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Conflicts between conflict and conflict management
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Conflict is inevitable in almost any situation. In the real world, “whether we like it or not, organizations are filled with independent” individuals who have an opinion, and most people will voice it (Colquitt 422). When there are conflicts in the workplace, leaders must use their powers to maintain control and influence tactics to deal with conflict. “Dealing with Conflict in the Workplace” by Tom Fox is an article focuses on how a leader can resolve these issues the best way possible, and we will also provide some other methods suggested by Colquitt who is the author of our textbook for the class. The first situation Tom Fox brings forward is conflicted with bosses. Bosses are usually seen as a necessary evil; to some just plain evil. Some bosses are bad at their jobs and some abuse their power; causing conflict with employees and impacting the work-flow. Fox states “while it’s easy (and maybe legitimate) to blame your boss, this, unfortunately, isn’t the most productive option” (Fox). He is on the right track with Colquitt’s method by using the influencing upward skill to get the leaders and the bosses out of the conflict. Fox’s …show more content…
In this portion of the article, Fox focuses on tension. Most people hate confrontation. It is awkward, scary, but very necessary. Avoiding conflict builds up tension creating a powder keg waiting to explode. “As a leader, you want to allow for a certain amount of creative tension, but the moment that conflict becomes counterproductive, you need to act” (Fox). The reaction a person may have after avoiding the conflict may be much worse than their reaction if it was addressed immediately. Avoiding is not a good method that a leader wants to use for the conflict issue. Colquitt suggests that “compromise is perhaps the most common form of conflict solution, maintains relations between parties, and generally results in favorable evaluation for the leader” (Colquitt
Felix Frankfurter once said, “the most constructive way of resolving conflicts is to avoid them.” which means evading the conflicts is the best way to resolve the conflicts.In the other words, if we don’t want to face the conflicts, we should stay away from them and try to not get involved in.However, in my personal opinion, I disagree with this quote since the conflicts will still surround us even though we try to avoid them. Moreover, if the conflicts are initiated by us or just comes to us, to avoid the conflicts will not help us to resolve them.
In several occasions, conflict occurs in the communication of one or two people. Several people have thought of conflict as cases involving pouring of furious anger in a communication process. Nonetheless, conflict is the misinterpretation of an individual’s words or values (Huan & YAzdanifard, 2012). Conflict can also be due to limited resources in an organization (Riaz & Junaid, 2010). Conflict may as well arise due to poor communication or the use of inappropriate communication channel of transmission of information between the involved parties. Management of conflict has various conflict management styles that include avoidance style, forcing style, passive-aggressive style, accommodating style, collaborating style and compromising style. Workplace conflict comes in two different kinds: task involving conflict, which focuses on the approaches used in resolving the problem and blaming conflict that has the aspects of blame and never brings element of resolving problems between the conflicting parties. In the perception of several individuals, relationship conflict is negative.
Have you ever faced a conflict and didn’t know what you were supposed to do? People all respond to conflict differently. Some face the conflict head-on and some people leave the conflict the way it is. Anne Frank from “Anne Frank: A Diary of a Young Girl,” Sophie Scholl from “Hitler Youth,” Elie Wiesel form “Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech” Bruno from “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: a fable,” Winston Churchill from “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat,” and few other people all responded to conflict by facing it head on and not letting opponents interfere in their ways.
Conflict Management can often be the toughest task for a leader to handle. It involves dealing with inter-personal and intra-personal conflict. As a team leader of a technical event called Pulse’09 at my university, I had to deal with conflicts on a regular basis. Conflicts usually arise either due to lack of effective communication, different ideologies, lack of resources or due to task interdependence [3]. It was by far my most life changing experience as it taught me the reason behind conflicts and the way to resolve them. In this paper, I will be talking about the way I dealt with conflicts and managed them, the impact they had on the team performance and what I could do to improve my leadership by contrasting my experience to the class readings.
Conerly (2004), further states two things attribute to the way conflict is managed. One is the importance of meeting your own goals and the other is the importance you attribute to relationships and wanting to get along with others.
McKenna, Stephen (1995, July). The business impact of management attitudes towards dealing with conflict. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22(6).
