Conflict Resolution: Can There Be Win-Win?

Conflict Resolution, Can there be a win-win?

As in some of the great books and movies of our time, conflict is at the forefront of every story. Whether it would be a fictitious story or a true to life event, everything revolves around conflict and how it is resolved. Without conflict, stories would be boring and no one would care, but in life, conflicts exist all around us, personally and professionally. Every conflict involves at the least two people, or many people from two different vantage points and having different opinions about the particular topic at large. The important thing to remember is that conflict between people or groups is important and in the end, with conflict resolution, will ultimately better both sides.

Conflict can arise in many different forms when working with multiple people in a learning team. To better help understand what conflict resolution is and how we can understand what types of conflict resolution there are we will use and example of a conflict in a group, and then show how this conflict may be resolved. The conflict that we will be primarily basing our study on is the following; each team will generally have a team leader for each project. The team leader, for our purpose, is in charge of collecting the assigned research from the other students and then will be combining the information from the other members of the team and putting it together in a final research paper. However, in this particular case, the team leader has decided that one student's research is not justified and doesn't flow with the rest of the research the group will present. This particular student obviously has put much work into his portion of the research and feels the opposite and neither person at this point is happy and we now have a conflict. In this essay we may vere from this main conflict, but in turn, everything will relate into how we will accomplish our goal of providing a "win-win" type of conflict resolution.

Now that we have conflict, we must find a resolution that will please both sides. Does conflict have to please both sides, such as a win-win style of resolution, or will conflict always result in a win-lose style of resolution? The trick to moving from conflicts resulting in "win-lose" solutions to conflicts resulting in "win-win" solutions is refraining the conflict and/or changing the assumptions underlying the resolutions of the conflicts. (Gitlow, Mcnary 2006) According to the Thomas-Kilman Conflict Mode Instrument there are five ways that conflict can be dealt with, and they are as follows: Accommodation, Avoidance, Competition, Compromise, and Collaboration. In the following paragraphs we will indentify if by using any of the types of conflict resolution are we are able to come to a "win-win" style of conflict resolution.

In the first style, accommodation, we find one member, either the team leader or the student, just giving in and accepting the idea of the other. This person has given into the team leader and has accepted that he/she is wrong. But how is this person going to feel on the next assignment regarding the group? Will he or she work as hard the next time, or will they always feel as if their opinion and work is not valued? The singular conflict may be resolved but personal feelings may take this conflict above and beyond the group and the assignment, which will only hurt the group as a whole in the end. In reference to our example our team is approaching the deadline and part of the paper is not making the team leader happy, some information may be missing, and the leader feels as if this particular section is not ready for the final cut of the groups paper. The deadline is approaching and there is little time to fix the particular section. So instead of the team leader working through the section with the team member, he or she just decides to go ahead and leave the section alone and put it into the paper not being satisfied with it. The team leader is taking the accommodation route of conflict resolution. However, before becoming an accommodator the individual team member must be certain he or she can live with the decision and will not later regret having made it. (Porter 2003) This is a simple idea to grasp but, will make the conflict a win-lose resolution style. Only one person is happy with the outcome.

In style number two, avoidance, we find that team member's being upset and not conversing with any classmates about the conflict at hand. This may make the avoider feel good about them self, however, other members of the team are frustrated with finding no resolution and also the team member who is avoiding is also putting added pressure on the team as deadlines approach quickly and assignments need to be completed. So far, simple to say, these two styles may be types of conflict resolution, but will never be in a win-win style outcome of conflict resolution.

In the third style, Competition, as explained by the Thomas-Kilman model is that here, two members are fighting for position. These two members of the team may start arguing and trying to back up their individual research with claims of fact and claims that their research is more viable and important in the end. For example, when deciding on a research topic the team comes together and collaborates ideas and brainstorms topics for their research paper. When doing this two team members have different views on what the overall