Conflict management is the practice of being

able to identify and handle conflicts sensibly,

fairly, and efficiently.
Conflict is an inevitable and unavoidable part
of our everyday professional and personal lives
It is important that there are people who
understand conflicts and know how to resolve
them

Misunderstanding
Personality clashes
Competition for resources
Authority issues
Lack of cooperation
Differences over methods or style
Low performance
Value or goal differences
Expectation

Conflict is destructive when it:

Diverts energy from more important issues and

tasks.
Deepens differences in values.
Polarizes groups so that cooperation is
reduced.
Destroys the morale of people or reinforces
poor self-concepts

Conflict is constructive when it:

Opens up issues of importance, resulting in

issue clarification.
Helps build cohesiveness as people learn more
about each other.
Causes reassessment by allowing for
examination of procedures or actions.
Increases individual involvement

Five stages

Potential opposition or Incompatibility

Cognition and Personalization
Intentions
Behavior
Outcomes

Presence of conditions that create opportunities for

conflict to arise.
They need not lead directly to conflict, but one of these
conditions is necessary if conflict is to surface.
Three general categories
Communication
Structure (The larger the group and the more
specialized its activities, the greater the likelihood
of conflict)
Personal variables

If the conditions cited in stage I negatively

affect something that one party cares about,
then the potential for opposition or
incompatibility becomes actualized in the
second stage.
It is at the felt level, when individuals become
emotionally involved, that parties experience
anxiety, tension, frustration, or hostility

Intentions
intervene
among
peoples
perceptions and emotions and overt behaviors.
These intentions are decisions to act in a given
way.
A lot of conflicts are escalated merely by one
party attributing the wrong intentions to the
other party.

Conflicts become visible.

The behavior stage includes the statements,
actions, and reactions made by the conflicting
parties.
At the lower level we have conflicts
characterized by subtle, indirect, and highly
controlled forms of tension
Conflict intensities escalate as they move
upward along the continuum until they
become highly destructive like Strikes, riots,
and wars

These outcomes may be functional in that the

conflict results in an improvement in the
groups performance, or it may be
dysfunctional in that it hinders group
performance.

ACCOMMODATING
An accommodating manager is one who
cooperates to a high degree.
This may be at the manager's own expense and
actually work against that manager's own
goals, objectives, and desired outcomes.

This approach is effective when the other

person is the expert or has a better solution.

AVOIDING
Avoiding an issue is one way a manager might
attempt to resolve conflict.
This type of conflict style does not help the
other staff members reach their goals, and does
not help the manager who is avoiding the issue
assertively pursue his or her own goals.
However, this works well when the issue is
trivial or when the manager has no chance of
winning

COLLABORATING
Managers become partners or pair up with the
each other to achieve both of their goals in this
style.

This is how managers break free of the 'winlose' paradigm and seek the 'win-win.
This can be effective for complex scenarios
where managers need to find a novel solution

COMPETING
This is the 'win-lose' approach.
A manager is acting in a very assertive way to
achieve his or her goals, without seeking to
cooperate with other employees, and it may be
at the expense of those other employees.

This approach may be appropriate

emergencies when time is of the essence.

for

COMPROMISING
This is the 'lose-lose' scenario where neither
person or manager really achieves what they
want.

This requires a moderate level of assertiveness

and cooperation.
It may be appropriate for scenarios where you
need a temporary solution, or where both sides
have equally important goals.