Collaboration for the common interest

Conflict is not avoidable in current world, no meter business or not. How to manage conflicts has become a critical part of getting getting things done. This blog will look into this topic based on the author’s real experience and thinking of the learning and assignments project of the whole seamster. 

What is conflict

If you want to manage conflict, first you have to understand what is conflict in deed. As the explanation on an online business dictionary, conflict is “Friction or opposition resulting from actual or perceived differences or incompatibilities.” (BusinessDictinary.com) According to this identification, conflicts are generated from “difference”, however people are different, there’s no two persons who are exactly the same. So it seems there’s no way to solve conflicts thoroughly. And when there’re more difference between the stakeholders there will be more conflicts. Take our team as a reference, three team members have different backgrounds, we from different place and have different working experience, also we are in different major. So when we were discussing which case to choose for an assignment and how to describe it and enrich it, we all had different standing point and explained our own ideas in very different thinking ways. 

In this case, what should we do? Shall we just give up and turn around then run away? Or maybe we can try our best to do something, even what we do may only impact the facts a little. Apparently people choose to face this problem instead of running away. That is why “conflict management” came out. 

What is conflict management 

I think the person who focused on “conflict management” at the first place, must have a good wish that just like our team had which is “make things done in a good way”. With this purpose, we try to implement the technologies which helps to manage the conflict. But conflict management is a very complex process, which might takes years efforts in the real business world. Fortunately, our assignment was not that complex as the business situation, so we have the opportunity to apply the tech without consuming years.  

Conflict management, is the process of limiting the negative aspects of conflict while increasing the positive aspects of conflict (Ra him, 2002, p. 208). As said before conflict comes from difference, so it won’t disappear ever. The only thing we can put our efforts on is to increase the positive aspects. Diversity brings conflicts also brings enrichment of the view and information of the topic which might be the source of innovation. How to turn the conflicts into innovation direction is an important topic of conflict management. 

To be specific, the aim of conflict management is to enhance learning and group outcomes, including effectiveness or performance in organizational setting (Ra him, 2002, p. 208). Properly managed conflict can improve group outcomes (Alpert, Tjosvaldo, & Law, 2000; Bodtker & Jameson, 2001). 

Set up your strategy of conflict management 

Conflict is a process and with a clear purpose which is to improve the group outcomes. And the process starts from strategy setting. 

Dealing with conflict essentially is dealing with people, so establish an open and trusted environment is the most fundamental thing. This is the thing we did well, at beginning we discuss the common goal of our team, we already set up the openness. In our team, we are all looking at the same outcome-complete the assignment. And we have this common sense at the beginning which saved a lot of time and efforts to make it clear. However in a real business world, this part may take some time. For example, when two departments deal with some process issues, it might hard for them to look at the “group outcomes” such as company interest because it is two vague and far to them. But these efforts are required, even when people are seeking for “win-win solutions” the group outcomes are the final purpose. So instead of claim the “company’s interests”, it is better to make it more specific, which is case by case.

The second step is to “explain yourself clearly”. When a team formed, there is a stage which full of conflicts, called storming. At this period, team members start to get more interaction and the differences of values, needs and interests appear. At this stage, in our team the most important thing is to “explain yourself clearly”. Members are encouraged to present their ideas and suggestions, and when one person was explain his or her suggestion, others always listened carefully and ask questions to get more understanding, the questions are also helpful to build the thinking and  rethinking of the speaker. In this kind of discussion, the suggestions were improved and became more practical. The trusted environment give a very important support, otherwise when audiences handed up different opinions, the speaker might thought it was a challenge instead of a suggestion. And the listening skills are useful at this part as well as the feedback skills. These two skills help the information receivers decode the information correctly. 

The third step is choose the way of dealing conflicts. There is a research about conflict management style called  Thomas-Kilmann model which classified people’s conflict management behaviors into 5 dimensions: Accommodating, Collaborating, Avoiding, Competitive and Compromising. 

This model shows us there are 5 different options we can choose to manage a conflict. As most of the training and studies said, collaborating(win-win strategy) is the most reasonable and helpful way to solve a conflict. However, if we brake down a conflict situation into some different aspects, we will see that all of these options have its own value. That means at the different stages of a conflict situation, we need to choose different strategy. But the final purpose is settled: make a group outcome. 

It is very easy to be confused by win-win and group outcome. The subject of “win-win” is each party of a conflict, however the subject of “group outcome” is the group of all the parties of a conflict. These five strategies are all mean to get the “group outcome” . Although we had a common goal of how to get achievement, sometimes we still had disagreement. Thanks for the first two steps, we can manage these disagreements smoothly. Because we trust each other and we presented our own idea clearly, we can choose the most suitable strategy. For example, when we were discuss how to complete the second assignment, there were two members brought out 2 different case and we needed to decided which to analyze. Because we trust each other and the two owners explained the case clearly, we started the persuasion process. First we went through the requirements of the assignment again and did the comparison on the 2 cases. Then make the decision base on the facts. During the persuasion, showing the respect and appreciation is very good lubricant for relationship. After all one of the case would be abounded, by showing the respect and appreciation, we can make the owner whose case was not being used fell that his or her efforts were still recognized and valued. Then both of the two parties got the felling of recognition. That is one aspect of win-win and on the other way, when the project complete at a high quality level, both of the two parties will have a good score. This is another meaning of win-win. 

Conclusion

After the reflection on this class, there are some tips I have got:

1. Openness and trust are always the foundation of collaboration
2. Showing the respect to other’s efforts and work is a way of continuous improvement of the trust building. 
3. Don’t run into conclusion. Remember the ladder theory 
4. Good listening and feedback skills are helpful to the communication
5. The task is important but the people who are doing the task is more important.
6. And finally, we need to emphasize the common interest frequently to make the direction correct. 

Reference

1. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/conflict.html

2. Rahim, M. A. (2002) Toward a theory of managing organizational conflict. The International Journal of Conflict Management, 13, 206-235.

3. Alper, S., Tjosvold, D., & Law, K. S. (2000) Conflict management, efficacy, and performance in organizational teams. Personnel Psychology, 53, 625-642.

4. Bodtker, A. M., & Jameson, J. K. (2001) Emotion in conflict formation and its transformation: Application to organizational conflict management. The International Journal of Conflict Management, 3, 259-275.

5.  http://ftfl-lict.blogspot.hk/2014/07/effective-communication_2969.html (Figur 1)