Personal Assessment of Conflict Management: In this first discussion for the final week, you will consider areas of strength and improvement associated with your own style of conflict management based on your own experiences.
Read Chapter 11 from The Interpersonal Communication Book; answer the 10 true/false statements regarding your interpersonal conflict behavior (p. 297 – 298). Then, review your results and consider whether your interpersonal conflict management skills are effective or ineffective.
Before reading about the various conflict management strategies, examine your interpersonal conflict behavior by responding to the following statements with true (T) if this is a generally accurate description of your interpersonal conflict behavior and false (F) if the statement is a generally inaccurate description of your behavior.
____ 1. I strive to seek solutions that benefit both of us.
____ 2. I look for solutions that give me what I want.
____ 3. I confront conflict situations as they arise.
____ 4. I avoid conflict situations as best I can.
____ 5. My messages are basically descriptive of the events leading up to the conflict.
____ 6. My messages are often judgmental.
____ 7. I take into consideration the face needs of the other person.
____ 8. I advance the strongest arguments I can find, even if these attack the other person.
____ 9. I center my arguments on issues rather than on personalities.
____ 10. I use messages that may attack a person’s self-image if this helps me win the argument.
These questions were designed to sensitize you to some of the conflict strategies to be discussed in this section of the chapter. As you’ll see, if you answered true (T) to the odd-numbered statements (1, 3, 5, 7, and 9) and false (F) to the even-numbered statements (2, 4, 6, 8, and 10), you’d be following the guidelines offered by communication researchers and theorists. As you think about your responses and read the text discussion, ask yourself what you can do to improve your own conflict management skills.
Initial Post: Prepare a 300-word minimum reply that sufficiently addresses each of the items below. Don’t forget that it is critical to cite your sources of information, including the textbook, using APA formatting.
1)Identify personal communication strengths and growth. Describe at least two strengths and two growth areas.
2)Consider an actual example from your own personal or professional experience where you could have been more effective. How would you go about following the conflict management steps on pp. 292-296?
Understanding Interpersonal Theory & Research
CONFLICT STYLES
The way in which you engage in conflict has consequences for the resolution of the conflict and for the relationship between the conflicting parties. Conflict researchers identify five styles of engaging in conflict (Kilmann & Thomas, 1977, 2002; Blake & Mouton, 1984). As you read through the following descriptions of these conflict styles, try to identify your own often-used conflict style as well as the styles of those with whom you have close relationships.
Competing—I Win, You Lose The competing style represents great concern for your own needs and desires and little for those of others. As long as your needs are met, the conflict has been dealt with successfully (for you). In conflict motivated by competitiveness, you are likely to be verbally aggressive while blaming the other person.
This style represents an “I win, you lose” philosophy. With this philosophy, you attempt to manage the conflict so that you win and the other person loses. As you can tell, this style might be appropriate in a courtroom or in buying a car, two situations in which one person benefits from the other person’s losses. But in interpersonal situations, this philosophy can easily lead to resentment in the person who lost, which in turn can easily morph into additional conflicts. Further, the fact that you win and the other person loses probably means that the conflict really hasn’t been resolved, just concluded (for now).
Avoiding—I Lose, You Lose Using the avoiding style suggests that you are relatively unconcerned with your own or with the other’s needs or desires. The avoider shrinks from any real communication about the problem, changes the topic when the problem is brought up, and generally withdraws from the scene both psychologically and physically.
As you can appreciate, this style does little to resolve any conflicts and may be viewed as an “I lose, you lose” philosophy. Interpersonal problems rarely go away of their own accord; rather, if they exist, they need to be faced and dealt with effectively. The avoidance philosophy just allows the conflict to fester and probably to grow, only to resurface in another guise.
Accommodating—I Lose, You Win In the accommodating style, you sacrifice your own needs for the sake of the needs of the other person. Your major purpose is to maintain harmony and peace in the relationship or group. The accommodating style may help you attain the immediate goal of maintaining peace and perhaps satisfying the other person, but it does little to meet your own needs—which are unlikely to go away.
Accommodating represents an “I lose, you win” philosophy. And although this style may make your partner happy (at least on this occasion), it’s not likely to prove a lasting resolution to an interpersonal conflict. You’ll eventually sense the unfairness and inequity inherent in this approach to conflict, and you may easily come to resent your partner and perhaps even yourself.
Collaborating—I Win, You Win In the collaborating style, your concern is with both your own and the other person’s needs. Often considered the ideal, collaborating takes time and a willingness to communicate, and especially to listen to the perspectives and needs of the other person.
Ideally, collaborating allows each person’s needs to be being satisfied, an “I win, you win” situation. This is obviously the style that you want to use in most of your interpersonal conflict. Collaborating promotes resolutions in which both people get something.
Compromising—I Win and Lose, You Win and Lose The compromising style is in the middle; there’s some concern for your own needs and some concern for the other’s needs. Compromising is the kind of strategy you might refer to as meeting each other halfway, horse trading, or give and take. This strategy is likely to result in maintaining peace, but there also will be dissatisfaction over the inevitable losses that have to be endured.
Compromising could be called an “I-win-and-lose and you-win-and-lose” strategy. There are lots of times when you can’t both get exactly what you want. For example, you can’t both get a new car if the available funds allow for only one. Still, you might each get a better car than what you now have—so you would win something but not everything. You wouldn’t get a new car, and the same would be true of your partner.
This is the
REQUIRED TEXT
1. DeVito, J.A. (2016). The interpersonal communication book (14th ed.). Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu
- Chapter 11: Interpersonal Conflict and Conflict Management (pp. 283-304)
