Conflict Management: Avoidance vs. Management Skills - Essay Sample

Introduction

Conflict management skills are the experience that one possess on how to control and manage a conflict or any disagreement between individuals or in an organization. Conflict avoidance is the technique of reacting to a conflict where one attempts to escape or avoid confronting the issue directly. The essay discussion is going to separate the two for further discussion and analysis.

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Conflict Management Skills

The discussion is going to be based on the conflict which I witnessed in an organization, among some employees in the organization. The members who were in a conflict over the performance of duty where they claim that one of them was not working effectively and could at times avoid some of the duties. The conflict went on until the moment in which it was reported to the supervisor. One of the parties who reported the case used lies and convinced the supervisor about lack of corporation from one of them. The supervisor then gave him full hearing and accepted all that which he was informed. He then made an arrangement of laying off the other employee without giving him a hearing to defend himself over the allegations which are being said about him. In this scenario, the judgment made in solving this conflict was extremely biased and the supervisor did not show any skills in conflict management. The supervisor did not display good listening skills since he only considered one side to make a decision. The supervisor did not display effective skills in communication, not patient to analyze the problem though discussion, he was having negative attitude and he ignored the other party.

Conflict Avoidance

Avoiding conflict can be done by either changing the subject that is causing the conflict, leaving a discussion for a while or not bringing a subject that can cause contention. Avoiding conflict can be appropriate when the topic of discussion or chatting causes confrontation among the parties. For example, a situation in which people are discussing over their preferred candidate in politics, misunderstanding can arise and cause conflict. To avoid that the topic is changed to another so that it can be settled.

However, in peer discussion, the method of avoiding conflict cannot work effectively as there is no respect among the peers being that they are of nearly same age. In this case, the conflict need to be tackled directly as avoiding it can just increase it when the issue is not fully addressed and advice provided as appropriate. If someone just tend to avoid a conflicting issue without addressing it effectively among peers, then result can be physical confrontation.

References

Craig, W. (January 1, 2019). How the best leaders resolve workplace conflicts. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamcraig/2019/01/01/how-the-best-leaders-resolve-workplace-conflicts/#650fd96d58bb (Links to an external site.)

Crawford, H. (January 22, 2019). How to handle conflict in the workplace. U.S. News. Retrieved from https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/articles/how-to-handle-conflict-in-the-workplace (Links to an external site.)

Dizon, A. (July 20, 2018). Top 25 workplace conflict resolution strategies from the pros. FitSmallBusiness. Retrieved from https://fitsmallbusiness.com/workplace-conflict-resolution-strategies/ (Links to an external site.)