Season 8 Episode 127

If you are uncomfortable dealing with conflict, listen to this episode to learn 5 conflict resolution strategies that help reduce conflict.

Show notes:

Episode Summary:

Last week in the first part of our two -part series on conflict, we explored the common causes of conflict.

In this episode, we expand that conversation with our guest, Mariann Kurtz Weber. We discuss the five conflict resolution strategies to deal with the conflicts that occur in your life.

If you loved the last episode, you’re going to love this one as well. Stick around and learn how to better handle conflict in your life!

In this episode:

These show notes are not a word-for-word transcript. Here, we share key highlights from the show. For the best experience, listen to the episode in the link above.

Introduction to our Guest Mariann Kurtz Weber

Mariann Kurtz Weber is a 30-year veteran in international economic development, including 20 years as a leader in the International Finance Corporation, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group. Mariann has worked with business leaders around the globe to enhance their skills and capacity, personally and corporately, to perform at their best. She is a Professional Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation, focusing on leadership development. She recently served as the Chief Strategy Officer of Clarke University in Dubuque, Iowa, where she also developed and taught professional development courses in topics such as conflict management, leadership, and Strategic Communications, as well as MBA courses in Human Resource Management. She currently lives in Dubuque with her husband and two boys, both attending Midwest universities.

Conflict management is an everyday reality in any discipline, and Mariann feels strongly that everyone should have a basic understanding of the common sources of conflict, the five conflict resolution strategies, and their personal conflict management style.

5 Conflict Resolution Strategies

We’ve all had conflicts in our lives. Last week we talked about the causes of conflict. This week we are digging into what to do about those conflicts. How do we handle conflict in effective ways?

The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Model outlines five conflict resolution strategies:

These are listed roughly from least effective to most effective:

Avoiding
Competing
Accommodating
Compromising
Collaborating

Breakdown of The Five Conflict Resolution Strategies and When to Use Each of Them

1. Avoiding

Avoiding is a strategy best suited for situations in which the relationship’s importance and goal are both low.

While you’re unlikely to encounter these scenarios at work, they may occur in daily life. For instance, imagine you are standing in line at a coffee shop. Someone is loudly speaking on their phone about personal things. It is irritating you and you don’t want to hear it. However, you know you will not see this person again, so you choose to just ignore it. In the larger scheme of things, it is not that important.

In workplace conflicts—where your goals are typically important and you care about maintaining a lasting relationship with colleagues—avoidance can be detrimental. Sometimes it is important to address something, especially if you want to save a relationship. You may avoid something in the moment, but choose to address it once you have had time to figure out how to address it.

Some conflicts are worth addressing and others are not. Know when it is important to deal with the conflict. Ask yourself, is this serving me in the long run?

2. Competing

Competing is another strategy that, while not often suited for workplace conflict, can be useful in some situations. It’s high in assertiveness and low in cooperation. Someone will win at the cost of others. Often it is very emotionally charged.

This conflict style is for scenarios in which you place high importance on your goal and low importance on your relationships with others.

You may choose a competing style in a crisis. For instance, if a student falls and is unconscious and people are arguing about what to do, asserting yourself and taking charge can help the person get medical attention quicker. Someone just needs to decide what needs to happen and just insists that they act.

Use this when there is an issue of safety, but otherwise there is often another better response than competing.

3. Accommodating

The third conflict resolution strategy is accommodation, in which you acquiesce to the other person’s needs. One person is choosing to give up. Use accommodating in instances where the relationship matters more than your goal.

For example, if you pitch an idea for a future project in a meeting, and one of your colleagues says they believe it will have a negative impact, you could resolve the conflict by rescinding your original thought. You may decide that the relationship with the person is more important to you than the goal.

Accommodating does have its place. It also depends on the longer term bigger picture.

4. Compromising

Compromising is a conflict resolution strategy in which you and the other party willingly forfeit some of your needs in order to reach an agreement. It’s known as a “lose-lose” strategy, since neither of you achieve your full goal. You each get something, but you both give up something. No one really achieves their goal.

This strategy works well when your care for your goal and the relationship are both moderate. You value the relationship, but not so much that you abandon your goal, as you might with accommodation.

When you are compromising, think about what you are giving up and how important it is to the overall goal.

5. Collaborating

Collaboration is a win-win situation. The goal and the relationship are equally important, motivating both you and the other party to work together to find an outcome that meets all needs.

An example of a situation where collaboration is necessary is if one of your employees isn’t performing well in their role—to the point that they’re negatively impacting the school. In extreme situations, the person might need to leave the organization.

However, the person was hired for a reason. What are that person’s skills and abilities? Maybe the role is a poor fit, but it is possible to shift them to a different role. While maintaining a strong, positive relationship is important, so is finding a solution to their poor performance.

How can we take what we have and both of us reach our goals? How could we rearrange the person’s duties?

Conflict pushes us into fight or flight and it is the ability to step back and ask, “wait a minute, what are the skills this person brings”?

What is one key take away?

Mariann shared that people should look at their patterns. Often the ways we deal with our conflicts are with patterns of behavior that we learned from growing up or that is our default way of dealing with conflict. Now that you know the causes and the strategies, you can choose how you want to solve a conflict and how you want to show up. That is my invitation and challenge.

Mariann also encouraged everyone to do the conflict self assessment, linked in the resources below.

Also, she suggests that teachers think about how better prepared our students would be if they could learn some of these strategies for resolving conflict. How could we teach this to students at a developmentally appropriate way?

Quote:

“Now that you know the causes and the strategies, you can choose how you want to solve a conflict and how you want to show up.

Mariann Kurtz Weber

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Connect with Mariann: mkurtzweber@gmail.com

Link to Harvard Business School – Online — Business Insights

https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/strategies-for-conflict-resolution-in-the-workplace

Self-assessment Conflict Management Styles (Free

Click to access Conflict_Management_Styles_Assessment.pdf

Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Model—developed by Dr. Kenneth W. Thomas and Dr. Ralph H. Kilmann—outlines five strategies for conflict resolution.

How to Create a Culture of Ethics and Accountability in the Workplace

Bell and Hart’s Eight Causes of Conflict

Understanding the Causes of Workplace Tension

Written by the Mindtools Content Team

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