3 Steps To Managing Conflict

Whenever 2 or 3 are gathered, there will be conflict.  It's inevitable.  Sometime, somewhere you are going to run into conflict.  It's part of life.

It's NOT a matter of conflict RESOLUTION.  That assumes once the conflict is dealt with, it will never return.  It IS a matter of conflict MANAGEMENT.  Managing the conflict is a more appropriate way to view the ongoing nature of interpersonal interaction.

Here are 3 steps you can incorporate into your own personal management of conflict:

1. Understand You.  Understand what it is that makes you tick.  What angers you?  What is your worldview?  What are the triggers to your anger?  When are you most vulnerable to contributing to negative handling of conflict?
2. Understand Them.  Understand what it is that makes them tick.  What angers them?  What is their worldview?  What are the triggers to their anger?  When are they most vulnerable to contributing to negative handling of conflict?
3. Adjust Accordingly.  When you understand more fully who you are and who the other person is, you can make adjustments to your style of personality.  For example, if you are a hard driving personality and you work with an easy-going "people person" you run the risk of conflict because they don't seem to care about results.  To properly manage this potential conflict, it's helpful to adopt a more easy-going approach to match who they are.  This doesn't mean you have to cease being yourself or stop caring about results.  But it helps manage conflict if you can genuinely honor who the other person is and how they view the world.  At the very least, it's a step in the right direction to managing conflict.  Ideally, if they are trying to honor how YOU see the world as well, the interaction can be very productive.

Understanding yourself and others can be done by incorporating various personality profiles.  DiSC and Leading From Your Strengths are common tests to help in this regard.  If you are interested in more information regarding this, contact me.

Managing conflict is a very real part of Serving Strong!