10-1
Chapter 10
Managing Conflict
CHAPTER OUTCOMES
In this chapter, students will learn:
• What conflict is and how it unfolds as a process
• The role power plays in conflict
• Which approaches to managing conflict are least—and most—competent
CHAPTER OUTLINE
DEFINING CONFLICT
How do the conflicts in your life happen? Are they “out of nowhere” blow-ups? Do they contain heated
language? Do you avoid them at all costs? No matter the type, all conflicts are a process involving people
who perceive incompatible goals or actions. Knowing what conflicts are empowers you to recognize them
when they exist and manage them more constructively.
CONFLICT BEGINS WITH PERCEPTION
• Conflict begins when people perceive incompatible goals or actions. The perceptual errors and biases
10-2
o During conflicts, you’re more likely to place blame on others than on yourself, perceive others as
uncooperative and yourself as helpful, and believe you’re acting reasonably and others are
behaving irrationally.
CONFLICT INVOLVES CLASHES BETWEEN GOALS OR ACTIONS
• Clashes between people’s goals or actions are at the heart of conflict, ranging from disagreements
between group members to arguments between romantic partners regarding relationship desires.
CONFLICT IS A PROCESS
• Conflicts often seem like they’re single, isolated events, such as a comment or text message, but
conflicts are never just one event. They are a communication process that unfolds over time.
o Most conflicts proceed through several stages, each involving decisions and actions that affect
what direction the conflict will take and what consequences it will ultimately have for the
individuals involved.
SELECTING
AN
APPROACH
TO
CONFLICT
When conflict erupts, you can deal with it in several ways. You may avoid the issue, accommodate the
wishes of others, compete to get what you want, or collaborate to solve the problem. All of these choices
have consequences, and the approach you take will affect whether the conflict endures, escalates, or is
resolved.
10-3
• Four common approaches to conflict are avoidance, accommodation, competition, and collaboration.
AVOIDANCE
• Avoidance occurs when you approach conflict by not managing it. You ignore or avoid talking about
• This seems easier and safer than directly engaging in disputes with others but it actually poses
substantial risks, which include:
o Cumulative annoyance occurs when you routinely avoid conflicts and create repressed
resentment as your mental list of complaints builds up. Eventually, cumulative annoyance
overwhelms your ability to suppress it, and you explode.
• Avoidance can sometimes be a wise choice for managing conflict in situations where emotions run
high and you risk saying things that will permanently hurt the relationship if you continue the
interaction.
o It may be best to leave the room, hang up, or hold off on responding to texts or emails until your
ACCOMMODATION
• Accommodation manages conflict by abandoning your own goals or actions and giving in to others’
10-4
o
Accommodating close relational partners is a hallmark of healthy relationships, and putting their
needs before your own, at least on occasion, shows them that you love them and you’re willing to
make sacrifices to ensure their happiness.
• Power is the ability to influence or control important resources, people, and events. Powerful people
can choose whether they wish to accommodate others or not, without fear of reprisal. People without
power must accommodate those with power, or suffer harmful consequences. Five different types of
power include:
o
Resource power, derived from material things such as money, property, and food. Most bosses
have resource power over employees since they control workers’ employment and compensation.
o
Personal power, based on desirable personal characteristics such as beauty, intelligence,
charisma, communication skills, or sense of humor. “Social butterflies” or other charming people
have power when their personalities or other social skills attract others to them.
COMPETITION
• Competition involves confronting others and pursuing your own goals to the exclusion of theirs and
has two defining characteristics: open and clear discussion of the conflict and pursuit of one’s own
10-5
goals without regard for others’. Whether you’ll choose competition depends on your power in the
situation and relationship. If you have power, you’ll be more likely to use competition than if you
don’t.
• Escalation is a dramatic rise in emotional intensity and unproductive communication; it can develop
if the competitive approach is used. If you and the others involved in the conflict refuse to back down
from the dispute, the conflict becomes “a test of wills,” virtually guaranteeing that tensions will
escalate.
o Technology can inadvertently foster escalation because lack of feedback means you can’t see or
hear your communication partners and their reactions. This creates an empathy deficit that puts
you at risk for incompetent communication.
COLLABORATION
• Collaboration, the most constructive approach for conflict management, involves treating conflict as
a mutual problem-solving challenge and often results in compromise, where everyone involved
modifies their individual goals to come up with a solution to the conflict.
o
You’re most likely to use collaboration when you respect the other people involved and are
concerned about their desires as well as your own.
