Recognising Conflict

00:01 Hi and welcome to Recognizing Conflicts.

00:03 When does a conflict need help? In today's lecture, you will gain some insight into how people resolve conflicts.

00:11 You will also be able to recognize when a conflict is spiraling out of control. You'll receive a few guidelines to help you determine if parties are in what we call a mutually hurting stalemate.

00:26 You will also receive a checklist where you can check off questions to help you decide when to seek help or offer help from an external support structure.

00:37 You will understand the four main approaches to conflict management.

00:43 In order to help us understand conflict a little better, I'd like to start off with a case which can be found in the download section of this course.

00:52 Mrs. Sunshine is the General Manager of the Regional Council on Tourism, which sets industry standards and promotes innovation approaches to promoting a healthy tourism sector.

01:05 It has 50 employees.

01:07 Recently, Mrs. Sunshine encountered two employees arguing intensely with each other. This is the third time this month that they have been seen arguing. Each time the situation has become a little louder and a little worse. It has had an impact on the whole office.

01:26 It seems that employee, a mrs.

01:28 Smith who works in customer outreach, feels that every time there is an interesting and profitable project coordinated by Ms.

01:35 Gonzalez, Mrs.

01:37 Smith is not on the team.

01:39 Despite these projects falling within her competences, Ms.

01:43 Gonzalez feels that Mrs.

01:44 Smith is not needed on those projects because she can be better used somewhere else and she can cover those parts of the project.

01:52 Both have asked Mrs.

01:54 Sunshine to intervene decisively to solve the problem.

01:59 What would you do? Well, let's look at this conflict just a little closer.

02:05 Ms Gonzalez is 30 years old manager.

02:10 She's new to the company.

02:11 She has an MBA.

02:12 She's career oriented, and she feels she works well in a multicultural team across the globe.

02:19 She also has no children and has a lot of time for working.

02:23 Mrs. Smith is 50 years old.

02:25 She has 18 years with the company.

02:27 She works part time because she has two teenagers and she values traditional forms of cooperation.

02:36 She seems to like to prevent projects that she seems to think are wasteful. Now, if we look at the conflict a little closer and what are the issues involved? Ms.

02:46 Gonzalez feels that Mrs.

02:48 Smith is never around for team meetings or in crisis moments.

02:52 She's not flexible.

02:54 She has old fashioned ideas, and she's been around so long she feels entitled.

03:01 She has no interest in new technology, and she fundamentally rejects all new ideas.

03:09 She fights anything that she does not understand.

03:13 Mrs. Smith thinks that Ms.

03:15 Gonzalez does not value basic tried methods.

03:19 She's always wasting time and this kind of new learning by doing approach that developed in recent years.

03:27 She does not value reputation and traditions.

03:31 She feels entitled because she's young and innovative and she's the future.

03:36 New technology is fine when needed, but it can create more problems, according to Mrs.

03:41 Smith. She does not value Mrs.

03:43 Smith has experiences and Mrs.

03:45 Smith does not see the need for unnecessary cost in the industry.

03:50 If cooler heads would prevail, we would see that both of them have an interest in efficiency. The image of the company industry, best practices, respect for each other, good service, successful completion of projects, good resource management and the acquisition of new projects.

04:08 But unfortunately they're involved in a series of conflict, escalation and cycles. Let's have a closer look at conflict.

04:18 So what exactly is a conflict? It's a disagreement or maybe an incompatibility of wishes, goals, interests, needs, preferences and values.

04:30 It's an interactive process involving an active or physical contest among parties.

04:36 And it actually is based on an interdependent relationship where neither side wishes to give in, but they need the other side's cooperation to achieve their goal.

04:47 It is often based on having different assumptions and perceptions about the issues involved, and these differences come up due to different experiences types of education, cultural values, and actually our own personal disposition.

05:04 Are we more trusting? Are we less trusting? How do we value different things in society? All of that help us to make our assumptions, perceptions of the world.

05:14 Now we have five broad categories of conflicts.

05:19 The first one is relationships, which are conflicts over how people treat us and how we interact with each other.

05:27 Issues of status, respect and recognition.

