How well a person handles conflict can determine the quality of both personal and professional relationships.
Relationships are determined to be good when they are open, without judgement, honest and respectful. The opposite of this is when relationships are critical, destructive and offer no safe place, this breakdown in communication can all to soon lead to conflict between parties.
How well do you handle conflict? Read the following questions and decide what is your most common response.
Do you avoid conflict?
Are you defensive if another person raises an objection to your ideas?
Do you use phrases like ‘you made me feel’ or ‘you always do that’?
Do you feel that you have to be ‘right’ all the time?
Do you say things like ‘I know what you’re thinking’?
Do you stop listening if you do not like what you are hearing?
Are you happy when you when an argument or disagreement?
Do you attack a person rather than confront a behaviour?
Do you use a ‘do this my way or not all’ approach?
Do you blank and give the silent treatment in times of conflict?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions you may already be aware that conflict is not something that you handle to the best of your ability.
How do you behave when conflict arises?
Do you become passive and ‘bow out’ or at the other extreme do you display anger and resentment? Somewhere in between? Does it depend who the conflict is with?
By learning to handle yourself in conflict it will increase and enhance your Interpersonal Communication Skills, being able to open and express yourself fully, valuing who you are and your core values whilst at the same time recognising that this right also belongs to other people as well.
By asserting this…relationships deepen and are built on stronger foundations.
Conflict is not the enemy, it is how we feel about it that is, as social animals our need to interact and build relationships with others contradicts this when conflict arises however you can make the choice to embrace conflict as the opportunity to grow and deal with differences that are between us.
By preventing yourself to creating meaningful relationships. Conflict does not have to seen as an unpleasant, anger fuelled, argumentative — it can an opportunity for you to respect who you are and voice how you feel.
What to do if…
You avoid conflict
At times conflict can be unpleasant, however if you start to see conflict as an opportunity to grow and develop your understanding of who you are and learn from it, this can reduce this unpleasantness. To avoid it means you are passing by an opportunity to resolve differences.
You are defensive
To accept that each person is an individual and as such they will not agree with you all time, is an excellent skill to learn. You have choices, allowing the person to raise their objections is their right, would you always willing go along with everyone else’s ideas, all the time.
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