Ambiguity Tolerance: Dominant Conflict Management Style

Introduction This report will go into detail and provide a self-analysis by looking at several topics. These topics are my ambiguity tolerance, my learning style using Kolb’s assessment, my dominant conflict management style, and my dominant reaction to dissonance.

Ambiguity Tolerance Ambiguity essentially just means uncertainty or unknown. In general, most people could say that their life is considered to be ambiguous to a degree as nobody knows exactly what will occur in their lives or in the future. This first assessment looked at our level of tolerance or intolerance for ambiguity, with higher scores correlating with higher levels of intolerance (Budner, 1962). As I scored rather high with a 75 total score, I would be considered very

Managing conflict is based on the two behaviors of assertiveness and cooperativeness, assertiveness is dealing with one’s own concerns while cooperativeness is satisfying the concerns of others. These two behaviors lead to five basic ways to responding to conflict which are competing, collaborative, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating (Griffith & Dunham, 2015). Competing is high in assertiveness and low in cooperativeness. Collaborative is high in assertiveness and in cooperativeness, while avoiding is low in assertiveness and in cooperativeness. Accommodating is high in cooperativeness but low in assertiveness, meanwhile compromising is the middle of both assertiveness and cooperativeness (Griffith & Dunham,

As I do not like to deal with ambiguity, knowing what I should do in the group is key for me to feel comfortable to speak up in the group. Being an assimilating learning style, I may seem not involved in group activities yet be thinking about things and working them over in my own mind to better make sense to me. The avoiding conflict management style and flight dissonance reaction are very similar and both mean that I will generally not get involved with any conflict that pops up in the group unless it is something major or directly involves me as a party in the issue.

My strengths for my group are being able to look at things from the outside by both avoiding conflict and sitting back and assimilating things to make sense to me. To further strengthen these, I need to start speaking up more when the situation demands it so that my group knows where I am personally at and what I think of the situation looking inward. I will stop overanalyzing the situation and try and come up with something that can be improved later in order for the people around me know where I stand on the topics at