Conflict Management Styles

You're going to learn five conflict management styles. This will help you not just recognize these styles and others, but help you raise your own self-awareness about your approach. I have an hour-long class on conflict management in my Communication Coach Academy, and what I'm doing in this video is I'm taking one of the 10 lessons in that class and recreating it a bit for you here. You can take a look at all my classes and group coaching options at the Communication Coach Academy. I'll put a link to that in the description below this video. Decades ago, Dr. M.A. Rahim, a distinguished management professor, gave us a model that explains the five dominant conflict styles. We're going to look at all five styles using his diagram to evaluate the style that you use the most. To explain these styles, Dr. Rahim uses two axes to create a four-square diagram. On the horizontal, or x-axis, people display a concern for others in a range. The idea is, during a conflict, people will either demonstrate a low, medium, or high concern for the other person they're talking to. As they deal with a conflict, in other words, they care to some degree about how the other person is doing in that conversation. So my question for you is, how would you score yourself on a level of concern for other people and their outcomes during a conflict? Take a second to give yourself a score anywhere from 1 to 10. The score of 5, for example, will be right in the middle. On the vertical, or y-axis, we also have some concern for ourselves during a conflict. We might focus on our own interests and needs at a low, medium, or high level. So what about you? On a scale of 1 to 10, how concerned are you about advocating for your own interests in the middle of a conflict? When we cross these two axes, we can plot out a point on the chart where those two scores interact. That positions you in one of these four boxes, and that shows your self-reported conflict style. Plus, there's a fifth style right in the middle that we'll look at near the end. Now, it's true that our conflict styles can be shaped by the situation, but do your best to score yourself on the way you act most of the time. People usually lean toward one or two of these conflict management approaches as their dominant styles. For example, I have a high concern for myself, let's say an 8, and a moderate to high concern for others, let's say a 7. That puts me somewhere in the top right box. So let's look at each of these styles to find yours. The first style we'll look at is called avoiding. If we have a low concern for others and a low concern for ourselves during the conflict, we will typically use the avoiding style of conflict management. That means we're not trying to resolve the conflict one way or the other. We're not attempting to get our way or advocate for our own position. We're also not actively trying to help the other person get their interests met. We just want to avoid or suppress the conversation altogether. For example, let's say the members of your team at work are trying to sort out the delegation of who's going to be responsible for certain parts of a new project. Based upon past experience, you anticipate that your team may not agree who should do what jobs. Instead of having a difficult conversation, you may delay or avoid having the discussion altogether because you simply don't want to argue about it. That's too uncomfortable for you. You dodge the conversation entirely. Now all styles have pluses and minuses. The short-term advantage of avoiding is that you don't have to have the conflict because conflicts don't feel good. The downsides are that nobody gets what they want and nothing gets done even if those deadlines are still approaching. That's why we call this the lose-lose approach. You lose and I lose because nobody is getting anything they want in the long run because we aren't willing to have the conversation in the first place. That's the avoiding style. Second is the accommodating or obliging style. If you have a low concern for yourself but a high concern for others, we would accommodate during the actual conflict. This is where we essentially act in ways that make the other person happy. We give in or allow the other person to get what they want, but we don't want to pursue our own interests during the midst of a conflict. If we're working on delegating tasks for a new project in our team, for example, you might have an unspoken preference, but instead of speaking up or advocating for yourself, you might just gently put your thoughts out there, but if the other person is assertive, you'll likely just defer to them and let them get their way. That's why some people call this the lose-win approach. You'd lose and the other person would win because you are accommodating them. You're giving in. And like the avoiding style, the so-called advantage of this is that it helps diffuse a potential conflict quickly so you don't have to have the discomfort of that conversation. And of course, it helps the other person get what they want. On the downside, you won't get what you want and this will likely lead to your long-term dissatisfaction and possibly resentment. If you make a habit out of accommodating others, your point of view will get buried and other people may even not see how you're adding value to the team. The third is the dominating or competing style. If you have a high concern for