10-6
o It increases people’s relationship satisfaction, and individuals who regularly use collaborative
o To manage conflict through collaboration, try these four suggestions:
a. Attack problems, not people. Keep your language courteous, respectful, and positive—
avoiding personal attacks. Treat the source of the conflict as separate from the people who are
involved, using “I” and “we” language to emphasize this and avoiding “you” language that
can place blame on others.
d. Critically evaluate your solution. Carefully consider this question: Is it equally fair for
everyone involved? Because collaboration focuses on respectful and ethical communication,
and on satisfying everyone’s interests rather than just one person’s, it tends to get more
positive outcomes than the other approaches to conflict.
CONFLICT
ENDINGS
When you’re in the middle of a conflict, it seems to last forever. But conflicts do end. The approach you
choose for dealing with conflict affects not only your future communication with those involved but also
the type of ending that will occur.
• Most conflicts reach some sort of conclusion, and the approach used to manage a conflict directly
10-7
SEPARATION
• Separation occurs when one or more of the people involved terminate communication; it can take
many forms.
o
It can be physical, technological, or communicative.
o It ends conflict encounters and may make you feel better; it doesn’t solve them but places them
temporarily on hold.
DOMINATION
• Domination is when one person or group gets others to abandon their own goals, and instead do what
the person or group wants them to do.
o These often are called win-lose solutions because the people who get their way “win,” while the
others who accommodate them “lose.”
COMPROMISE
• Conflicts end in compromise when the parties involved change their goals and actions to make them
compatible.
o
This typically results from the collaborative approach and is most effective in situations where
people have relatively equal power and the clashing goals aren’t especially important.
10-8
o If everyone considers their goals important, compromise tends to foster resentment and regret.
INTEGRATIVE AGREEMENTS
• Integrative agreements are forged when people generate creative solutions that enable all sides to
keep and reach their original goals.
• Such agreements commonly are called win-win solutions, and people can arrive at them only
through collaborative approaches.
STRUCTURAL IMPROVEMENTS
• Structural improvements occur when both parties change their relationship rules to prevent further
disputes, and the conflict itself becomes a vehicle for reshaping relationships in positive ways—
BARRIERS
TO
CONSTRUCTIVE
CONFLICT
It’s not easy to resolve conflicts. There are powerful barriers that get in the way—and they are often ones
you create: blaming others but not yourself, using words as weapons, and failing to recognize cultural
differences. Overcoming such challenges will help you improve your conflict-management skills.
• Three of the toughest barriers are attributional errors, destructive messages, and cultural differences.
ATTRIBUTIONAL ERRORS
10-9
perceive these things subjectively, in ways that paint yourself in a positive light and make others look
bad.
o
It is easy to blame other people for causing conflict and to consider ourselves faultless; this one-
sided blaming is an attributional error, because most conflicts are not caused by only one person.
o
To improve your conflict-management skills, practice analyzing the attributions you’re making
during disputes and adjusting them to compensate for any potential errors. Get into the habit of
asking yourself three questions:
a. Is my partner really being uncooperative, or am I just imagining it?
DESTRUCTIVE MESSAGES
• Destructive messages are when you perceive others as uncooperative and you blame them for
conflicts; you may say things that make others feel bad, escalate conflicts further, and damage the
relationship. Three common types of destructive messages that occur during conflict are as follows:
o Sniping involves communicating in a negative way and then leaving the encounter. When you
snipe, you “take a shot” at others, then immediately “hide,” so the others can’t “shoot back.”
10-10
possibility before the conflict. People can “walk it back” after issuing sudden-death statements,
but this is hard to do without looking foolish and impulsive, often causing them to lose face or
experience embarrassment.
CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
• Cultural differences also affect conflict and must be competently managed. People from
individualistic and collectivistic cultures perceive and approach conflicts in radically different ways.
o
People raised in collectivistic cultures often view direct discussion of the causes behind a conflict
as personal attacks and see such discussion as disruptive to the “harmony” of encounters; they
tend to approach conflict through avoidance or accommodation.
o
These two differences mean that when individualists suggest or demand specific solutions, the
collectivists would likely give in to those solutions just to restore harmony; the individualists
might then conclude that the conflict has been “resolved,” even though it hasn’t.
10-11
• Use indirect verbal messages more than you usually do. For example, sprinkle your
comments with “maybe” and “possibly,” and avoid blunt responses such as an outright “no.”
o If you’re a collectivist in contention with someone from an individualistic culture, the following
three tips may help:
• Manage conflicts when they arise, even if you’d much rather avoid them.
• Use an assertive style and be more direct than you usually are. For example, use “I” messages
and directly state your opinions and feelings.
CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Your textbook states that conflict begins with perception. In your own words, what does this
mean to you? How could understanding this one concept help you manage potential conflicts?
Give an example to support your argument.
