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Conflict Resolution and Conflict Management
- Conflict always arises in the real-world — it's unavoidable.
- It is how we handle the conflicts that makes the difference.
- A healthy work environment is one that can resolve conflicts peacefully by finding a win-win solution.
- An unhealthy work environment is one that sees conflicts as evil that needs to be punished.
- Our research shows that employee job satisfaction depends very much on how the organization handles conflicts with the co-workers in the work environment.
- One of the most common reasons employees cited for leaving a job is unresolved conflicts in the work environment — resulting in employee turnover, dissatisfaction and low productivity.
Why Do Conflicts Arise in the First Place?
- Conflicts are natural consequences of human interactions.
- Conflicts arise when there are competing interests that compete for a mutually-exclusive solution.
- For example, if someone wants to “have the cake and eat it too”, it creates a conflict because the solution is mutually exclusive —
- if you have the cake, you can't eat it.
- if you eat the cake, you can't have it.
- Conflicts could arise similarly when human interacts with each other:
- For instance, when the “wants” of a person and the “needs” of another person are in competition, then it creates a conflict.
- Therefore, conflicts arise constantly as long as humans are interacting with each other because there are always competing interests among people.
Is Avoiding Conflicts the Best Solution?
- Avoiding conflict is not necessarily a smart solution because that may imply giving up a person's “wants and needs” to settle for something less.
- This often leads to resentment somewhere down the line.
- The best way to deal with conflict is to address the conflicting interest, and resolve it that way instead of avoiding it.
- In other words, avoiding conflicts is a passive solution — when the resentment builds up, it will lead to “passive aggressiveness”, which basically can eat people up alive!
How to Resolve Conflicts Peacefully?
- Peaceful resolution of conflicts requires forethoughts and compassion.
- It requires the willingness to find an alternate solution that could lead to a win-win situation.
- The reason why conflicts exist in the first place is that the solutions are mutually exclusive.
- If you can find an alternate inclusive solution (rather than an exclusive solution), then you will resolve the conflict peacefully.
- Our research shows that “fighting it out” not only would not resolve a conflict but also escalate the conflict into a crisis because it exacerbates the competing interests even further.
How can a Human Resource Department Manage Employee Conflicts More Effectively?
- Conflict management requires skills and compassion.
- Having the forethought is a good start in preventive medicine.
- But when conflicts already occurred, then conflict intervention could be used to de-escalate the crisis.
- Effective conflict management in the workplace requires the skills and know-how of teamwork and team-building.
- Conflicts could be effectively resolved if the parties are able to see the bigger vision of the team (whole) rather than being short-sighted by the competing parts.
- When the parts are operating cooperatively, it will benefit the whole — the win-win solution.
- When the parts are operating against each other, it will destroy the whole — the lose-lose solution.
Conflict Resolution is Like Playing in a Cooperative Game
- Our research shows that conflicts can be understood in terms of “Game Theory”.
- There are many kinds of games: cooperative game and competitive game.
- A “cooperative game” is a game where the game-players work together to win — the objective is to reach a common end-goal by assisting each other.
- A “competitive game” is a game where the game-players work against each other to win — the objective is to destroy the other.
- For cooperative games, if the game-players destroy the others, it will make it harder to reach the end-goal, so players work cooperatively to win — there is no incentive to destroy the others.
- Therefore, conflicts usually don't arise because there are no competing interests, and if they exist, they can resolved easily.
- In contrast, for competitive games, the incentive is to destroy the others to win — which always leads to conflicts because of the competing interests.
- Peaceful conflict resolution can be understood by applying the winning strategy in cooperative games based on game theory — which always lead to a win-win situation.
- Deletive conflict resolution is likened to the winning strategy in competitive games — which always lead to a win-lose or lose-lose situation.
How Does Emotional Intelligence Affect Conflict Resolution?
- Our research shows that most conflicts are exacerbated by the unresolved emotional bitterness.
- Even if the competing interests are resolved, if the emotional sourness is not resolved, conflicts still remain.
- Effective conflict management that leads to peaceful resolution requires emotional intelligence.
- The ability to recognize, manage and channel appropriate emotions in resolving conflicts is crucial.
- Emotional intelligence is the ability to effective manage one's emotions in a productive way that allows for effective communication and understanding of the situation at issue.
How Can We Help You Manage Conflicts More Effectively?
- We offer “Conflict Management Seminars and Workshps” to our corporate clients.
- The Conflict Management Program consists of multiple parts:
- (1) Understanding the essense of teamwork in conflict resolution.
- (2) Understanding the cooperative game theory in conflict resolution.
- (3) Understanding the emotional intelligence in conflict resolution.
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