This course introduces you to the concept of conflict transformation and how it differs from conflict resolution, management, and prevention. We’ll see how conflict offers opportunities for constructive change, and we'll explore different tools and methods for engaging conflict constructively. Regardless of your familiarity with the topic, you'll get insightful tips, portable handouts, lively demonstrations, and personalized assignments to bridge and enhance your own knowledge and history within the conflict narrative. In any area of your life, you'll benefit from the practical techniques and transferable information offered throughout this five-week journey.
Which Style Is Best for What Kind of Conflict?
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Из курса от партнера Emory University
Conflict Transformation
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Know Thyself: How Do You Respond to Conflict and Why Do You Respond That Way?
This module looks at a self-assessment instrument, the conflict styles, and how your body and brain respond to conflict.
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Ellen Ott MarshallAssociate Professor of Christian Ethics and Conflict Transformation
Candler School of Theology
So we've talked about five different conflict styles.
We've talked about different ways to describe them.
You've also done an exercise leading into this module
where you did a kind of sentence completion with a metaphor,
right I asked you to think about a couple of different kinds of conflict,
perhaps one in a family setting, one in a work setting.
And then to complete that sentence, right.
I responded to this conflict like a, whatever.
People, as we've been seeing, respond to conflicts in all kinds of ways.
The couple of things to points to add on to that though.
We respond to conflicts in lots of different ways.
We have a default setting what we tend to gravitate towards.
But we also have the capacity to respond differently.
We can stretch ourselves a little bit.
There's another conflict assessment instrument that's
put out by the education for conflict resolution.
And in their assessment, when you complete it,
you end up actually with scores for the different conflict styles.
And I mentioned that because it's a helpful reminder, that although he might
lean toward unavoidance style, you do have a capacity to
also practice a collaboration style or to be forceful when you need to.
So we need to think a little bit about
how you move across these different conflict styles and why.
Some conflict styles are more appropriate in some contexts than others,
right, so there needs to be a match between the way you are responding to
a conflict and the conflict that actually is unfolding in front of you,
or the conflict that is swirling around you so
there are four different things to consider when we're looking at this match
between how I tend to respond to conflict and what is happening in front of me.
The first is the importance of the issues, right?
Are the issues at stake, what we're fighting about,
how important are those things?
That's the first, the second is the importance of the relationship.
Are you arguing with or witnessing an argument among
people who are in a long term relationship with one another?
Or is this a passing moment?
That matters for how you respond, right?
The third issue is time.
How much time do you actually have to respond to the conflict?
And the fourth is power.
How much power do you have to really affect change,
with this problem or this conflict that you're trying to address?
Now, there are different ways to play with this interaction
between your conflict style, the other possible styles, and
the nature of this conflict with these considerations.
It's a lot to sort of hold in your mind.
So, you have now a couple of graphs that we can look at.
Different ways to chart out
the relationship between the styles and these four things to consider.
So, if you look at the first chart,
you'll see that we've laided out by high concern and low concern.
And this is trying to think about again how important is something,
how unimportant is it.
In two different arenas.
Up the top, if we think about that axis and
you can see it here as illustrating the issues themselves.
If the issues are really important, right?
Things are important here, then we are inclined to be more forceful about them.
We may well adopt a competitive style.
And in fact that style is helpful when the issues are that important, right?
We don't want to be passive or
accommodating about them if they are that important.
So, there is a relationship between the importance of the issues and
the style of competition or forcing, right?
My way, we also have up in a top of this graph when the issues are important
at tendency to went to work cooperatively or collaboratively on them, right?
So, at the top of this graph where the issues are high
two styles tend to predominate.
My way forcing style and our way collaboration.
Now, what's the difference between these two quadrants, right?
Well, that pertains to that X-axis, right?
Going horizontally, which is what's illustrated there?
If the relationship is of low concern Right?
It's a passing relationship.
It's not a long-term relationship.
Always hate to say that it's a relationship you don't care about or
person you don't care about.
That sounds harsh to me, but we do have interactions with
people that are deeply meaningful and we invest a lot of time and energy in.
And then we have other interactions that are more passing.
So, if the interactions are more passing,
their relationship is not as important as others.
Then, that's placing me on this with the forcing style,
right, or the assertion style, the advocating style.
So, here I'm going to insist on my way
because the issue is that important and I might well so run right over
you because the relationship with you is not of primary concern.
