How to Deal with Conflict
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- Date Submitted: 11/14/2010 12:57 AM
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How to deal with conflict
Stage One: The Background
In the workplace (and almost any setting), you are likely to find two forms of conflict. The first is conflict about decisions, ideas, directions and actions. We will call this "substantive conflict" since it deals with disagreements about the substance of issues. The second form, "personalized conflict" is often called a personality conflict. In this form, the two parties simply "don't like each other much". Substantive conflict can occur on just about any issue, but its moving force is that the two parties simply disagree about an issue. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. Handled correctly parties in conflict can create, for themselves and those around them, the ability to resolve an issue with something creative, something better than either party's original position. While substantive conflict, if handled correctly, can be very productive, personalized conflict is almost never a good thing. There are several reasons. First personalized conflict is fuelled primarily by emotion (usually anger, frustration) and perceptions about someone else's personality, character or motives. When conflict is personalized and extreme each party acts as if the other is suspect as a person. Second, because personalized conflict is about emotion and not issues, problem solving almost never works, because neither party is really interested in solving a problem...in fact, in extreme cases, the parties go out of their ways to create new ones, imagined or real. Third, personalized conflicts almost always get worse over time, if they cannot be converted to substantive conflict. That is because each person expects problems, looks for them, finds them, and gets angrier.
Stage Two: The Prelude
I have had to work fairly extensively with a colleague who is just impossible. She is arrogant, stubborn, sometimes abusive, and acts like she is right about almost everything. At first I tried to ignore it, but it just gotten worse. It's...
Stage One: The Background
In the workplace (and almost any setting), you are likely to find two forms of conflict. The first is conflict about decisions, ideas, directions and actions. We will call this "substantive conflict" since it deals with disagreements about the substance of issues. The second form, "personalized conflict" is often called a personality conflict. In this form, the two parties simply "don't like each other much". Substantive conflict can occur on just about any issue, but its moving force is that the two parties simply disagree about an issue. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. Handled correctly parties in conflict can create, for themselves and those around them, the ability to resolve an issue with something creative, something better than either party's original position. While substantive conflict, if handled correctly, can be very productive, personalized conflict is almost never a good thing. There are several reasons. First personalized conflict is fuelled primarily by emotion (usually anger, frustration) and perceptions about someone else's personality, character or motives. When conflict is personalized and extreme each party acts as if the other is suspect as a person. Second, because personalized conflict is about emotion and not issues, problem solving almost never works, because neither party is really interested in solving a problem...in fact, in extreme cases, the parties go out of their ways to create new ones, imagined or real. Third, personalized conflicts almost always get worse over time, if they cannot be converted to substantive conflict. That is because each person expects problems, looks for them, finds them, and gets angrier.
Stage Two: The Prelude
I have had to work fairly extensively with a colleague who is just impossible. She is arrogant, stubborn, sometimes abusive, and acts like she is right about almost everything. At first I tried to ignore it, but it just gotten worse. It's...