 Hi, welcome to the lecture for chapter eight, Managing Conflicts Productively. The goal of this lecture is to give you some insight on some of the techniques and methods that you can use to better manage conflict as they arise in your group, as well as some understandings as to where conflict come from. So with that, let's get started. All right, so a little bit of background about what conflict is. Conflict tends to happen inside groups when there is a series of ill feelings or bad experiences between two interdependent parties. Keep in mind that all groups have a level of interdependence between members. I think this definition that's on the screen is useful because it really emphasizes the role that communication takes place in the expression and management of conflict. It's important here at the offset to know that in the way that we approach managing conflict, we focus more on the management than the resolution of conflict. And we'll get to why that is next. All right, so a couple of myths that are worse covering inside of the realm of conflict. First, myth number one is that conflict is harmful and should be avoided. When in reality conflict can actually be a really useful construct to help members understand issues that the group is facing more effectively and more clearly. But also conflict and the management of it requires people to more critically look at the decisions and thought processes that they're doing and as a side effect can actually increase member involvement as well as cohesiveness inside the group. So in reality, after going through conflict, groups can become stronger and more effective entities than they were pre-conflict. The second common myth that we hear about conflict is that conflict represents some sort of a misunderstanding or our tends tend to be like based in a lack of communication. The reality is that conflicts can occur over differences in values, goals and resources and the tendency to like blame communication tends to be a misnomer and can actually just lead to more conflict. By understanding the fundamental backgrounds of how like values and differences in there can lead to conflict will allow you to be more effective in managing it. The last part here is that all conflicts can be resolved. The parties are just willing to sit down and discuss what's going on. The reality is conflicts, particularly conflicts that situate themselves in the midst of value-based discussions may not be resolvable. So again, the goal here is to consider more about using conflict as a means to enhance critical thinking and be managed so that they don't become detrimental to the group. All right, so when we talk about conflict, there's two key types of conflict that are worth discussing, task conflict and relational conflict. So when we talk about task conflict, this is the type of conflict that kind of stems over disagreement about the ideas of the group, the processing of information, the access to evidence. This is your work-related conflict, right? Task conflict can be good because it forces people to critically evaluate information and can lead to a better understanding in that and can kind of be procedural, like especially if you have allocated a devil's advocate, someone who specifically is standing to disagree to whatever the majority decision is, it can just be a technique that you're using to enhance critical thinking inside of the group. The other side of conflict is what we would call relational conflict and this comes from clashes between strong personalities, values, likes, dislikes, people competing from power and kind of exercising like tertiary tensions inside of the group. Here, you kind of see this as being more of a power struggle. One of the most common ways that I've seen this present itself, at least in this course, is conflict over unequal workloads or at least the perception that one person is doing more of the work and maybe one or more members are not. So there's a variety of techniques that you can use to manage conflicts in the group. The kind of warning that I give you is that there's not necessarily a best way to handle all conflicts, right? It's situational. So instead, consider these things and these ideas that we're about to discuss as a toolbox that you can use to better understand conflict and manage it as the situation develops or changes as things become more complicated and nuanced. All right, so one of the first things that's useful to understand in terms of dimensions of understanding how people deal with conflict is the different conflict management styles that people can take. Keep in mind that it's not necessarily the point here that you fall into one of these, you may have a tendency to one of these, but these are different styles that people might take in a different situation. So when we talk about, for instance, the conflict style of avoidance, this is a person who is unwilling to confront or engage in conflict. And why this might seem problematic, there are specific situations, say for example, when conflict is causing you severe psychological distress and emotional turmoil, that avoidance might be the best strategy. The next one up here is accommodation. And this conflict style means that an individual would be willing to engage in conflict, but they might back away from conflict in order to appease other people, right? So they're willing to get in there and discuss, but might be more willing just to want to make the conflict go away by accommodating others. The competition conflict management style actually comes from a preference of group members for kind of like winning the conflict. Unfortunately, this tends to be at the expense of other party members, right? So kind of like a really dog eat dog cutthroat approach to winning conflict. The next one is collaboration. And this is where individuals want to work together with other party members to find a solutions that pleases everybody. And at the outset, most people are like, well, Ryan, that sounds like the best possible option inside of here. And why I agree, collaboration is great when it's possible, especially when you're dealing with scarce resources or value-laden conflict. Oftentimes, the collaboration method isn't always feasible for group members. And so that leads us to the conflict management style of compromise. And this is where the individuals have a preference for kind of playing that game of give and take. They'll give a little ground and try to win a little bit inside of here for solutions that aren't necessarily everybody's first choice or what really anybody wanted to begin with, but is within the acceptance level of the group moving forward. More often than not, when it comes to managing conflict, compromise tends to be what is sought out in those difficult situations. So when it comes to actually engaging this, it's important to try to express disagreement ethically. If you kind of follow some of these guidelines, it's going to make it easier to have the discussions that lead up to managing conflict better. So the first and perhaps the