Conflict Management Role-play videos with MFM/MMM/MIM-I OB Batch 2017-20 under the guidance of Prof. (Mrs.) Merlyn Michael D'souza

MANAGING CONFLICT

Many managers head in the opposite direction when they encounter conflict in the workplace. That's a mistake, as there are both healthy and unhealthy forms of conflict and both merit your attention. 

Healthy conflict focuses on tasks or work-related activities and can be leveraged and facilitated for gain. Unhealthy conflict--the type that gets personal, must be extinguished immediately or it jeopardizes adversely impacting the work environment.

Understanding the Five Styles of Conflict Management: 

The research work of Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann in the 1970’s led to the identification of five styles of conflict and the development of a widely used self-assessment called the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, or TKI.

Their work suggested that we all have a primary, preferred way to deal with conflict, which serves us well is some situations, but not all. The key to success for us is to develop a flexible toolkit of approaches and use the one that best fits the situation.

The more you can get comfortable with each way of dealing with conflict, the more effective you will be.

Here’s a summary of the five styles:

Collaborating

With the collaborating approach, you work with the person(s) to develop a win-win solution. In this approach, the focus in on finding a win-win solution that meets everyone’s needs.

Competing

With a competitive approach, the person in conflict takes a firm stand. They compete with the other person for power, and they typically win (unless they’re up against someone else who is competing). This style is often seen as aggressive, and can often be the cause of other people in the conflict feeling taken advantage of.

Compromising

With the compromising approach, each person in the conflict gives up something that contributes towards the conflict resolution.

Accommodating

The accommodating style is one of the most passive conflict resolution styles.

With this style, one of the individuals gives up what they want so that the other person can have what they want. In general, this style is not very effective, but it is appropriate in certain scenarios.

Avoiding

The last approach is to avoid the conflict entirely. People who use this style tend to accept decisions without question, avoid confrontation, and delegate difficult decisions and tasks. Avoiding is another passive approach that is typically not effective, but it does have its uses.

  

 Here are three role-plays used to effectively manage conflict as shown below:

1. Video 1 : Handling student complaints about having College library to remain open on Sundays 

2. Video 2 : Handling customer complaints of mobile network not working properly.

3. Video 3 : Handling customer complaint of loan department constantly calling him up to recover dues even though he has paid the loan with interest.

The Bottom Line

There is not one “right” or “wrong” style – each has its time and place. Learn when and how to use all five, and you’ll be much more effective than always relying on what your preferred style is. As a manager, learn to suggest different approaches based on these five styles when striving to defuse conflict on your team. 

The students filled the TKI and found out which mode of conflict handling style they followed. Now they are better equipped to handling workplace conflict.