Do you know your conflict management style?
- meaganintensity
- Mar 23, 2023
- 4 min read
Conflict can be hard to describe because it happens in different situations. The major themes of conflict seems to be disagreement, contradiction and/or incompatibility. Conflict has goals, cognitions or emotions that may be incompatible with other parties.
Everyone deals with conflict: either within work environments, family or friend relationships, or in your personal lives. Each have us have different ways to deal with conflicts depending on our own knowledge, personality and how we are used to. Do you know your conflict management style? The rest of the article will have descriptions of the the conflict management styles and a provided quiz to help you figure out which style is yours. Let's begin.
1) Competing
Competition reaons that for a way for one party to win, the other party must lose. Competition focuses on what you want AND making sure the other person does not get what they want.
Benefits:
Asserting Your Position: allows you to stand up for your ideas and interests while making sure that they are taken seriously.
Possibility of Quick Victory: allows you to make a quick recommendation and possibly press for a quick decision if you have enough power to be victorious.
Self Defence: allows you to protect your interests and standpoints from attack.
Testing Assumptions: allows you to debate to expose and test your own and others' assumptions and views.
Costs:
Strained Work Relationships: the loser of the conflict may feel resentful or exploited.
Suboptimal Decisions: rapid resolution can lead to possible win-win solutions being overlooked. Information is not exchanged freely in the competing mode.
Decreased Initiative and Motivation: when decisions are imposed, other individuals are less committed to them and show less initiative and motivation.
Possible Escalation and Deadlock: it is possible there might be a temptation to use more extreme and provocative tactics if initial tactics fail. Can lead to negotiation deadlock
2) Accommodation
Accommodation is surrendering what you want in order to let them get what the other party wants. It's putting aside one's own needs and concerns in order to satisfy the needs of the other person.
Benefits:
Helping someone Out: assisting others in meeting their needs by supporting them.
Restoring Harmony: can smooth feathers and settle troubled waters.
Building relationships: used to build social capital by doing favours. Can also be used as a way of apologizing when necessary.
Choosing a Quick Ending: used to cut your losses as a way to minimize future losses in a hopeless situation.
Costs of Accommodating:
Sacrificed Concerns: entails conceding something you care about, so your views or interests are sacrificed.
Loss of Respect: build goodwill, but perception of low assertiveness can lead to you losing respect from your peers. Can encourage others to exploit you.
Loss of Motivation: leads to less satisfaction. It can lead to you agreeing to things for which you have little excitement.
3) Collaboration
Collaboration is sorting out differences to unveil what everyone needs instead of what they just want. It generates unique solutions that meets the needs of everyone. It involves win-win problem solving and believes that both people can get their needs met.
Benefits:
High-Quality Decisions: leads to seeking inventive solutions that are better than each person's initial positions.
Learning and Communication: aids communication and discovery through open exchange of information.
Resolution and Commitment: leads to both people working toward meeting all concerns, translating into both parties being committed to the decision.
Strengthening Relationships: builds trust and respect by resolving problems in a relationship.
Costs:
Time and Energy Required: full concentration and creativity. Requires more time for digging through issues than the other modes.
Psychological Demands: can be psychologically demanding as both parties have to be open to new viewpoints, ideas, and challenges.
Possibility of Offending: may require working through some sensitive issues. You risk worsening the situation and potentially hurting another's feelings if unsuccessful.
Vulnerability Risk: it is possible that others may try to exploit your flexibility and openness.
4) Compromising
Compromise is splitting the difference 50/50. Each person gets and gives up a little of what they want. It is an attempt to seek middle group.
Benefits:
Pragmatism: leads to a deal that is good enough without the necessary effort of trying to get both parties everything they wanted.
Speed and Expediency: allows you to settle on a conclusion quickly
Fairness: creates resolutions that aim for equal gains and losses for both parties.
Maintaining Relationships: allows both parties to meet halfway and reduces strain on the relationship.
Costs:
Partially Sacrificed Concerns: since both individuals' concerns are compromised, it leaves some residual frustration. The issue isn't fully resolved and may flare up again.
Suboptimal Solutions: settling for compromising decisions is of lower quality than successful collaborative decisions.
Superficial Understanding: agreements often gloss over differences with fuzzy statements that don't accurately mirror the beliefs of the individuals who disagree.
5) Avoidance
Avoidance is knowing that there is a conflict but choosing not to deal with it. Avoiders do not acknowledge or talk about the conflict with the other person and maybe avoid the person with whom he or she is having the conflict.
Benefits:
Reducing Stress:allows you to avoid exacting or displeasing people and topics
Saving time: allows you to not waste time and energy or low priority items.
Steering Clear of Danger: allows you to avoid inciting trouble.
Setting Up More Favourable Conditions: provides you with time to be more prepared and less distracted so that you may deal with the matter at hand.
Costs:
Deciding Working Relationships: creates possibility that work nay not be accomplished as people avoid each other. Allows for hostile stereotypes to develop and putrefy.
Resentment: lead to resentment from others whose concerns are being neglected, seeing your actions as shifty
Delays: unaddressed issues cause delays and may keep recurring. This takes up more time and causes more aggravation than if these problems were addressed earlier.
Degrading Communication and Decision Making: may cause people to walk on eggshells as opposed to speak honestly and learn from one another.
What Conflict Management Style are you? Do you want to find out? Take the quiz!
To learn more about conflict management and how to solve conflict, book a session with me!
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