Even though conflict may not feel like a positive, beneficial aspect of a relationship, conflict can help you to enjoy stronger relationships with family members, friends and colleagues. Conflict itself is neither positive nor negative. Instead, how you handle conflict is what causes it to be helpful or hurtful in your life. When conflict arises in a relationship or in a group, your immediate response may be to ignore, avoid, minimize, fix or win a disagreement. The more you learn about conflict and how to effectively resolve it, the more you will enjoy the positive effects of it in your life.
Benefits
Choosing to resolve conflict, whether in a personal or business relationship, has many immediate benefits, including greater interpersonal trust and rapport. In fact, resolving conflict can do more for strengthening a relationship than many other life experiences. In "Getting to Resolution: Turning Conflict Into Collaboration," Stewart Levine explains that pursuing resolution helps you to see a situation from the perspective of the other person and to consider that person's concerns, as well as your own. "Standing in [another's] shoes provides [a] critical perspective," writes Levine, which helps to serve "everyone's long and short-term interests."
Prevention
Resolving conflict can also help those involved to avoid long-term relational breaches and divisions. Whether between a husband and wife, a parent and child or an employer and employee, conflict can cause distrust and alienation, eroding relationships in small and large ways. W. Robert Nay explains in "Taking Charge of Anger" that unresolved conflict can result in distracting, disrupting feelings, anger-evoking thoughts and long-term resentments. Taking time to resolve conflict can help to prevent the emotional and physical discomfort, as well as health problems that can result from unsettled disagreements.
Misconceptions
The process of resolving conflict does not have to be an antagonistic and hostile one. Conflict can be destructive or constructive depending on how you respond to the situation that produces the conflict. Isa N. Engleberg and Dianna R. Wynn, in "Working in Groups," point out that "conflict itself is neither good or bad." They explain that conflict becomes destructive when personal insults and threats, complaining and avoidance, as well as inflexibility and competition permeate the conflict situation. Instead, pursuing cooperation, respect, flexibility and clear communication can help to promote constructive conflict.
Effects
Learning to resolve conflict can also help you to avoid the negative side effects that may result from common conflict-handling styles, including competition, avoidance and accommodation. Competition often results in too great a focus on your own concerns at the expense of the other people involved, resulting in greater division rather than unity. Avoidance can also be counterproductive, sometimes even causing you to deny that conflict exists. Accommodation often results in individual needs going unmet at the expense of group needs, which can produce resentment and dissatisfaction as well.
Considerations
Even though more than one method exists for resolving conflict, most methods highlight the importance of self-control, empathy and understanding in the conflict situation. Healthy conflict resolution skills include an ability to manage your own responses to the conflict; a readiness to listen and respond to the concerns of others; and a commitment to a positive resolution for all those involved. Practicing humility by forgiving and asking for forgiveness, and prioritizing the relationship also contribute to effective conflict resolution.
References
- "Getting to Resolution: Turning Conflict into Collaboration"; Stewart Levine; 2009
- "Taking Charge of Anger"; W. Robert Nay; 2003
- "Working in Groups"; Isa N. Engleberg and Dianna R. Wynn; 2007
- Help Guide: Conflict Resolution Skills: Managing & Resolving Conflict in a Positive Way