05:31 Number two, we have what we call data conflicts.

05:35 These focus on access to information, distribution of information, how we prioritize information, and what kind of information actually is relevant.

05:47 The third type of conflict, which is what we know the most, are interest conflicts.

05:52 These are struggles over unsatisfied needs and wishes.

05:56 We can have procedural interest, substantive interests and psychological interests.

06:02 Types of conflicts, for example, are resources or participation.

06:08 Number four are identity conflicts.

06:11 These are fundamental disagreements over our belief systems, religions, values, and they manifest themselves in issues like education, history, books and actual things in society that are going on.

06:26 And lastly, we have what are called structural conflicts.

06:30 They're based on power and resources.

06:33 For example, gender issues tend to be structural.

06:37 Inter-cultural issues tend to be structure, but also, for example, how you get a promotion or how you are invited into a particular network or mentoring system. In the case of Mrs.

06:49 Smith and Ms. Gonzalez, we see that quite possibly there are different types of conflicts at play.

06:56 One is their whole relationship, how they treat each other.

07:00 Another one could be a series of interests over how to structure project management and and in some cases, it could also be an identity crisis between older and younger colleagues.

07:15 Now, how do parties approach conflict? Well, we know that the resolution of interests takes place within a framework of rights.

07:25 And rights are constrained by the power dynamic among the parties.

07:31 In any given conflict, parties may seek to reconcile their underlying interests through a win win process or determine who is right in a more judicial process.

07:44 In worst case scenarios, people try to use their power to determine who is more powerful among the parties.

07:53 What do they consider when they're trying to decide which way to resolve the conflict? Well, they think about the cost of the conflict and they make an estimation how much power do I have? How much will I invest? What is my expected return? What will I get? In exchange for the compromises that I'm making.

08:17 It will also talk about the impact of the relationship and what kind will I have at the end of the process and what kind of risks do I have to take in order to win? Lastly, we'd like to talk about the satisfaction of outcomes.

08:35 If I have no return but I held firm, will I be happy or will I be happier if I had a fair hearing? Or will I be even happier if nothing came out of it? But at least now I know where I stand.

08:51 These are the kind of questions people ask when they are considering which approach to take. Now, another consideration that people have is how intense is the conflict.

09:04 Depending on the intensity and the time that a conflict has taken, people may have other ways of solving conflicts.

09:13 We know that conflicts have a natural bell curve flow. It starts off very minor, very slowly as a late in conflict, and it slowly starts to escalate depending on the types of incidents that appear into a real conflict emerging stage.

09:36 The incidents tend to create a feeling of shock, denial and outrage at the behavior of the other side during this conflict escalation phase.

09:47 Parties tend to disengage, not talk to each other and move towards finding outside support for their own positions. They may even seek to be a little bit obstructionist at the height of the conflict.

10:02 The parties may find themselves in what we call a mutually hurting stalemate. Neither side can move to gain an advantage.

10:12 It is not until one or both of the parties acknowledge that they are in a form of conflict spiral that keeps bringing them into the stalemate, that they don't start to take responsibility for the deescalation. Once they've taken responsibility for the escalation, they will slowly come together to build trust and begin to re-engage in a dispute settlement phase. At the very end, in an ideal situation, the problem will be solved through joint problem solving.

10:47 The problem is when the parties are in a stalemate.

10:51 A stalemate is a situation in which neither side can win, but neither side wants to back down or accept loss either.

11:00 It's a very difficult, very burdensome situation to be in.

11:04 Sometimes the stalemate could be very long and it could feel almost like an unending plateau in the middle of the desert where nothing is changing. And it seems that there is nothing to do. It might even have a spillover effect on other colleagues and members who cannot bear the situation.

11:26 Important to know is that the level of the conflict becomes intolerable for even the outsider, and the conflict begins to impact the overall effectivity of the team.

11:38 Remaining in a stalemate is not the best solution in conflict management.

11:44 What we want to do is to come and help the parties understand that they are in a form of conflict spiral that is not moving them forward towards conflict resolution.

11:56 A conflict spiral is a series of actions and reactions where the parties conflict intensifies and the relationship, the trust and the communication decrease.

