TheOtherDoor (TOD)portal is a hub for improving your confrontational bilities. 'Confrontational' is big word to describe any situation involves opposing points of view. Whether when egotiating a deal with a business partner, trying to resolve a conflict with a peer.
5 conflict resolution strategies
Vouching for a conflict resolution strategy is like endorsing a means of traveling to one. For instance, if you are roving on a scenic road on a day that is sunny, then a motorbike ride can be fantastic as opposed to if you are covering a long distance at night, in a weather that is particularly bad. Strategy is a consequence of myriad factors such as your target goals, the restrictions you will meet, diverse contextual factors among many others.
Even though strategy forming is a product of so many subjective parameters, we still have a few foremost parameters that one might contemplate employing in most cases.
In the present column, I would like to catalogue these principal conflict resolution strategies.
Communication
The number of times you should shun the instigation of communication with the other party is very restricted. In the improbable event that the other party is a terrorist, communicating directly to them might be seen as an act of legitimizing them as a negotiation partner, but in all other circumstances communication is justly taken as the most effortless and efficient tool for solving problems.
Regrettably, the first thing that conflicting parties drop when a conflict explodes is the inclination, along with the capacity, to communicate. If and when they do communicate, it is likely to be in a manner that is not constructive.
The ability to communicate effectively, just like mathematical abilities, is not something that one just obtains instantaneously. Consequently if you find yourself mired in a conflict and you realize that your communication skills are deficient, enlist a good conflict advisor to assist you cope with the conflict. I would advise that you should not begin enhancing your communication skills while in the middle of managing a crisis-one challenge, which is managing the conflict in the most supreme way possible, is sufficient.
If you think your communication skill is excellent thwart your inner voice that restricts you from communicating with the other person. Train your eyes on your targets and begin communication with the other party that will enable you achieve these objectives. Indeed, the other person(s) might snub your advances to communicate, but you might be flummoxed by the number of cases that you might succeed, and if you will be rejected, then you will take solace in the fact that you at least tried.
Letting the other side know you have a ‘gun’
That is a complex issue-how do you permit the other side to know that you have alternatives different from the current one without being deemed as making threats? The precincts of each negotiation are marked by each party’s alternatives. If one side has the ability to exploit its utilities by using the alternative it has, it will go ahead and employ it. Thus, the method to gently sway the other party to try and conjointly work out a solution is by allowing it to realize that it might be comfortable desisting from using its own alternative, hence yours.
To get to know more about the gentle areas of employing ‘guns’ before and during negotiations, please read my book, ‘Negotiation Tactics-Levers, Guns and Sanctions’.
Appointing yourself the devil’s advocate
One of my most beloved conflict resolution strategies happens to be this one because we amazingly become blind so fast during a conflict. We become so occupied with our own perceptions, motivations, justifications and any other components that build the story we tell ourselves (the story which enables us to explain why we are on the right while the other side is on the wrong) to the point that we become blind to any other standpoint but our own. We will zealously uphold this viewpoint like our very lives hinge on it and catastrophically get ourselves, a lot of times, into pointless tumult.
This is the devil’s advocate-that person that was appointed to contradict your own standpoint- helpfully comes in. Being forced with a contradictory point of view will oblige you to question yourself why you are having this standpoint and more essentially, if this viewpoint is serving your greater good.
Any person can slot into the role of the devil’s advocate as long as they recognize that they ought to battle the innate penchant to back your point of view. When confronted with a differing standpoint, do not attempt to expound why you might be right but rather let yourself mull over your view point in light of the contrasting viewpoint.
Moving your constituency aside
Among the characteristics of a conflict is that the longer it plays out, the more the number of people involved swells. The number of those who support you grows, as well as spectators-constituency-those people who observe the conflict from the ‘fence’. The potential for irrational decisions from you increases when more people watch the conflict because this triggers your ego. For this reason, move aside your constituency, attempt and make the process of dealing with your conflict as reticent as possible so as to allow you to act in a fashion that best serves your interests instead of just offering a spectacle to your constituency.
Get trained
Our lives are entrenched with many conflicts. A lot of them are relatively minor entailing our family members, a colleague at work, and sometimes our friends. But because they are so recurrent, getting conflict handling skills or conflict resolution strategies will remarkably enrich your life for the better. Just think of how much energy, time you will save and how your relationships and even career will gain should enhance your conflict solving abilities just by a measly 10%.
When, and this occurs sporadically, you meet a bigger conflict, you might have to confer an expert but it is possible to efficaciously manage the vast majority of your daily conflicts. Therefore, a training of this sort will pay itself 100 fold.
The list that I have offered herein is incomplete. When handling people, there are various ways to behave-many conflict resolution strategies that one can espouse. View the points offered in this post as the stepping stones to vitally essential life skills abilities-getting successful conflict resolution strategies.
