Conflict Handling Styles

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You Should …

Having a preferred style for managing conflict

Using different styles depending on the problem – and get there by using

your ability to read situation

avoiding

accommodation

competition

compromise

collaboration

• Characteristics• ignoring conflicts and hoping they’ll

go away• putting problems under consideration

or on hold• use of secrecy to avoid confrontation• appeal to bureaucratic rules

Avoiding

When to use

• Trivial, small/unimportant issue

• no perceived chance of

resolution

• To allow a cool down period

• To allow others to resolve the

situation

Characteristics

• negotiation

• looking for deals and

trade-offs

• finding satisfactory or

acceptable solutions

When to use

• goals are important, but not worth effort

• opponents with equal power are committed

to mutually exclusive goals

• achieve temporary settlements to issues

• arrive at solutions under time pressure

• back-up to collaboration or competition

Compromise

• Characteristics• create win-lose situations• use of power plays • forcing submission

When to use

• quick, decisive action is vital, very

important

• unpopular actions eg. cost cutting

• issues are vital to company welfare

• against people who take advantage of non-

competitive behavior

Competition

Characteristics

• giving way

• submission and

fulfillment

When to use

• find you are wrong

• issues more important to others than yourself

• maintain cooperation

• build social credits for later on

• minimize loss

• harmony and stability are important

• allow team members to learn from their mistakes

Accommodation

Characteristics

• problem-solving carriage

• tackle differences

• sharing ideas and information

• seeing problems and conflicts as

challenges

When to use

• find an integrative solution when

both sets of concerns are

important

• objective is to learn

Collaboration

Resolving Conflict in a team

• This is a systematic procedure which involves all team members understanding the requirements of their of own and everyone else's position, duties and expectations

• You’ll need to clarify roles for team and individuals; for example via questionnaires (or for project teams - RAM matrices!)

Role Clarification Technique (RAT)

• Each group should prepare list of what they would like the other groups to start doing, stop doing, and continue to do.

• This list narrows he scope of the dispute and makes it easier to work on the core problems.

Intergroup Conflict Resolution

“Conflict is A Part of Learning”