• Give students an opportunity to discuss their examples in class, and help walk them through this
concept. You can begin the discussion with a simple example, such as how easy it is to provide
2. Which of the four common approaches to conflict mentioned in your textbook do you feel you
use the most? Why? Which approach do you use the least? Why? Do you agree with the book
that there are times when all four are useful? Why or why not?
10-12
• Discuss with students how, although we may feel more comfortable with one approach, it is
3. Give an example of a time when someone you were in conflict with used his or her power over
you to influence the outcome of the conflict. What type of power did they use? How did this
make you feel? Did you feel this was an effective use of their power? Did the conflict end in
collaboration? How would you have suggested the conflict could have been handled better?
• Give students an opportunity to discuss their ideas on the use of power in conflict resolution.
4. What is the difference between integrative agreements and compromise? Give an example of a
conflict, and provide an example of how both could be used to end the same conflict. Which
method of resolving the conflict do you prefer? Why?
• Have students discuss their examples and which solution they prefer for its resolution. Help
students visualize how some situations work better with compromise and others with integrative
5. What is a sudden-death statement? Give two examples of something said during conflict that
would be considered a sudden-death statement.
• Ask students to discuss how they feel when others use a sudden-death statement toward them. In
these cases, are they usually willing to give them a second chance, or is the relationship over?
10-13
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Happily Ever After
Goal: To help students understand that conflict is a natural process and to reinforce teamwork skills.
Time: 60 minutes
1. Divide the class into three or four groups.
3. Once the groups have created their lists, ask them to select one movie and rewrite the ending with
a more realistic ending that demonstrates one of the four common approaches to conflict
mentioned in the text.
4. Have each group act out their scene.
2. Conflict Brainstorming
Goal: To help students understand their own views of conflict and expose them to the positive or
constructive side of conflict.
Time: 20 minutes
1. Ask students to spend a few minutes brainstorming all of the words they associate with conflict.
2. On a board or flip chart, draw two columns. Label one “positive” and the other one “negative.”
10-14
5. Discuss with the class the impact that having an overly negative opinion of conflict has on our
relationships.
3. Lottery Winners Group Activity
Goal: To explore the dynamics of ending conflict.
Time: 60 minutes
1. Divide the class into three groups.
2. Assign each group the following as their primary goal:
a. Group 1: To be charitable and make the world a better place.
3. Explain to the class that they have just been informed that they have won $50,000.00 in a lottery.
Unfortunately, they must spend the entire amount within one month. Each group must discuss and
agree on how they will spend the money based on their assigned goals.
4. Once the groups have finished, bring them back together. Explain that they must now agree as a
5. Have the class determine which approach to ending conflict they selected. How satisfied were
they with their decisions?
4. Building Blocks or Stumbling Blocks?
Goal: To help students work through conflict and understand how perception influences conflict.
Time: 30 minutes
1. This exercise requires a large set of Lego bricks or similar building blocks. You will need at least
three different colors of blocks in the set. Split the blocks into two groups.
10-15
b. Your agenda is to make sure there are four white bricks touching horizontally.
e. Your agenda is to make sure there is a white brick in every row.
f. Your agenda is to make sure there is a black brick in every row.
g. Your agenda is to make sure there are five black bricks touching horizontally.
h. Your agenda is to make sure there are no white bricks on the end.
3. Divide the class into two groups and give them the building blocks.
4. Give each member of each group one of the agenda cards. If the class is larger, you can pair up
two or three students to work together. Explain that they are not to share their agenda with the
other members of their group.
7. Once the exercise is complete, have the groups discuss the difficulties they encountered. Did they
accomplish the goal of building a wall? Discuss how these hidden agendas didn’t leave room for
compromise, integrated agreement, or structural improvements, and success was unlikely. Are
there issues in our own lives that have become stumbling blocks instead of building blocks?
10-16
MEDIA RESOURCES
1. Lauren Mackler at Harvard Business School—Managing Conflict
This five-minute video by executive coach and psychotherapist Lauren Mackler is a concise
2. The Art of Conflict Management: Achieving Solutions for Life, Work, and Beyond: Why Conflict
Management Matters
This 30-minute lecture is an audio file by Dr. Michael Dues, senior lecturer in communication at the
3. Power—How Much We Need and How to Use It
This 30-minute lecture is an audio file by Dr. Michael Dues, senior lecturer in communication at the
4.
Conflict Styles Assessment
Students can take this 30-question conflict style assessment created by the U.S. Institute of Peace to
assess how they approach conflict. It can be helpful in assessing the best ways to approach conflict
10-17
5. The Walk from “No” to “Yes”
This 19-minute TED Talk by William Ury, mediator and author of Getting to Yes, discusses how to
find agreement in the midst of conflict. He examines the differences and importance of understanding