For effective teamwork, it is very important to always remember that any the staff of any office, as well as any team, even the most united one, is, in fact, the sum of the personalities. So, for the sum of the personalities, it is totally okay to have conflicts. And the most important point is to find an effective way to resolve them. The specialists know 5 ways to resolve a conflict that are most common and are applied to all the conflict situations in large, medium, and small groups.
How To Manage Conflict Among your colleagues
Those 5 approaches on how to manage conflict were explored empirically in the 1970s by Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann. The effective manager or psychologist should know them and choose the best how to managing conflict-approach according to the situation.
These five common approaches used to deal with conflict are:
- Collaboration
- Competition
- Compromise
- Accommodation
- Avoidance
Let’s talk about them a bit more detailed.
Competing Conflict Management Style
Long story short, competing (power-forcing) style of conflict management in groups it is a story not about the diplomacy, but about the dominance. In this approach the most stubborn wins. Or, in many cases, the most powerful counterpart wins.
The style is appropriate for urgent and tough decisions. But even there it will go only when the person making a disputable decision is ready to take full responsibility for it.
The competition style is totally inappropriate when it comes to sensitive issues and is highly debatable in non-urgent situations.
Compromising style
The compromising approach is all about mutual concessions and give-ins. All the sides of the conflict should define the small goals they want to achieve, then point out the less important ones and decide what points they can give in for the sake of the most effective or less-harmful result.
Compromise is one of the most effective ways to resolve the conflict when it comes to equal counterparts. And when the time-frames for the decision making exist, but they are not very tight.
If one of the sides holds the power, or they’re too many nuances, the odds you can compromise on the decision are not high.
Accommodating Conflict Management Style
As for the accommodating style, it is another way of concessions. But here the only one side that gives the position in. There is only one situation, accommodating would be effective for – if the issue is crucial for one of the sides and almost has no importance for another.
Avoiding style
The most passive one. The person-in-charge just ignores the conflict or tries to hand the decision for someone.
The style is effective with minor conflicts of no importance that can disappear without any additional steps to the solution.
Collaboration Style
Collaboration is the most effective of five conflict management styles, though it can take quite a period to find a solution. In this approach, the whole team works together to reach the best possible result and to make a win-win situation out of the problem.
This conflict management style fits perfectly when many people are involved, or whet the stakes are high and a solution of the conflict matters a lot for the company.
Now you know what the methods for managing conflict are and can learn and practice how to use them in the right times and places.