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Working Through Disagreement: Approaches to Conflict Resolution
Principles of Management · Chapter 12: Communication and Financial ControlSection 12.5 · lesson 77 of 11713 min · free with a free account
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In this lesson
5 ways to handle conflict, and how to choose among them.
- Describe the 5 conflict-handling approaches and their costs
- Distinguish positions from interests
- Apply negotiation basics and spot escalation
- Select an approach for a described conflict
Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,748 words). Read along, or search it.
Communication and Financial Control
Working Through Disagreement: Approaches to Conflict Resolution
Disagreement at work isn't a failure in itself. What matters is how it gets handled. Subchapter eight point four looked at conflict inside teams, and handed the resolution approaches forward to this section. We'll map five ways of handling conflict on two dimensions, and see why none of them is always right. We'll look at what collaborating and compromising really cost. We'll separate positions from interests, and learn the questions that surface what people actually need. We'll cover negotiation basics, and the pattern by which a disagreement escalates. We'll look at a manager's role when two of her own people are in conflict. And we'll finish with two departments whose positions were irreconcilable, while their interests were not.
A 2-Dimensional Framework
Assertiveness and Cooperativeness
Subchapter eight point four covered conflict types, and how a team manages conflict. It handed the specific resolution approaches to this section. The most widely used framework for them comes from the researchers Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann, in the mid-nineteen seventies. It organizes conflict-handling behavior along two independent dimensions. Assertiveness is the degree to which a party pursues her own concerns. Cooperativeness is the degree to which a party accommodates the other party's concerns. The key word is independent. Being more assertive doesn't automatically make you less cooperative. You can be high on both, or low on both. Combined, the two dimensions produce five distinct approaches.
The 5 Approaches
Where Each Approach Sits
Here are the five approaches. Competing combines high assertiveness with low cooperativeness. You pursue your own concerns directly, with little regard for the other party's. Accommodating is the reverse: low assertiveness, high cooperativeness. You yield to the other party's concerns, at the expense of your own. Avoiding is low on both. You withdraw from the conflict, rather than engaging either party's concerns. Collaborating is high on both. You work to satisfy both parties' concerns fully. And compromising sits in the middle of both dimensions. Each party gives up something, to reach a middle ground that's mutually acceptable, though not fully satisfying. So compromising and collaborating aren't the same thing. One splits the difference. The other tries to satisfy both sides in full.
Figure 12.5.1
A Map, Not a Ranking
Figure twelve point five point one plots the five approaches on the two dimensions. Assertiveness runs along the horizontal axis. Cooperativeness runs up the vertical. Competing sits low and to the right: high assertiveness, low cooperativeness. Accommodating sits high on the left. Avoiding sits low on the left. Collaborating sits high on the right, and compromising sits in the middle. The point of the picture is what it doesn't show. It isn't a ranking from worst to best. Each approach sits at a genuinely different combination of the two dimensions. And as we'll see next, each combination fits a different kind of situation. None is universally superior to the rest.
None Is Universally Correct
When Each Fits, and What It Costs
The single most important point in this section is that none of the five approaches is universally correct. Each fits specific conditions, and each carries a specific cost somewhere else. Competing is appropriate in genuine emergencies, where there's no time for a fuller process. It's also appropriate where an unpopular decision must be imposed, despite resistance. Its cost is damage to the relationship, and the loss of whatever insight the other party's position contained. Avoiding is appropriate for genuinely trivial issues that aren't worth the engagement. It also fits where strong emotion needs time to settle, before a productive conversation is possible. Its cost is that the underlying issue stays unresolved. It can resurface later, often in a worse form. Accommodating is appropriate when the issue matters much more to the other party than it does to you. Its cost is that your own legitimate concerns go unaddressed. Used too often, that can build resentment.
Collaborating and Compromising
The Best Outcome, and the Fast One
Collaborating generally produces the best outcomes of the five. It's the only approach that genuinely tries to satisfy both parties' concerns, rather than trading one off against the other. It also carries the highest cost in time. Fully understanding and integrating both sides' concerns takes much longer than imposing, yielding, or splitting a difference. So collaborating should be reserved for issues that warrant it: significant, recurring, or relationship-defining conflicts. Not applied to every disagreement, whatever its stakes. Compromising deserves an honest observation. It's often a fast route to a solution neither party would have chosen on its own merits. Sometimes that's genuinely right. Time is short, the issue doesn't warrant collaboration, or a rough middle ground is truly acceptable. But sometimes it's an evasion of a better answer. The easy middle position gets chosen because it's faster than the harder work collaboration requires. Even when that harder work would have produced an outcome both parties would have preferred. So telling the two situations apart is a judgment worth making deliberately, rather than defaulting to compromise out of habit.
Positions and Interests
What They Say, and Why
A position is what a party says she wants. An interest is why she wants it. It's the underlying need, concern, or goal the stated position is meant to serve. The distinction was developed by the negotiation scholars Roger Fisher and William Ury. It matters because conflicts that look irreconcilable at the level of position often have overlapping interests underneath. Two departments demanding the same limited resource may hold genuinely incompatible positions. Yet once their interests are examined, they may need entirely different things from it. This move descends directly from Mary Parker Follett's concept of integration, covered in Subchapter three point eight. She defined integration as finding a solution that meets both parties' underlying interests, rather than splitting their stated positions. Surfacing an interest means moving deliberately past the position, with a specific kind of question. Why does this particular outcome matter to you? What would it solve, if you got it? And what are you actually worried about if you don't? Questions like these steer a conversation away from two incompatible demands, toward needs a creative solution might meet for both sides.
Table 12.5.1
From Positions to Integrative Options
Table twelve point five point one shows the move in four described conflicts. Two departments each demand the same specialist's full-time attention. Underneath, one needs fast turnaround on urgent requests. The other needs deep, sustained focus on a complex project. So the specialist handles urgent requests on a fast-response basis, while blocking dedicated time for the complex project. A manager wants weekly detailed reports. The employee wants no reporting at all. The manager's interest is early warning of problems. The employee's is avoiding unnecessary overhead. A brief, exception-based report, sent only when something is off track, serves both. Two teams each want a feature built their way. One needs it to integrate with an existing system. The other needs it usable by a non-technical audience. The option is a design that meets the integration requirement internally, while presenting a simplified interface externally. And an employee wants a raise, while her manager says the budget can't support one. She wants recognition of her growing contribution. The manager needs to stay within a fixed budget this cycle. So the option is non-financial recognition now, paired with a committed budget request for the next cycle.
Negotiation Basics
3 Basics of Principled Negotiation
Effective negotiation rests on a small set of established basics. Preparation comes first. Understanding your own interests, the other party's likely interests, and the range of outcomes consistently beats improvising in the moment. Next is the alternative to a negotiated agreement, a central concept in Fisher and Ury's principled negotiation. It's the source of a party's resistance point. What she would actually do if no agreement is reached determines how much she's willing to concede. No rational party accepts a negotiated outcome worse than her own best available alternative. Finally, the scholars Richard Walton and Robert McKersie distinguished distributive situations from integrative ones. A distributive situation is a conflict over a genuinely fixed resource, where one party's gain is necessarily the other's loss. In an integrative situation, a creative solution can expand what both parties receive. That distinction tells you whether collaboration's extra investment is likely to pay off at all.
Escalation
How Disagreement Becomes Entrenched
A manageable disagreement becomes an entrenched conflict through a recognizable escalation pattern. Subchapter eight point four covered its team-level dynamics. First, the specific issue at stake broadens into a wider set of grievances. Second, positions harden, as each party digs in rather than searching for movement. Third, the conflict becomes more and more about the relationship itself, rather than the original, narrower issue. Recognizing the pattern early, before it fully takes hold, makes intervention considerably easier. Once a conflict has escalated through several of these stages, it's much harder. Sometimes the approaches in this section genuinely fail. The parties stay deadlocked despite good-faith effort, or the relationship has deteriorated too far for direct negotiation to work. That calls for third-party intervention, which Subchapter twelve point six covers next.
The Manager's Role
When 2 of Her People Disagree
One common situation deserves separate treatment: a conflict between two of a manager's own people. Here, the manager isn't a direct party to the dispute. So her role shifts away from applying one of the five approaches herself. It moves toward something closer to the third-party function Subchapter twelve point six develops. Her task is to help the two employees find their own resolution. She surfaces interests, and she structures the conversation. What she shouldn't do is impose her own preferred outcome, simply because she has authority over both of them. There's a complication, though. Being both parties' supervisor creates a genuine neutrality problem of its own. The next subchapter takes that up.
Case Vignette
Common Ground Once the Real Issue Surfaces
Here's a composite case, constructed for instruction. The marketing and product departments at a fictional software company reached what looked like a genuine impasse. Marketing insisted the next release had to ship by a fixed external date, tied to an already-announced campaign. Product insisted that date wasn't achievable without cutting corners neither department wanted. Framed as positions, ship by the date or don't, the conflict looked entirely zero-sum. Then a facilitated conversation asked each side why its position mattered. Marketing's real interest was avoiding the reputational cost of a publicly announced date slipping. Not the date itself. Product's real interest was avoiding a release with unresolved quality issues. Not resisting speed for its own sake. Stated that way, an integrative option appeared that neither original position allowed. A phased release. A genuinely ready core feature set would ship on the original date, with a few secondary features shortly after. Marketing's concern was met, because the public date held. Product's concern was met, because unfinished features weren't rushed. The positions had been irreconcilable. The interests underneath them were not. Next, Subchapter twelve point six develops third-party intervention, covering mediation and arbitration.
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