Creatively Resolve Your Conflict

Looking to minimize your daily conflict and improve your problem-solving techniques?

A “tip” is to use self-reflection and creativity to collaborate on lasting solutions.

This is the most optimal approach to constructively minimizing ongoing conflicts.

There comes a time during your professional development and well adulthood when you realize that creatively solving your conflict is the key to sustainable success.

With all of the pivots in life that the Covid-19 pandemic has and continues to throw our way, the last thing on your mind is self-care and self-reflection.

Can any of us blame ourselves for just wanting to get the job done and checkout?

What would happen if we created the best versions of ourselves both personally and professionally?

Well for starters there would be a heck of a lot less conflict and turmoil arising in our daily lives. Less fighting, less complaining, increased understanding, allyship and unity.

Truth be told, you need to know yourself beyond the surface. It’s a journey to better understanding how you operate on the team.

So, as a word of advice, please take the time to understand your work style, personality type, learning style, motivations (both internal and external), and/or career interests to soothe your needs in a work environment.

So how does all of that relate to working with others?

Well, the work environment is not organically constructed. Organizations hire human beings for the job.

These human beings are chosen because of their knowledge, skills, abilities or other competencies that an individual possesses.

A bonus is having strong interpersonal skills that aid in your teamwork abilities.

Many people that you work alongside and/or interact with, you would not cross paths in your personal daily life. This in and of itself is a source of conflict.

Why you ask?

It’s because we are unique beings. Our childhood/upbringing, culture, religion, education, and roles we fulfill in our personal lives deeply shape us.

Conflict in and of itself can be broken down into five (5) categories which are:

a) Task Conflict

Task Conflict happens when team members have varied ideas, views and approaches to completing a task.

This is one of the simplest forms of conflict to resolve using a solution-oriented approach.

Keep in mind that voting on suggested ideas will generate successful results and increase resolution overtime

b) Relationship Conflict

Relationship Conflict occurs when team members have a difference in attitudes, preferences, or in their personal styles.

This style of conflict makes completing tasks more challenging because it weakens your collaboration process and efforts

c) Process Conflict

Process Conflict stems from how tasks are delegated and coordinated between team members.

A team contract for each new assignment helps to detail individual responsibility.

Issues can arise regarding the strategy of task completion

d) Status Conflict

Status Conflict is threaded within an organization’s existence.

This stems from the internal social hierarchy and individuals striving to be on top regardless of organizational hierarchy.

Power struggles will emerge while making decisions and allocating resources.

e) Organizational Conflict

Organizational Conflict occurs from the overall structure of the business and the underlying factors are linked to poor communication, vision and value differentials.

It would benefit the whole organization to have the aid of a third-party business consultant (HR Specific)

So, how do we see the devastation of our conflict, if we are in the eye of it?

Let’s be completely transparent. There is a central theme throughout all five (5) workplace conflicts which are: human beings.

Human Resource departments within organizations do their best to attract, recruit and select the top talent available in a pool of candidates.

It’s important background information to know that HR also takes into account a candidate’s interpersonal skills, communication styles, personality and behavioural tendencies by asking behavioural type interview questions.

So why does HR do all of that? It’s because employees dedicate many hours in time worked to fulfill organizational goals.

Organizations also dedicate many hours in human resources to attract, recruit, and select top talent with their respective industries.

By hiring the wrong people, it is costly to an organization in both physical time and money.

Wise companies usually avoid having a chronically high turnover rate.

This is because it’s nearly impossible to build an enriching work environment when you have different staff ending their employment every few days, weeks and/or months.

On the human side of things, it’s important to get along with and share a mutual respect with co-workers, superiors, stakeholders, customers for the success of any business venture overall.

Success begins in the business plan and further development of a business venture.

A founder creates an objective for the business including a solid mission and value statement to articulate the expectations for its workplace culture and daily business practices.

A healthy workplace culture is aware and inclusive of all emotions that its employees face.

These emotions range from celebratory (such as securing a new client that was difficult to win over) to stressed, overwhelmed (due to poor distribution of work), frustration, anger, dislike, feeling like you’ve been let down, as well as worry according to research conducted by Cynthia Fisher (a professor from Ohio State University).

So how do we work through these emotions to resolve conflict in a healthy, solution-oriented way?

Through collaboration.

Yes, indeed. A team’s best chance of successfully resolving conflict is finding long-term reasonable solutions for all parties involved.

That’s why it’s very captivating to witness or belong to a strong interdependent team.

Work tends to feel effortless when a team reaches that point in their working relationships.

It takes time, communication and creative problem solving to get there, however.

The key to confidently resolving situations is not complicated.

Be it your personal or professional relationships, it’s important to know that conflict resolution can be applied to all areas of one’s life.

Focus on deepening your level of active listening, use clarifying questions to understand the needs of others, understand how you play a role in a situation/team by using a heightened self-awareness and reflection.

Lastly,

I’d like to share a current resource from the United States Institute of Peace that allows for self-paced learning until the end of this year surrounding conflict resolution.

Mind you this is all tuition-free for now! Thank you for this opportunity USIP. Below is a quote from the front page of their website:

“ As the coronavirus pandemic forces us to change the ways in which we interact with one another and as people across the United States and the world demand racial justice, today’s peacebuilders are in need of increased access to resources and tools to support them in transforming conflict. To meet that demand, the U.S. Institute of Peace is offering its entire catalogue of online courses tuition-free from now until the end of 2020.”

In search of finding current resources that I can share with my community, it would be beneficial to visit and explore: https://www.usip.org/academy/catalog-global-campus-courses

If you’ve read this post in its entirety…boy are you the g.o.a.t 😊

- Articulate Tee