Self Assessment Conflict

Conflict resolution style is the individual manner in which an individual approaches conflicts or disagreements. Williams Wilmot and Joyce Hocker theorized that people exhibit five primary "styles" of behavior when dealing with conflict that differ where levels of cooperativeness and assertiveness are concerned. These fives styles of conflict resolution are: competitive collaborative, compromising, avoidance, and accommodating of which after taking the the “Measuring Your Conflict Style” assessment. My conflict style is competitive. As I learned more about my style set, also have assessed and analyzed the other styles that I can possibly learn to use.

The competitive style person such as me is high on assertiveness and low on cooperativeness. This style maximizes individuals in reaching their own goals or getting issues resolved at the cost of demeaning the others goals as well as their feelings. I find this to be true in assessing a conflict between my husband and myself. We can never come to an agreement about his oldest son, my step-son and college. He has failed three semesters and I feel that maybe college is not for him, but on the other hand my husband said he will get an education and regardless of what I say or feel he has the upper hand. Switching conflicts I do us the competitive style when it comes to our finances, when I say no it’s no and nothing else needs to be discussed especially when there is no justification for extra spending. In evaluating these two issues with competitive style, even though the results may be quick and victorious through force and/or domination it also causes the other person’s input to be excluded. I am going to try to be a collaborator.

Collaborating style allows accomplishment of a set goal while maintaining while reaching a mutual agreed upon solution. The collaborators go into problem solving mode verse destroying or avoiding each other. For example, they can divide an assignment and assign sections for each...