Introduction
Choosing your battles entails calculated tactics, forethought, confidence, and solution-focused strategies to distinguish between dysfunctional and functional disputes, articulate Robbins and Judge (2015). In the context of organizational behavior, the ingenuity of disentangling adverse collisions and instituting effective conflicts is imperative especially for managers and leaders of team groups. This paper enumerates the appropriate conditions and stakes necessary for solving dysfunctional conflicts present within and beyond organizational settings.
How to Ensure Sufficient Discussion of Contentious Issues in a Work Group: How Managers Can Highlight Unspoken Conflicts Without Making Them Worse
The discourse of controversial subjects at the workplace more often than not induces agony and distress among the employees, engendering diminished productivity, analyzes Duggan (2015). It is, therefore, vital for the managerial board to decipher provocative elements in a practical and productive methodology to establish favorable settings and augment interpersonal relationships. Contentious topics constitute politics, work, international events, career progression, salary benefits, privacy, employee policies, gender differences, race, and sexual orientation. Managers should erect training modules that will equip the workforce with valuable expertise on how to pick and unravel battles, asserts Dontigney (2015). Duggan (2015) adds that practical debates within work groups will nurture team members to cherish differences, observe respect, harmony, healthy interactions, and contentment.
The task of formulating amicable discussions also necessitates integrating mechanisms that enable employees to divulge those contentious issues that threaten them emotionally, mentally, or physically. Such a platform will detail how the punitive department handles the communicated allegations by way of facilitating conflict resolution techniques and official evaluations (Duggan, 2015). Workgroup administrators should incorporate a culture that encourages diversity and trains employees on how to cope with traditions, comments, discrimination, and benefits. Employers should implement coherent communication forums with the workforce to convey impartial employee concerns and equity as regards job security, company procedures, surveillance, and technology usage.
How Can Negotiators Exploit Conflict Management Techniques to Their Advantage so That Variations in Interests Steer to Active, Integrative Solutions?
Dontigney (2015) claims that the latency of conflicts in forged acquaintances and associations is high considering the prevailing power imbalances, philosophical differences, divergent goals & interests, views, and opinions. Uncontrolled contentions precipitate trust disintegration, as detailed by Robbins and Judge (2015), and result in deflated work performance as well as business disintegrations. This unit discusses four key conflict management approaches that a negotiator can employ to diffuse interest differentiation, creating integrative solutions.
Accommodation
The accommodating approach calls for a negotiator to concede to the demands of the opponent with the intent of upholding peace or in the event that they perceive the issue at hand as negligible (Dontigney, 2015).
Avoidance
Duggan suggests an alternative tactic namely the avoidance ploy that works toward indefinite circumvention of conflicts (2015). The technique solicits deliberate ignorance or delay of a dispute by a negotiator, anticipating that it will unravel itself without additional clashes (Dontigney, 2015).
Collaboration
Collaboration, as Dontigney (2015) explains, encompasses diversity sustenance and functions to consolidate and merge the diverse ideas set forth by multiple participants. A negotiator can enlist this strategy in the quest for a middle ground that is up to everyone’s standards, remark Robbins and Judge (2015).
Compromise
In the case of settlement, Duggan argues that a negotiator can enlist the compromise approach to reassure the parties to a dispute to relinquish their distinctive opinions in place of a neutral solution (2015). The ‘compromise’ solution works best in situations where the conflicting accessories hold a comparable authority and status such as in business contract negotiations. Business owners, more often than not, engage in compromising techniques with other enterprises when each side suffers to lose a precious entity such as an indispensable service or patron (Dontigney, 2015).
Situation Where Silence Aggravated a Conflict Between Parties
Communication is an instrumental cornerstone in the context of any affiliation whatsoever, and its absence is silence, commonly denoted as stonewalling (Robbins & Judge, 2015). Stonewalling constitutes the insensitive silence and withdrawal from an ongoing conversation by an offended party. I have lived through various stonewalling circumstances where the impacted silence impaired any efforts to mend the tension. Three months ago, I got into a brawl with my roommate over household errands responsibility, quarreling on whose shift it was to clean the house. In the midst of the squabble, my roommate just walked out of the room and went to lock himself in his bedroom. Following his ruthless deeds, I was repulsed and resolved to keep silent too. The petty misunderstanding escalated to a melodramatic scene, triggering resentment and contempt to the extent that a mutual friend had to arbitrate the contention. The arbitration exercise entailed four chief healing steps to diffuse the enmity, centrally featuring open communication. The training enlisted us first to calm down, converse non-defensively, empathize and validate each other, and uphold open communication lines.
Conclusion
In conclusion, almost all interrelationships consist of lurking inherent conflicts all set to detonate with the exertion of poor communication skills and misunderstandings. All corrective efforts should strive to deflect hostilities and contentions between two persons or parties by way of enforcing clear and rational communication. Equally important are accommodation, compromise, avoidance, and collaboration techniques engaged to abate dysfunctional conflicts.
References
Dontigney, E. (2015). 5 conflict management strategies. Web.
Duggan, T. (2015). Controversial workplace issues. Web.
Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2015). Organizational behavior (16th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.