In: Operations Management
What are the consequences of avoiding all conflict? What role do perceptions play in creating conflict? Are most conflicts about facts or about underlying feelings? Is compromise the same as collaboration? How can a supervisor best remain nonjudgmental, supportive, problem-oriented, and sensitive to everyone's needs in the face of conflict?
Consequences of conflict avoidance:
Emotional health: When we stop confrontation endlessly, otherwise we basically block our feelings. Lots of work has shown this is not safe.
Through forcing down our thoughts of continually preventing confrontation, it's more than possible that fear or frustration will emerge somewhere, usually when you least anticipate it. In other areas of life, pressures will escalate and boil over when it is not necessary for them to flow out. So if you continue to stop the confrontation, this will happen more frequently than not.
Creating fear: Avoiding confrontation constantly tells the subconscious, in a derogatory manner, this is what keeps one safe from bad emotions. The question is that we just delay what we must do, by preventing the confrontation.
Through resisting that, the emotions of relaxation we obtain strengthen our avoidance negatively. But while this sounds nice at the moment, since we don't have to address the issue, it raises our concerns in the long term, because we don't deal with it.
Missing opportunity: Avoiding conflict implies we typically lose resources not just for professional development but also in life. If we are afraid to deal with issues, we stall our personal development.
Conflict resolution is a catalyst for improvement and development, which keeps us stagnating. We may also lose out on chances because our confrontation worries may become unfounded and trigger anxieties. This can be limiting in our daily lives and discourage us from leading a full life.
We describe dispute as a discord by which the parties involved
consider a challenge to their wants, desires or concerns. The main
feature of this interpretation is the notion that any particular
scenario should be interpreted differently by each side. We may
imagine experiencing these variations because of a variety of
influences that create "perceptual barriers" or "verbal lenses"
that affect our reactions to the situation, such as History, Race
and Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality, Awareness (general and
situational), Messenger Impressions, Previous encounters.
Such (along with others) influences conspire to shape the
perceptual mechanisms through which we perceive conflict. As a
consequence, our responses to the danger and problem posed by
confrontation should be expected to involve differing situational
understandings. That also means we should expect that there will be
considerable confusion about the views, desires, and emotions of
each other in certain disputes. Those problems lead to our evolving
understanding of the daunting and unsolvable situation during the
war. As such, they are vital sources of knowledge, perspective, and
opportunity.
Most of the conflicts occur due to feelings or grudges that one may have about any particular issue. Natural experiences of rage, terror, pain, and irritation are usually present in person or group disputes. These thoughts, and the situations of the danger posed by the confrontation, allow our bodies to respond in the stress response of "fight or flight." In taking an aggressive or defensive posture, we naturally plan to defend ourselves, control the situation and contend with our opponent. The complexities of this hazard relation are compounded in circumstances where there is a power imbalance dependent on location, position, temperament, or other variables.
Compromise and collaboration are not the same. Collaboration refers to participating in an operation together. On the other hand, a settlement refers to an arrangement that each side has reached to make compromises. This is clear that two or more parties are interested in both cooperation and consensus but the way the parties handle and address the problem is different. Therefore, one may point out that the main distinction between collaboration and compromise is that although the parties concerned will find common ground in a settlement, this is not required in collaboration.