most obvious, but still needs to be said, is to express the actual disagreements. One of the most common ways that I see conflict-building group is when members or even just a member sit on issues and disagreements that they have and refuse to discuss it to the group until it's had a point that it is so detrimental that it causes a total group breakdown. Better to talk about those things early and get them out on the floor. With that is the kind of value of being timely. If you express issues early on when there's still times to deal with them, it's gonna be better received and more likely managed in an effective way. Whereas if you put things off to the very end and you aren't timely with your feedback and your disagreements, it's going to lead to problems. The next one is to use rhetorical sensitivity. And this means to consider how you come across to other people. And so when you are packaging your arguments and your disagreements inside of there, consider how other people are going to take issue with that and try to phrase things in a way that aren't aggressive and attacking of another individual. One of the most effective ways that I like to do that when I am dealing with a situation that's conflict is the use of I statements. So instead of saying, you did this or you did that, say that I feel that this is what's taking place and I desire for this to happen. And that kind of re-situating issues inside the group with the self tends to make things less adversarial. And the next part is to, the final piece here is to react with a spirit of inquiry. And what that means is as people are giving you feedback and perhaps telling you things that you might be kind of reluctant to hear instead of being standoffish and unwilling to hear them, be open but be investigative and ask questions and try to gain deeper insights and understandings. And by taking it to that level, it should hopefully alleviate some of the issues that you are facing. So with this, and there's kind of a bit of persuasive tact that goes into having an effective conflict management, there are things that you can do to help maximize your influence and your ability to be heard inside your group. One of the most effective things that you can do is to use high quality argument. And if you think back to the chapter on creative and critical thinking, we talked about logic and avoiding fallacies. And we've also talked about like using good evidence. The same is true when you make arguments about conflict. When you're trying to say that something should be this way, don't just say from your perspective, try to give feedback and understanding, either referencing sources and facts or other things will ultimately make you more effective at having your ideas heard. A second piece here is to be consistent. And I teach speech and debate from time to time. And one of the things that we'll punish debaters for in a round is shifting ground. If you have a stance on an issue, don't shift that stance and shift the ground that you're on to better fit a position if you feel like you're losing arguments. You know, stand at your point and make it into it. And if ultimately you feel that the other person has made a better argument, it's time to be open and be willing to shift a little bit and compromise a little bit as you try to alleviate some of these issues. And the last piece here is if you are making decisions on behalf of other people and other groups, you wanna make sure those subgroups are in agreement. So be careful not to speak for other people without checking it on them. All right, so another technique that works really well in dealing with controversy and can kind of help in supportive conflict is something that we call the nominal group technique. This technique alternates between individual work and group work to kind of help a group hear from every member when discussing a controversial issue. So this technique can be used by a group to help members reach a decision on controversial issues without like the bitterness that comes from like a win, lose conflict. It's based on the premise that sometimes people working individually in the presence of others tend to generate more ideas and also that sometimes dominant members inhibit their participation by quieter members, especially when discussing conflict. So as we break it down, the way that the nominal group technique works is that you start by stating the problem clearly. So kind of coming up with a problem statement, figuring out what it is and making sure that all the parts are there together. Typically it is useful to have a coordinator to assist in the nominal group technique. So an outside member tends to work best inside of this, but if not possible, perhaps the most neutral group member can kind of seek inside of here and fill this role. The coordinator is gonna ask everybody in the group to list the features of the problem and the issue. Then they're gonna go ahead and give people in the group time to sit there and work quietly and kind of think about some of these issues and describe some of the problems and suggestions inside of that. At that point, each suggestion is going to be listed in a round robin fashion, meaning that you'd go around the group and people would kind of contribute suggestions until everything is done. Now why you wouldn't want to start having the argument at this point, it's okay for people to ask clarifying questions to make sure they're understanding the issue. At this point, you've got a huge sheet with a bunch of issues and aspects of the problem listed on the board and each person ranks. Typically when I do this, I have each person rank their top three and at that point we put little check marks by the ones that we think are our biggest one and we drop the ones that are less important, focus in the top one, engage in a group discussion of those top related items and try to reach a decision on how to move forward at that point. Another technique that can work in addition to the normal group technique is what's called principal negotiation. What principal negotiation is, is another way of dealing with conflict that is more focused on finding ways to meet the needs of conflicting parties while still kind of respecting the interpersonal relationships between those individuals. So again, here is kind of similar in this systematic method is to try to separate the people from the problem that the group is facing, focus on the interests and not the positions that people are taking place and try to find new options, new alternatives on how to address the problem that mutually benefit everyone inside of that and then using subjective criteria to get that out on the floor. So it's a little bit less structured than principal negotiation but again it can be useful as a means to like better deal and understand that conflict. All right, well that takes us to the end of this chapter. Once again, thank you for watching and as always if you have questions please feel free to contact me at one of the variety of methods that is available to you. Thank you.