Conflict in Relationships

Conflict In Relationships

Anthony Whitten

Grantham University

Conflict In Relationships

The way I deal with conflict in relationships with people at work is somewhat similar to how I handle conflict in non-work relationships. There are different conflict styles and each style is a way to meet one’s needs in a dispute but may also impact other people in different ways. The conflict styles include competing, accommodating, avoiding, compromising, and collaborating. Competing is a style of conflict where a person places his or her own needs over the needs of others. Accommodating is also known as smoothing and is the opposite of competing and a person places the needs of others above their own needs. Avoiding is just as it is stated where the common response is to try to allow negative perceptions to fester and not be confronted immediately. Compromising is an approach to conflict in which a person will give in order to gain. This style of conflict is generally not satisfying. The last style of conflict is collaborating and this is the pooling of individual needs and goals toward a common goal. This style of conflict is often referred to as “win-win problem solving” and it requires assertive communication and cooperation in order to achieve a better solution than what could have been achieved alone.

There are actually consequences of each conflict style. If a competing style is used, this may force others to accept the solution but may be accompanied by fear and resentment. With the accommodating style, the relationship may still proceed smoothly but with built up frustrations about needs being unmet. If a person uses the compromise style, the person may feel okay about the outcome but still harbor resentments in the future. In using collaboration, you may not get a better solution than you could have gotten by compromising but you could be more likely to feel better about chances for understanding better in the future. If the...