The Nature of Conflict

Chapter One
 Conflict
Fact of human life
Constructive conflict is an essential
set of interpersonal skills
 Conflict Defined
Conflict varies in intensity. It may
seen as a (1) mild difference, (2)
disagreement, (3) dispute, (4)
campaign, (5) litigation, or (6) fight
or war
Is an expressed struggle between at
least two interdependent parties who
perceive incompatible goals, scarce
resources, and interference from
others in achieving their goals
 Effective Conflict
Management
Is one aspect of interpersonal therapy, a
technique for dealing with depression
An interpersonal approach to conflict
management focuses on the
communicative exchanges that make up
the conflict episode
Intrapersonal Conflict internal strain
that creates a state of ambivalence,
conflicting internal dialogue, or lack of
resolution in ones thinking and feeling
accompanies interpersonal conflict
 Application
Think of an intrapersonal strain you may be
feeling right now, or felt for a while in the past.
What is the struggle you feel? Think of a
picture or metaphor to describe what you are
feeling. What words describe the internal
strain? Have you ever lived through an
intrapersonal conflict that did not ever become
expressed? If you answered yes to this
question, ask yourself if you might have
expressed the conflict ever so slightly in some
way. How might you express the internal
conflict nonverbally, or by actions you did not
take?
 Family of Origin
Our family of origin socializes us into
constructive and destructive ways of
handling conflict that carry over into
how romantic relationships are later
handled.
 Parental Conflict
Conflict between parents predicts the
well-being of the children
Conflict between parents tends to
both change the mood of household
interactions and shift the parents
attention to the negative behaviors
of their children
 Effects of Conflict
The number of conflicts experienced does
not seem to predict poor health and well-
being as much as whether the individuals
perceive the conflict to be resolvable
Common responses to abuse, including
verbal abuse of yelling and the silent
treatment, are hypervigilance; difficulty
relaxing; withdrawal at the first sign of
tension or conflict; floating away, or
dissociating; and not knowing or expressing
what one really wants
 Effects of Conflict, cont.
A childs general feeling of self-worth
are directly affected by interparental
conflict
 Learning about Conflict
Can assist in the process of
redrawing family boundaries, letting
you see which styles backfire, and
which ones work best
Learning effective skills for dealing
with your younger brother or sister is
far better than engaging in a family
dispute that will affect your children
and subsequent generations as well
 Conflicts at Work
Presents important challenges that
affect your career development
We carry interpersonal relationships
into our workplace; work life and
private life intertwine
 Importance of Skill
Development
The skills of conflict management are
not intuitively obvious
In conflict, we must learn to do what
comes unnaturally
How many of us intuitively know to
tell more and more of the truth when
a conflict is becoming destructive
rather than keeping quiet or yelling?
 Unresolved Conflict
In personal relationships, unresolved
conflict leads to drifting away from
one another and sometimes
jettisoning the relationship entirely
 Emotional Intelligence
Conflict management draws upon the
skills of emotional intelligence
The capacity for recognizing our own
feelings and those of others, for
motivating ourselves, and for
managing emotions well in ourselves
and in our relationships
 Application
Look on page 7, at the list of list of
emotional intelligence
Discuss with a small group what you
believe are your three key strengths
from the list. What are three areas that
you believe, or have been told, need
development? Name and describe
some people you know who model
certain areas of emotional intelligence.
What do you notice that they do?
 Do we have an option?
We do not have an option of staying
out of conflict unless we stay out of
relationships, families, work, and
community
 Approach to Conflict
Your approach to conflict is not an
inborn set of responses but rather a
developed repertoire of
communication skills that are
learned, refined, and practiced
 Destructive Conflict
We would like to do what we can to
prevent destructive, time-wasting,
relationship-harming conflict
Conflicts move from episode to episode
in a continually unfolding pattern of
interaction between the prime parties.
Destructive conflict rely on the same
old (unproductive) strategies
Trying harder often doesnt work
 Destructive Conflict, cont.