12:09 Sometimes people, intentionally or unintentionally choose to escalate a conflict.

12:15 They might need attention.

12:17 It might be a call for help.

12:19 They can feel that maybe they can win the conflict quickly, or they just wish to get out of this unbearable situation.

12:27 Each round brings a series of new issues and the list begins to grow. And we fear the next encounter with the other side. Now, looking at this conflict spiral and looking at the stalemate and putting them together, we can identify three different types of stalemate. One is the imminent catastrophe as the conflict spiral begins to get more intense.

12:54 The second one is the feeling of being trapped and feeling that every time you lose something in a conflict, it's another reason to stay firmly in the conflict.

13:08 There's actually a much more positive way to look at the conflict spiral.

13:12 And it is that people might be willing to leave the conflict spiral if they find some kind of motivation or incentive that is more interesting than remaining in that conflict spiral.

13:25 Whatever we want to do is we want to break the conflict spiral by getting them to step out of the conflict spiral.

13:33 And we want them to realize that the spiral, while escalating and verbal rhetorics, is actually keeping them in a stalemate.

13:44 It's important that while we're working with people in conflicts and conflict spirals, that we look at the timing of our intervention.

13:52 Is it right or wrong to try to intervene? And what are some of the basic questions that we ask ourselves? Now, at this point, you might be wondering, how do I know that I can help? Well, here is a checklist of six questions that you can ask yourselves to prepare you for that question. Number one, have the parties exhausted their own possibilities to solve the conflict on their own? Number two, to the parties want help.

14:21 Number three, are you the right person to help? Number four, are you an accepted third party? And number five, are you doing more harm by interfering? And lastly, what help do they actually need? By asking yourself these questions independent from your legal, professional relationship to the parties, you might come up with some very interesting answers. Once you've decided that you are able to help parties in conflicts, you have to think a little bit about the type of approaches to resolving that conflict.

15:00 There are four general approaches that someone can take.

15:04 One is called conflict prevention.

15:07 These are actions taken to avoid or prevent the emergent or escalation of potentially harmful conflicts to an organization.

15:17 Number two, we have what's called conflict management.

15:21 The goal is to help parties manage but not necessarily resolve their differences immediately.

15:27 Maybe there are some reasons that prevent the organization from going deeper into this conflict. The goal here is merely a form of coexistence amongst colleagues.

15:39 We hope that the resolution will come at a later stage.

15:43 Which brings me to our third approach.

15:46 Generally called conflict resolution.

15:49 The goal is to address the substantive, procedural and psychological interests through a form of, for example, mediation.

15:59 And lastly, we want to look at the long term when there has been conflict.

16:03 How do we transform that conflict? By addressing the root causes that make structural changes to that interaction. The reality is that most of us are somewhere in between these four approaches and we don't really know the differences. But we're going to have a look at that in another lecture.

16:24 What we need to know right now is that between prevention, management and resolution, negotiation skills will come into play between resolution, transformation and prevention.

16:37 We're going to have much softer, facilitative mediator approaches, and this will be the topic of another lecture.

16:45 Lastly, on the issues of types of approaches needed, we want to ask ourselves a series of questions. What is the stage of the conflict? What do the parties want? How is the relationship? How should the relationship be afterwards? And what is actually realistic at that moment? In the case of Mrs.

17:05 Smith and Ms. Gonzalez, we see that the conflict is beginning to escalate into a conflict spiral.

17:11 The parties have asked for help.

17:14 The relationship is deteriorating, but they know they have to work together and they'd like to focus on their work.

17:23 Therefore, there is an opportunity for Mrs.

17:26 Sunshine to either bring in some outside help or actually if she has some training in third party intervention, she might be able to deploy those.

17:37 I hope that through this lecture you have been able to gain some insight into how people resolve the conflicts.

17:44 When is a conflict out of control? When is a conflict in a mutually hurting stalemate? What are some questions to ask ourselves to figure out whether we need external support or not, and what type of approaches are out there to help us solve a conflict.

18:02 Thank you very much and good luck with your next conflict.