Conflict Resolution and Mediation: How to Reduce Conflict Avoidance and Assertively Deal with Disputes

Workplace conflict and personal disputes are part of life. In fact, some of the most healthy growth opportunities and breakthroughs arise out of disagreements. The key is to how they are handled.

If you are never involved in disagreements, you may be conflict avoidant. Conflict avoidance means that disagreements make you nervous and you seek to avoid any ill feelings or negative conversations, often at the expense of getting your feelings heard and exercising your assertiveness skills.

Conflict resolution and mediation is almost always easier if there is a third party, objective mediator involved. A trained mediator helps everyone to keep their emotions down so they do not take over the process and productive outcomes can be achieved.

Mediation strategies depend whether you are part of the conflict or an external mediator. In many forms of workplace conflict and personal disputes, there are not outside mediators involved, at least not at first, so we’ll discuss how to manage conflict when you are part of it.

Here are some tips to get you going:

1)    Start with the facts. People often get engaged with their emotions and forget to do their research and start with the objective data. When you begin on an emotional tone, people respond to the emotion rather than the data, so begin with a clear focus on the facts.

 

2)    Look for common ground. Establishing common overarching goals has been shown to solve many forms of personal and professional disputes. Even if the common ground is very, very small at the beginning, start there.

 

3)    Express empathy. If the other party does not feel that you’re listening and that you understand where they’re coming from, they will resist your influence. Before seeking to make your points, seek to understand and express what you understand the other party’s position to be.

 

4)    Mirror emotion. This goes along with how you express empathy. If the other party is visibly upset, you don’t want to respond in an upbeat or overly calm tone because they will just get more irate. Instead, as you express empathy use similar emotional language and tone to what they are using.

 

5)    Give and take (but give first).  The law of reciprocity is one of the most powerful strategies of influence. In all disputes, you seek to influence the others to your way of thinking. According to the law of reciprocity, when you give others naturally want to give to, so start with giving. 

 

6)    Get feedback—on yourself. Ask someone outside of the conflict who will tell you the truth if you are being stubborn or ridiculous in your position. It may give you the incentive to negotiate if you’re standing firm is unreasonable.

 

As a general rule, you want to pick your battles. There are times when conflict avoidance is a good thing—so you don’t overreact to every small disagreement. When you decide that it is a good time to confront a situation, use these dispute resolution skills and you’ll find reduced defensiveness and increased collaboration from the other party.

Comments

[Deborah Stewart]

Larina great tips! Your first bullet point "focusing on the facts" is the single most important conflict management skill in my opinion. It deserves first place on your list. And in my experience it's where most people go wrong. When we start off with generalities and/or blanket "you" statements, eg: "You are always late. You are thoughtless, rude, and inconsiderate" - it instantly surfaces defensiveness in the other person. And a battle predictably ensues. Instead, every conflict conversation, where we want to request a behvaviour change, should start out with a statement about the facts. Describe factually what did the person said or did that is bothersome. Then describe the impact it had on you, followed by what you want the person to do differently next time. It's constructive. It's focused on the issue (vs the personality), and it increases the likelihood of resolution. Thanks Larina for writing about such an important life skill.

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