a person who is being difficult.

First, there’s a conflict of roles and responsibilities, who’s to do what, who’s got the power, who has authority, whose territory is it, who’s supposed to be responsible for what’s going on, what’s the person’s knowledge of the subject, who has the most knowledge.

The second is a goals and needs conflict, what information is needed, what are the goals you’re trying to achieve, what result are you trying to attain, what need you are trying to fill.

Third is conflict of values, what is desired, what is most important to you, what’s most important to them, what do people believe. We need to know how to ask questions and discover what’s important to others on an individual basis.

And the fourth is perception-based conflict or conflict of point of view. Over 80% of all conflicts are the fourth kind. Why? Because we’re different people; we’re older, we’re younger, we’re male, we’re female, we’re more educated and less educated, we grew up in different sizes of families, in different cultures, in different parts of the country or perhaps even in different parts of the world. We have different hobbies, different interests, like different kinds of foods. Perception-based conflict is the most common.

I remember in graduate school in one of my psychology texts said, “Anytime two people interact for an extended length of time, differences between the people will sooner or later lead to perception-based conflict.”

To work effectively and efficiently with someone requires a give and take. When you’re dealing with that difficult person, unmet needs that they have, whether real or imagined become very important and they can turn into a struggle between you and them.

Conflict Management

When needs arise and they’re working towards getting their payoff, negotiation and communication become essential. If you get into conflict with this difficult person and you’re trying to manage the conflict, there are really five different ways of dealing with it. You can compete, you can collaborate, you can compromise, you can avoid, or you can accommodate them. There is a positive and negative to each one of these.

Avoidance

A negative example of avoidance would be running away. You don’t want to think about it, can’t handle the conflict, so you just hide or try and avoid it. There’re times that may be appropriate, but most of the time it doesn’t work. A positive side of avoidance would be, the conflict is going on, you can see it’s escalating and you say, “Wait a minute, why don’t you go calm down for a little bit and I will too and then let’s get together again in a half an hour or so” and you take a temporary break. You avoid temporarily and then you come back together with everyone calmer to discuss the issue.

Accommodation

The negative side of accommodation causes more resentment than probably any other type of dealing with conflict. Let’s say that you’re dealing with this person and you give them what they want, but you didn’t really want to. Later you feel angry or resentful because of the fact that they got what they wanted, but you didn’t really want to give it to them. That’s the negative side of accommodation.

The positive side of accommodation is where you can see that what they’re saying makes sense and that there is some benefit to it, so you say, “okay, it doesn’t really matter, let’s go ahead and do it your way, it’s a good thing”.

Compromise

The negative side of compromise is, though you may be doing your best to work out a solution you only get a little bit of what you’d hoped, and they only partially get what they wanted, so it doesn’t feel very satisfying. So, the downside of compromise is that nobody really gets what they want, they just get a taste.

The positive side of compromise is that you do get something out of it and they get something out of it, there is little bit of a benefit to both of you.

Competition

The fourth style of managing conflict is competition. The negative side of competition is someone who must have their way, or must win any disagreement. Those type of people are truly the most difficult to deal with. In most cases, if someone moves into a competition space, they have a lot of emotion behind it, even anger, and if you remember, angry people feel justified in their position; they think they’re right no matter what. If you run into somebody who must win, the best thing you can do is positive avoidance which is temporarily move away, then come back later when they’ve calmed down.

The positive side of competition is where you are willing to stand up for what you believe in. You’ll stand up for those boundaries, those things that you find truly good and valuable to you, the organization and other people. That’s the positive side of competition.

Collaboration

The negative side of collaboration is where you have someone who consumes all your time trying to get the project done or managing the situation the way they want it. That collaborative style can use up your time and cause difficulties in your ability to do what you need to do.

The positive side of collaboration is where you promote working together, where you both are supporting the outcomes each of you want to achieve.

These five ways of managing conflict; avoidance, accommodation, compromise, competition and collaboration can be of benefit to both you and the other person. Find ways to apply these so you can gain the benefits of each of those styles.

To understand the differences between these five strategies for dealing with conflict, imagine that you’ve just been asked to work late by your boss. If you use avoidance, you may hide in your office or duck out the back door. If you use accommodation, you will do the work, but you may resent it and you may do it poorly. If you use competition, you’re going to refuse to do it and trigger an argument. If you use compromise, you’d agree to work late today, if they can get someone else to do it tomorrow. And if you use collaboration, you’ll suggest you both do it together.

None of these strategies are wrong; in fact a skillful person is able to employ each of these at the appropriate time. Each is simply a different approach, or choice for responding to conflicts.

There are times when each is useful and each is appropriate. If the way you see conflict is one in which you see yourself with multiple options, you’ll be able to choose the most appropriate strategy for the situation. There is no rule book for employing these; there is never just one way to manage a difficult person.

(to be continued…)

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