If all participants are dissatisfied with
the outcomes of a conflict and think
they have lost as a result, then the
conflict is classified as destructive
The four horsemen of the apocalypse
when these four behaviors ride in
to a relationship, the end is near
 The Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse
Criticizing
Defensiveness
Stonewalling
Contempt
 Criticizing
The first moments of a conflict
interaction the critical start up
can set the scene for a constructive
or destructive conflict
 Application
In your small group, practice changing
criticisms to complaints. Think of
destructive criticism, maybe you have used,
or that others have used against you, and
practice brainstorming about how to change
these critical comments to legitimate
complaints
Avoid blame
Use I statement
Describe instead of judging
Leave the door open for change
 A Constructive Complaint
Use an I statement
Describe the undesirable behavior
Use neutral, not judgmental,
language
Ask for a specific, behavioral change
 Defensiveness
When people use defensiveness
communication, they are communicating a
desire to protect themselves against pain,
fear, personal responsibility, or new
information
Some people seemingly cant help
adopting a devils advocate or contrary
point of view. For them conversation is a
battle of wits. The enjoy the game of
batting around ideas and are often very
good at the performance
 Supportive vs. Defensive
Climate
Evaluation vs. description
Control vs. problem solving
Strategy vs. spontaneity
Neutrality vs. empathy
Superiority vs. equality
Certainty vs. provisionalism
 Support neutralizes defensiveness
Support does not mean agreement
You can disagree and still be
supportive
 Stonewalling
Is more than avoidance of conflict
An attempt to signal withdrawal from
communication
Maintenance of a stiff neck and
frozen facial features
 Contempt
Often involves a nasty kind of
mockery, put-downs, hostile
corrections, and nonverbal
expressions of contempt
Functions as a powerful attack on the
personhood of the other
Full-blown continuing contempt
means that intervention of some kind
is needed, or the relationship is over
 Reciprocity of Negative
Emotion
Can lead to destructive conflict
Three kinds of reciprocity:
Low intensity emotion is respond to in kind (anger)
High intensity emotion is met in kind (fury)
Low intensity emotion is met with high intensity
emotion (hurt with rage)
Meeting negative emotion with more,
especially more destructive, negative emotion
leads to big problems in relationships
 Communicative Behavior
Easily identified with conflict, such as
when one part openly disagrees with
the other
An interpersonal conflict may be
operating at a more tacit level
The interpersonal struggle is
expressed by the avoidance
 Intrapersonal perceptions
The bedrock upon which conflicts are
built
But only when there are
communicative manifestations of
these perceptions will an
interpersonal conflict emerge.
 Communication is the central
element in all interpersonal conflict
Communication and conflict are
related in the following ways:
Communication behavior often creates
conflict
Communication behavior reflects
conflict
Communication is the vehicle for the
productive or destructive management
of conflict
 Interdependence
Conflict parties engage in an expressed
struggle and interfere with one another
because they are interdependent
A person who is not dependent upon
another that is, who has no special
interest in what the other does has no
conflict with that other person
In a healthy family, everyone can talk to
every other member. This builds
healthy interdependence
 Strategic Conflict
Conflict in which parties have choices
as opposed to conflict in which the
power is so disparate that there are
virtually no choices
No one party in a conflict can make a
decision that is totally separate
each decision affects the other
conflict participants
 Gridlocked Conflicts
The conflict makes you feel rejected
by your partner
You keep talking but make no
headway
You become entrenched and are
unwilling to budge
You feel more frustrated and hurt
after you talk than before
 Gridlocked Conflict, cont.
Your talk is devoid of humor,
amusement, or affection
You become more entrenched over
time so you become insulting during
your talks
More vilification makes you more
polarized, extreme, and less willing
to compromise
Eventually you disengage
emotionally or physically or both
 Perceived Incompatible
Goals
People usually engage in conflict
over goals that are important to
them
Opposing goals are a fact of life
If goals are reframed or put in a
different context, the parties can
agree
Trust is built through a discussion of
goals
 Conclusion
Conflict brings both danger and
opportunity
Changing our usual behavior,
learning to do what comes
unnaturally, requires an
examination of ones most deeply
held values and spiritual beliefs