Leading Self: Understanding Conflict
Whether you’re experiencing conflict as an individual or as a team, understanding how to have constructive conflict allows for innovation, learning and growth. Having a good sense of your personal conflict style and how to use other styles makes you a more flexible and effective leader.
Keep reading to find out more about your own conflict style and what you can do to become more effective at conflict and conflict management.
The Value of Conflict
The first step in understanding conflict is seeing how it can be valuable. Conflict, when done constructively, can be used as a tool for ensuring diverse perspectives are considered in decision-making.
When it comes to team development. Lencioni’s model shows us that when trust is present, conflict is constructive and can lead to commitment, accountability and ultimately high performance.
Five Behaviors of a Team
1. TRUST: Trust serves as the foundation or the most important element of a team. Only when we have trust can we engage in constructive conflict.
2. CONFLICT: Mastering constructive conflict enables team commitment to be established.
3. COMMITMENT: When team commitment is established, members of the team can begin to hold each other accountable.
4. ACCOUNTABILITY: A strong sense of shared accountability, or holding each other responsible for tasks, paves the way for high-quality performance.
5. HIGH-PERFORMANCE RESULTS: While we would all love to start as a high-performance team, it’s only possible when all four foundations are mastered.
We’ve established that trust enables constructive conflict, but what enables trust?
Think back to when you’ve developed trusting relationships in the past. Typically, it involves getting to know more about each other and creating safe spaces for communication, like offering feedback, doing an informal activity or building a “team charter.”
Your Conflict Style
When you begin to see conflict as valuable, you can then begin to understand your relationship to it. That starts with becoming aware of your conflict preferences. The stronger your understanding of your own preferences, the easier it will be to adapt your conflict style to be most appropriate for a given situation.
Consider...
How do you currently view conflict?
What is your stress indicator (In other words, where do you feel conflict in your body?)
When you are in conflict, what happens?
The Kilmann Model
The Kilmann Model for Conflict Style features two axes. The horizontal axis considers the importance of the relationship, while the vertical axis considers how important it is to express your needs. From this, the Model identifies five unique styles of conflict.
No one of these conflict styles are better than the other, and we all have our preferences. Each style of conflict has a value and a scenario in which it is most appropriate. Practicing the ability to make choices and “flex” between different styles will make you more effective at different types of conflict.
Kilmann’s Five Conflict Styles
1. AVOIDANCE: When there is both a low-need for cooperation with others and a low-need to be assertive of your own needs.
Avoidance is most beneficial when the issue does not merit an urgent response or you don’t have strong feelings about the topic.
2. ACCOMMODATION: When there is a high-need for cooperation with others and a low-need to be assertive of your own needs. Also known as harmonizing.
Harmonizing is most beneficial when it is more important for the group to have harmony over the individual. This may be meeting a customer or client need.
3. COMPETING: When there is a low-need for cooperation with others and a high-need to be assertive of your own needs. Also known as directing.
Directing is most beneficial when it is there is an emergency and an immediate action is needed
4. COMPROMISE: When some but not all needs are met on all sides. This is the lose-lose scenario, with a solution that is minimally acceptable for all parties.
Compromising is most beneficial when a quick decision needs to be made and everyone can accept the results.
5. COLLABORATE: When there is both a high-need for cooperation with others and a high-need to be assertive of your own needs. This is the win-win scenario, with a solution that is acceptable to all parties.
Collaborating is most beneficial when you have the time needed to achieve the ideal outcome. This style may require a third party mediator or facilitator.
Want help making decisions about which conflict style you should choose? Grab our conflict styles decision tree!
TRY THIS: Conflict Styles Assessment + Journaling (30 Mins)
1. Consider your conflict style. If you want, you can take the official Kilmann assessment.
2. What are 3-5 things that trigger you? (HINT: triggers often conflict occurs when something we value is pinched. Check out our blog on values to discover what might be behind the thing that’s triggering you.)
3. When you respond negatively to one of these triggers, what do you tend to do? For example:
Do you avoid confrontation?
Do you become defensive and/or argumentative?
Do you shut down and stop communicating?
4. Brainstorm and choose something that you will do in order to slow down when triggered. For example:
Step away from the situation and take a break.
Write down notes to organize your thoughts and frustrations.
Ask to go back and recap what has been discussed, and explain where your opinions diverged.
5. Think about which of the conflict styles you’d like to practice more. What might that look like in response to one of your triggers?
6. Write a habit statement: When [TRIGGER] happens, instead of [NEGATIVE RESPONSE], I will try [CONFLICT STYLE] through [ACTION].
For example: When my idea gets shut down, instead of becoming upset and drawing out of the conversation, I will try to compromise by asking for feedback on why my idea was rejected so I can develop it to become a better fit.
7. Put your habit statement in a place where you will see it. Reward yourself when you practice a new or challenging style of conflict.
Navigating conflict effectively means first starting to see it as valuable and then starting to understand your relationship to it, your preferences and ultimately being more thoughtful about your conflict style.
Share in the comments! What do you think your natural conflict style is? Which one would you like to try?
If you enjoyed this article, please subscribe to our blog to receive email notifications whenever we post.
This blog is part of a series — 10 Steps to Grow Yourself as a Leader:
Listening Made Simple Part II: 3 Skills for Listening to Others
Self-Coaching Activity: Put Your Oxygen Mask on First (Energy Renewal and Self-Care)
You might also like:
