Leadership Essay 2
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11.4_Reflection_Action_Worksheet.pdf
INTRODUCTION 258 TO LEADERSHIP 11.4 REFLECTION AND ACTION WORKSHEET
Managing Conflict
Reflection
1. How do you react to conflict? Based on the Conflict Style Questionnaire, how would you describe your conflict style? How has your past history influenced your conflict style? Overall, I think conflict style matches the compromise and collaboration styles. It’s important that everyone is agreeable and content with the decision. If not, it can lead to problems down the road it someone ends up not being able to handle the conflict any longer. In professional contexts, I always try to avoid whenever possible. In these situations my conflict style is avoidance and accommodation. In my first jog, anytime I brought up any issues they were quickly dismissed to I got in the habit of not mentioning them and that has kind of stack to me.
2. This chapter describes three kinds of relational conflict (i.e., esteem, control, affiliation). Of the three kinds, which is most common in the conflicts you have with others? Discuss. Issues of esteem is the most common type of conflict I have dealt with. In my past job I felt underappreciated. No matter what I seemed to do or how hard I worked it seemed like it went unnoticed. This created a major relational conflict between me and my supervisor, and ultimately ended up being a part of the reason I found a new position. I was not comfortable going to her to try to solve the problem because i knew of other employees who had and it ended up making things more difficult for them.
Action
1. Briefly describe an actual conflict you had with a family member, roommate, or coworker in the recent past. Identify the positions and interests of both you and the other person in the conflict. (Note: Individuals’ positions may be easier to identify than their interests. Be creative in detailing your interests and the other person’s.) My boyfriend and I had a disagreement about continuing to rent our apartment and buying a home. His position was that we continue renting. His interest were that he did not want to deal with the hassles of buying ad maintaining a home. I wanted to buy a home. My interests in this was that I wanted a place of my own considering I am living close to his parents.
2. Describe how you could fractionate the conflict. We could’ve fractionated the conflict by breaking down the multiple
different issues in buying a home such as cost, availability, and location. Our main concern was money so by fractionating based on that and compromising on the subject.
3. Using Fisher and Ury’s (1981) methods, describe how you could separate the person from the problem and how you could work together to address the conflict. During your discussions, how could you help the other party in the conflict save face? How could the other party help you save face? We could separate ourselves from the problem by leaving out out personal wants and focusing on what we could jointly afford. We made a budget and used that to decide how much each of us could afford to pay in monthly rent/mortgage and down payments. That way our decision was based on money rather than our opinions.
Visit edge.sagepub.com/northouseintro3e for a downloadable version of this worksheet.
