Conflicts can be due to a mismatch of conflict styles

Some time ago, I wrote about conflict styles.  Here is a link to that newsletter, if you want to brush up on them.

I recently was one of a team brought into help an organization that had an ongoing conflict. I suspected that one of the causes was a mismatch of conflict styles, so we ran a workshop on them.  I explained them to everyone and then asked people to identify their own default conflict style and any others they used, and then talk about them in a small group. My intent was to give them a tool to make changes that might solve at least part of the conflict.

What I didn’t take into account was that the default conflict style of this organization would overwhelm their awareness of their own tendencies. They all felt that they used a “collaborating” style or at least aspired to it. This was a particular problem for one of the people at the very center of the conflict, whose default style was “competing”. This person believed that she was “collaborating” even though she wasn’t.

One factor that appears to have precipitated the conflict was that the other key person had previously used a style of “accommodating”, so that anything that the “competing” person wanted, she got.  But he got tired of ”accommodating”; he wanted a “collaborating” style. He tried to send a message by switching to an “avoiding” style.  That backfired bigly.

One of my lessons from this is that certain styles work well together, such as “competing” and “accommodating”, and others don’t. And it can vary by the situation what works well together.

I see this in my own life as well.  In one relationship in my life, my default style is “avoiding”.  I have developed other styles, which I use in other relationships, but I default to “avoiding” with this person because they tend to not ask for my opinion and in fact, get upset when I disagree with them. I suppose it works well when the issue is of low importance but this recently blew up. I had crucial information about something that concerned us both that I failed to convey.  Now he’s mad at me because I didn’t provide that information. I now want to figure out a way to provide needed information to this person, using the skills I have learned about “collaborating” and not default to my “avoiding” style. That isn’t working.  Perhaps I can ask something like, “Do you want me to tell you what else I learned?”

My takeaway from these two situations:  First, the ”avoiding” style seems like it works, until it doesn’t. You really aren’t avoiding conflict, you are just pushing it down the road. Second, consider how well your default conflict style meshes with other people’s styles in your life. Do you use other styles in other relationships?  What changes can you make to your style, what things can you practice to use in your problematic relationships that might help them become functional?