Conflict with Family: What’s Your Style? By Carly Friedrich Imagine that you had just gotten home from grabbing dinner with your friends and find your mother standing in the living room angrily. She is furious because you had agreed to pick up your brother from soccer practice but forgot. Your brother was left at the park for an hour and a half without a ride. Would you avoid her? Would you try to convince her that dinner was more important? Or would you find a way to make it up to her and your brother? Everyone has their own style to approach conflict, which can make problem solving difficult to navigate, especially when it's with loved ones. If you want to discover the specific styles you use to handle conflict, you can click here to take a conflict styles inventory. No matter what style you use, each has its own benefits and drawbacks, so there is no “best” style for every situation.
Here is a quick overview of the different ways people approach conflict :
1. Competing When you are determined to get your way when a conflict arises, you may be considered a competitor in that situation. In a conflict, you would care more about your personal agenda and be less focused on maintaining a relationship. For example, if your sibling asks you for the TV remote to turn on a show they like and you respond with “I’m older so we’re going to watch what I want to watch,” you would be adopting the style of a competitor.
2. Avoiding If you try to ignore the problem in some situations and choose to not address the conflict at hand, you may be an avoider. Let’s say you leave your dirty dishes in the sink, again, even though the dishwasher is empty. Your mom is visibly upset, but when you ask her what’s wrong, she mutters “Nothing” and continues to load the dishwasher. In that situation, your mother is acting as an avoider by not confronting you about washing your dishes.
3. Accommodating In a conflict, when you are operating as an accommodator, you may concede your agenda and give in to the other person’s position. It may also be considered harmonizing, because an accommodator has a strong interest in maintaining the relationship. An example of this could be when your grandparents come to stay with you at your house and want to sleep in your room, forcing you to stay on the couch. You may accommodate in this scenario out of respect for your grandparents but may be unhappy with the outcome.
4. Compromising You adopt the style of a compromiser when you want to split the difference and meet halfway in a conflict. In a broad sense, that means that each family member would “win some” and “lose some.” Siblings dividing up chores evenly may be a good example of compromising. You may both agree to switch up doing the laundry and vacuuming every other week to ensure you share the work equally, even though you would prefer to do the laundry.
5. Collaborating You may be a collaborator in a conflict when you try to find a way that both people can have their needs met while maintaining the relationship. Looking back on the example from the compromising section, by communicating with your sibling, you may realize that, while you prefer to do the laundry, your sibling likes to do the vacuuming. A collaborator would suggest that you solely do the dishes and your sibling is responsible for all of the vacuuming in the future. That way, the chores are still getting done, but each of you is doing the task you like more.
The style you use to handle conflict can change in different situations with loved ones. For example, you may have an avoiding style towards telling your partner that they should help clean up the house more, but follow more of a competitor style when fighting for a bigger piece of cake with your extended family at a holiday party. Explore different conflict styles and discover which ones work best for you. If you have any questions or would like additional information, please feel free to reach out to the Office of Student Conflict Resolution!
Source: http://www.slideshare.net/joannelaw11/workplaceconflict30174294
Carly is student facilitator at the Office of Student Conflict Resolution. Carly is passionate about building peace between the environment and people. In her free time, Carly enjoys hanging out with her dog, Toby, and reading all of the Harry Potter books.