yourself but a low concern for others, then you'd be seen as dominating. This is where you want to get your way even though there might be possible negative influences on other people. Some competitive people will only feel satisfied if the other person has lost out in some way. So we call this the win-lose approach because you want to win, but you also may want the other person to lose. If you have this style and you're working on a team to delegate tasks on a new project, you would likely push like crazy to get assigned the task that you desire and that you don't want anything on your plate that you don't want. So getting what you want will be your main concern and if you have a really low concern for others, you may have a clear win-lose philosophy. You might openly criticize other suggestions or even take some satisfaction that the other people on the team are getting forced into tasks they don't You might say to yourself, well good, I've had to do things I don't like, now it's their turn. If you have this style, you likely see conflict as a competition, a game, or a sport. Your victory over others is what really matters. Now on the upside, you may get what you want some of the time, but the downside is that this will typically result in a lot of hurt feelings with the people around you and you might come across as aggressive and combative and that can damage your long-term relationships. Not surprisingly, out of all the styles, people who have a competing or dominating conflict style are usually seen as the source of most of the organization's conflicts. So if you see yourself as really competitive, you may want to give that some careful thought and reflection. Fourth is the collaborating or integrating style. This is where you have a high concern for others and also a high concern for yourself. As I showed you earlier, this is where I end up when I plot myself on the diagram. Most people consider this the ideal conflict management style. Here you want to get what you want, but you also want other people to get what they want too. When we're collaborating, we might listen to all the different possible distributions of tasks and use a collaborative decision-making process to make sure everybody has input, field ownership, and is satisfied with the outcomes. You might even join forces with others on the team so that certain tasks are delegated or combined with yours so that everybody's satisfied and happy. This is a win-win approach. The advantages are that everybody gets most of what they want and it strengthens relationships. The downside is that it usually takes more time, patience, and you have to have collaboration skills. Overall, most people feel that the extra time is well worth it. And lastly, we have a style that's hidden in the middle. This style has a medium level of concern for ourselves and also for others. So on a one to ten scale, if you put yourself somewhere between four and six on each axis, that would put you right around the compromising style. If we're delegating tasks, that means I get some of what I want, you get some of what you want, but we also get some things we don't want. We get a mixture of desirable and undesirable tasks, and that's okay. We can live with that outcome. Aside from the when it's compared to some of the other styles. The advantage is that everybody gets a little bit of what they want. One disadvantage is that nobody gets exactly what they want, and that can feel somewhat dissatisfying when we compromise because we all fall short of that ideal. But one real world approach to compromising that's almost as satisfying as the collaborative style is where you basically take turns or pick your battles over the long run. You could say to yourself for example, well this time I got what I wanted, but next time I'll make room for other people to advocate and get what they want. Compromising like this can work because you might feel strongly about some issues but not other issues, but you don't care about those as much so you can be more flexible. It's rare that every team member feels an equal level of passion and commitment to the same issues. In other words, you can compromise by taking turns getting what you want. I teach college for example, and some of us on faculty want to teach the same classes sometimes. One way to compromise is you teach it this time, I'll teach it next time, and we all get turns getting what we want depending on the semester. You probably do some version of this in your personal life. I picked the movie last time, you pick the movie this time. It all works out in the long run because there's always another opportunity to see a movie. This is not a great way to do things for every issue, but it does have a sense of fairness and it can be a handy way to compromise some of the time. Now let's look at the entire chart again. Where would you plot your own conflict management style? As mentioned, some of this depends on the situation. So given that, what are your top two conflict management styles where you see yourself using those the most? And here's my advice, if you see yourself either as collaborative or compromising in your top two styles, that's a pretty good start. You can build on that. In contrast, if you only have some combination of avoiding, accommodating, or competing in your top two styles, then you have to consider the long-term downsides of those approaches. I'd love to know what you think.