Briefly outline an example of collaborative conflict
resolution that you have engaged in.
Contrast that with a competitive conflict. Which was more satisfying to you? To the other party?
In a collaborative conflict
resolution it is basically a win-win situation. This means that the members of
the group are open to contribute and listen to ideas. A lot of communication is
involved with this option. A personal example would be when I play volleyball
with a group of friends. Everyone has a position that they are play better at,
while there are some who cannot play at any position. Also some people might
have multiple positions of where they can play. After a discussion, everyone
was put into a position on the court where everyone thought it might benefit to
the team.
On the other hand the
competitive conflict resolution is a win-lose situation. In this case, people
do things for their self-interest. During my senior year of high school, I had
some friends who wanted to design the senior class shirt and sweatshirt. Of
course we can only have one design for the shirt because we did not want to buy
more than one shirt. So in order to solve this conflict the class president set
up a date of when they had to turn in the best design they could so the class
can vote on it. The designers had to compete with each other to bring the best design
in a short amount of time.
For me I think the better approach
is the collaborative resolution. This is because it is better to have everyone working
together to come up with the proposition.
I think your examples are perfect for identifying the difference between the two conflicts. In the conflict about the senior t shirt it sounds like many people could have come up with a collaborative shirt but they chose a win-lose path instead. When you choose this path you are accepting at that point that you could lose. I think competition can be healthy at times, but in most cases we are just setting ourselves up for disappointment. Two heads are better than one. i think you showed that in you team example. In the team effort to decide who goes where people may have even found out that they were better at a position than they realized based on feedback from the team. They may have also discovered that a particular position was not a strong place for them. either way, the team learned more about themselves and others and ended up with a stronger team and a happy team.
ReplyDeleteHey Cyyntthhia,
ReplyDeleteI think that is a great example of competitive conflict resolution. This strategy sounds like it was appropriate and positive for that situation because it forced everyone involved to bring their A game. And I can relate to your example for collaborative conflict resolution. When I played hockey in high school, we knew the strengths and weaknesses of our teammates, and we sat down with the coach to figure out who should play which position in order to help the team. This is certainly a win-win situation for everyone involved. The players win because they get to play to their strengths and be in a positions where they are more likely to thrive. This is beneficial to the team as well because having putting players in a position to succeed will allow them to maximize their potential to help the team win.
Hi Cynthia, nice post. I agree with you that collaborative method is always better than competitive method, but when it comes to decide merit then there has to be competition. As you mentioned about the competition from designing Tshirt, people will take it seriously as everyone wants to win it. I think instead of making a competition collaborative, the college can encourage a healthy competition where people will look forward to present their best creative work rather than fierce rivalry. I also definitely think that however healthy a competition is, not everybody can take it sportingly. There are high chances of finding cut throat competitors who take the competition personally.
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