My Conflict Management Strategy
According to "How You Act in Conflicts" sheet, my most common conflict strategy is smoothing. And I partly agree to this result.
In most case, I try to maintain the relationship so I sometimes give up my idea or I do not insist my opinion strongly. I use this strategy when I have conflict against my team members or my classmates, so called "good friends." This is because I believe that keeping good relationship is one of the most important things for leading or participating in an organization, and insisting just my opinion is sometimes break relation and trust. Somebody wants to say that by discussing they can get a good relationship with members. But I think that sometimes it is needed to compromise and give up personal view for a good of all. Of course I know that to become "the Owl" is important. It is ideal to ensure I and the other person "fully achieve our goals" by negotiation to resolve conflicts, even though it is very difficult.
On the other hand, when I talk with people who is not familiar with me or who does not so connect to me such as a staff of ICU Student Group, I will be "the shark," but the shark with ear which listen to the other person's opinion. For example, when I was a freshman, I visited Student Group to demand an explanation about the reason I could not go to ICU by motorbike. I tried to be gentle but their explanation was not the explanation so my way of speaking became stronger and stronger. I ended up giving up my demand, but this time I was so acrid. In that case, I did not care about the breaking of our relationship.
What I want to say is, people often choose each strategy according to with whom they discuss. If the opponents are good friends or a member of family, the most important thing for me is firstly listen to their opinion then explain my opinion, but explain not so strongly, I seek to the middle point of my goal if the situation is not good. But if the opponents are not-friendly people, I emphasize to get my goal even if there are possibilities that I break the relationship with them.
The relationship between people is the most difficult thing I have ever encountered. How do you think??
Yasu
Hi Yasu,
返信削除Thanks for your nice, long post. You raise a very good point about how the nature of the relationship plays such an important role. In the book I took that image from of the different types of strategies, there was an additional point about what was called the "durability" of the relationship, and the role it might play in which strategy one might use. The basic idea, as I recall, is that if you haven't really a relationship and don't desire one, then you can be more aggressive, more shark-like, as you mentioned having been. But if you do desire the relationship and need it to be good over a long period of time, then it is important to be more careful and to focus more on maintaining the relationship, such as with the members of the baseball club.
Ken