Many people enjoy working or participating in a group or team, but when a group of people work together chances are that conflicts will occur. Hazleton describes conflict as the discrepancy between what is the perceived reality and what is seen as ideal (2007). “We enter into conflicts reluctantly, cautiously, angrily, nervously, confidently- and emerge from them battered, exhausted, sad, satisfied, triumphant. And still many of us underestimate or overlook the merits of conflict- the opportunity conflict offers every time it occurs” (Schilling, nd.). Conflict does not have to lead to a hostile environment or to broken relationships. Conflict if resolved effectively can lead to a positive experience for everyone involved. First, there must be an understanding of the reasons why conflicts occur. The conflict must be approached with an open mind. Using specific strategies can lead to a successful resolution for all parties involved. The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument states “there are five general approaches to dealing with conflict. The five approaches are avoidance, accommodation, competition, compromise, and collaboration. Conflict resolution is situational and no one approach provides the best or right approach for all circumstances” (Thomas, 2000).
Before understanding how to deal with conflict, one must understand what conflict is. Conflict can be defined as, “any situation in which incompatible goals, cognitions, or emotions within or between individuals or groups lead to opposition or antagonistic interaction” (Learning Team Toolkit, 2004, pp 242-243). Does the idea of conflict always have to carry a negative connotation? The growth and development of society would be a great deal slower if people never challenged each other’s ideas. The Learning Team Toolkit discusses three different views of conflict: traditiona...
workplace include greater total resources, greater knowledge band and a greater source of ideas. However, these advantages can also bring on conflict within teams and the entire workplace. Varney (1989) reported that conflict remained the number one problem within a large company. This was after several attempts were made to train management in conflict resolutions and procedures. However, the conflict remained. The conflict possibly remains because the managers and leaders did not pay attention to the seriousness of the issue. In order to maintain an effective team, leaders and team members must know and be proactive in the conflict resolution techniques and procedures.
This elasticity in your approach to choosing which conflict style is best for the current situation is a key to managing conflict. No one style of conflict resolution will work all the time when addressing issues. You must remain flexible to other people’s wants, needs, direction, criticism, schedules, moods, temperament, and a myriad of other things in life. If there is one thing in life that will never change it is the fact that everything is going to change! There is nothing you can do to stop it, so the quicker you learn how to adapt to the changes the better off you will be. The ability to change your approach to dealing with conflict better prepares you to face the interpersonal challenges that will eventually come your way. I believe it is important to also remember that you cannot win every battle with every person you encounter. Knowing that you cannot fix or solve every problem with everyone is very helpful in reducing stress and managing difficult situations with others. My father dislikes when I use this cliché but sometimes, it is what it
Conflict avoidance is a technique used to deal with conflict. Avoiding conflict is mainly used to disregard the direct issue at hand. Avoiding conflict can be used to temporarily get rid of an issue or it can be used to permanently remove the issue. Avoiding conflict within the workplace most often results in relationship division. Workplace conflict is inevitable, meaning wherever and whenever there is a group working to accomplish similar goals as a whole, conflict will be present. Workplace conflict exists due to various factors. (Graham 2014) The most common seen factors influencing workplace conflict include role understanding, meaning who is responsible for what task, how tasks are to be accomplished, personality difference and poor
(Asawo, 2011). Conflict can occur in any setting and as leaders in organizations guide and
Conflict can occur anywhere and at any place, and recently there has been an ongoing conflict that has been manifesting at work, between a supervisor and an employee, and I am stuck in the middle of their conflict. For the past few months, a coworker has been moved from seat to seat, all over the call center. At first, the conflict was very difficult to see, however, between the supervisor and the employee, atmosphere of tension was felt when interaction was made. The employee, Ana Maria, began showing acts of defiance against her supervisor’s instructions, and additionally began spreading her discontent with fellow employees. As a result from her discontent being spread with to the other employees, work productivity began to fall, which caused
Conflict exists in every organization as a result of incompatible needs, goals, and objectives of two people while aligning to the overall business requirements. Though disagreement is linked with negative impact, the approach has healthy considerations (Leung, 2008). For instance, some conflicts create an avenue for the exchange of ideas and creativity to meet the set organizational purposes. However, damaging disagreement in organizations results in employee dissatisfaction, turnover, and poor services and reduced productivity. The paper establishes different types of interpersonal conflict and key resolution strategies used to address the problem. Human resource managers need to have the capacity to identify different levels of conflicts and the best methods to negate them.
A good leader in my opinion, not only can resolve such conflicts in a workplace, but also use his or her influence to create a positive environment. Using the non-violent communication is certainly one way