Lecture notes
Resolving Conflict
- Institution
- CCEA
What is conflict and the methods to resolve it: avoidance, accommodating, forcing, compromise and problem solving.
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Resolving ConflictIt is important for managers to recognise and deal with conflict. Sometimes it is best to just let
things be. However, most problems don't just go away, and festering anger can eat away at morale
and get in the way of effective decision making.
There are five main strategies for dealing with conflict:
1. Avoidance:
a. Sometimes the best course of action.
b. Avoiding conflict is a sign of inability to successfully manage problems.
c. The conflict avoider often rationales for the conflict, dodges meetings or
conversations where conflict is present and hopes conflict will resolve itself.
2. Accommodating:
a. This may help solve the immediate problem, but the basic issue remains.
b. Accommodating and avoidance are similar techniques.
c. They both come from a fear of addressing and dealing with an issue directly.
d. A manager who sacrifices his or her own goals and gives in could hurt the company
in the LT.
e. This is why it is often healthier to have conflict out in the open than to have people
think there is harmony when there really is not.
3. Forcing:
a. Is the opposite of accommodating.
b. The manager who forces his or her employees to accept a solution to a problem or
forces them to drop the issues will seldom find the best LT solutions.
c. This behaviour can be competitive or aggressive in nature.
d. The manager would attempt to force an opinion on the opposition and this hardly
ever fixes the problem and usually produces more anger.
4. Compromise:
a. Often seen as the best way to deal with conflict.
b. However, it can lead to both sides feeling as if they lost.
c. This is especially true when managers are the ones who decide what the
compromise will be.
5. Problem Solving:
a. In order to successfully implement the problem solving strategy, there must be
certain common beliefs that the two parts can agree on:
i. Cooperation is better than competition:
1) Is better to get parties involved to reach a LT solution.
2) The like hood of solutions working is best when parties come up
with it rather than just management.
ii. Parties can be trusted:
1) As value and perspectives differ, it can be easy for individuals to
distrust each other = breakdown in communication + failure to
realise others goals.
2) Managers can gain this trust my actually trusting employees.
3) Allows communication and problem solving is improved.
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