Now, you contrast that exactly with this notion of collaboration,right.
When we're in collaboration mode, we do that because the issue is important and
also because the people we're working with are important.
We treasure those relationships, we want to work well together.
And so, we're thinking about the outcome, right?
Addressing the conflict in a kind of problem sense and
also maintaining a relationship and when both of those are high,
it pushes us up into that top right quadrant of collaboration.
All right.
Let's drop down now in the bottom half of our graph for
issues or goals that are of low concern.
Right?
Now there are, this is where it's helpful to say to those turtles, or ostriches, or
gerbils that there is even a time and place for avoidance, right?
It's not that avoidances always bad, in fact there's a time and a place for
avoidance.
And some of it again has to do with the importance of the issues and
the nature of the relationship.
So, if the issues are of low importance.
It's really not a big deal to you, right?
That moves you down to the bottom part of our graph and
if the relationships involved are also not as deeply important, they're more passing.
It's not a deep relationship that I'm working to build.
Then, we move squarely into this quadrant of avoiding and that's appropriate.
The greatest problem I think with avoiding especially for
those, for whom that is a tendency is to stay in that path
at to the detriment of relationships or important issues, right?
People who tend to avoid conflict have got to get out of that quadrant of our graph,
when relationships really matter to them and when the issues are important.
So that's a crucial kind of discernment, especially when you think about
relationships with colleagues that go on over time, relationships in your family.
These are not spaces where you want to be consistently avoiding problems.
All right.
The relationships matters and
those even the smallest issues would grow in importance over time.
The lower right quadrant is where we find the accommodation style.
So here the issue is not of very importance to me, I could live without it,
it's not a big deal, you can have it, right, that sort of an attitude, it's
a low imports issue but the relationship is really important, right?
I mean a relationship with you is not a big deal to me.
I want you to be happy, right?
I can sacrifice this piece of time or
this goal of mine to support you in this endeavor, right?
So, here we have on the accommodation quadrant something that's of low
importance issue and the high relationship context.
Last point on this is that we have two issues that are not,
as well, captured in this chart.
So I need you to bring up the other chart that's going to look
at the relationship between time and power.
And here we have not a graph but I consider a list of considerations, right.
One of the differences in these styles is that some of them take a lot of time
to implement and some of them take not much time at all.
So, you need to think about In terms of time is that appropriate
to launch in to a long process of collaboration, right?
Sometimes the issues have a great urgency about them, someone's rent
is due, the landlord's being a jerk and it's not a time to sort of sit down and
say let's collaborate on this, let's work this out, right?
You are trying to advocate strongly for
somebodyand you need to move into more of a forcing posture.
If you have time, if the issues are important.
If the relationships are high, then collaboration is lovely, right.
But it takes time.
So, thinking about time and urgency of issues really matters.
Especially on something like collaboration which is so time intensive.
The middle ground that I'll just lift up on the time issue is compromise, right?
Compromise is really helpful style to keep in mind because of that
mathematical feature I mentioned.
If the nature of the issues is such that things can be divided,
like you can quantify people's needs in some way
then compromise is really helpful and pretty efficient.
So, time is a factor and you want to think about how that matches up
with the conflict itself and with the styles.
The last factor that we're looking at and that's captured on this.
List of considerations is power.
In our interactions, there are all kinds of power dynamics at play all the time,
and part of discerning your conflict style, and its match with a conflict,
right, is thinking about how much power you actually have, in that context
and what kind of power relations you might develop to help you move forward.
Think a collaboration style.
Or if it is an issue that is of low importance and
would be ultimately much more costly for
you then because of some weak power that you have.
And the issue is low, then that moves you
with kind of some integrity into the avoidance quadrant, right?
If you can't make a difference,
if it would cost you more you could realize, right?
If the issue is not that important, avoidance might be the right pasture.
So, think through the dynamics of power.
Not only in terms of what you have and don't have.
But, in terms of the dynamics of power running across the different parties.
And that affects the way you think about your style of conflict, and
with whom you might cooperate.
And it's incredibly important that the style that you use
matches the needs of the moment.
Right? The kind of conflict that's unfolding for
you that is very important when you are a party to a conflict and I think it's
even more important when you are trying to help other people address a conflict.
You need to be very clear about what that conflict requires of you and
how you can row into that role
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