Conflict Magangement Disagreements

Conflict undoubtedly occurs in our lives and is inevitable. From arguing with your siblings about whose turn it is to use the computer to having issues over financial matters, conflict comes in many different forms. Scholars believe that conflict can cannot always be resolved and refer to conflict management, which is the way we address disagreements with our relational partners. There are three main strategies I’d like to focus on towards managing conflict: escapist strategies, challenging strategies, and cooperative strategies. An escapist strategy avoids direct conflict because of reasons such as personal safety and practicality. Challenging strategies uses more skills such as assertiveness to get what they want and essentially cause a winner and a loser to manage the conflict. Using a cooperative strategy focuses on the issues instead of using verbal aggressiveness and to consider options and other alternatives. These three concepts of conflict management is important to me because it relates to my relationship with my girlfriend Nancy and gives me a chance to see the positive and negative sides of the strategies to determine which strategy would work for me. An example of a scenario in which these strategies can be applied to is about having a game console. I recently bought a Playstation 4 and Nancy is not pleased about how I use all my time to play games. Hypothetically, Let’s look at how these strategies could be used to manage this conflict.
An escapist strategist would prevent or avoid direct conflict and in my situation, I would ignore Nancy and her constant nagging to avoid any direct conflict. I would come to conclusion that all guys play video games and that it is not such a big deal. This strategy is effective beca...

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...ing strategy allows you to get what you want and for my scenario, I get to play my games. Although I may have won, my partner loses and this can cause long-term damage to the relationship and this strategy should be used wisely. The cooperative strategy does not have just one winner, but winners for all sides of the relationship. In the end of this strategy, I managed to talk things out with my partner to find and agreement and if necessary, I would have to give something to gain something and causes mutuality. What I learned in this application paper is the cooperative strategy is the best strategy for my particular scenario of a conflict but I have to be mindful to not ignore the other two strategies. With this knowledge, I finally know how to manage my conflicts more efficiently and know what strategy should be used best for any future conflicts that I encounter.