Negotiating And Resolving Conflicts

In the course of a week, we are all involved in numerous situations that need to be dealt with through negotiation; this occurs at work, at home, and at recreation. A conflict or negotiation situation is one in which there is a conflict of interests, or what one wants isn't necessarily what the other wants and where both sides prefer to search for solutions, rather than giving in or breaking-off contact.

Few of us enjoy dealing with conflicts with bosses, peers, subordinates, friends, or strangers. This is particularly true when the conflict becomes hostile and when strong feelings become involved. Resolving conflict can be mentally exhausting and emotionally draining. It is important to realize that conflict that requires resolution is neither good nor bad. There can be positive and negative outcomes as seen below. It can be destructive but can also play a productive role for you personally and for your relationships, both personal and professional. The important point is to manage the conflict, not to suppress conflict and not to let conflict escalate out of control. Many of us seek to avoid conflict when it arises but there are many times when we should use conflict as a critical aspect of creativity and motivation.

Potential Positive Outcomes of Conflict

• can increase commitment, enhance group loyalty
• can lead to innovative breakthroughs and new approaches
• conflict can clarify underlying problems, facilitate change
• can focus attention on basic issues and lead to solution
• involvement in conflict can sharpen our approaches to bargaining, influencing, competing

Potential Negative Outcomes of Conflict

• can lead to anger, avoidance, sniping, frustration, fear of failure, sense of personal inadequacy
• withholding of critical information
• lower productivity from wasteful conflict
• careers can be sidetracked; relationships ruined
• disrupted patterns of work
• consume huge amount of time-loss of productivity

You will be constantly negotiating and resolving conflict throughout all of your professional and personal life. Given that, organisations are becoming less hierarchical, less based on positional authority, less based on clear boundaries of responsibility and authority, it is likely that conflict will be an even greater component of organisations in the future.

Studies have shown that negotiation skills are among the most significant determinants of career success.

While negotiation is an art form to some degree, there are specific techniques that anyone can learn.

Understanding these techniques and developing your skills can be a critical component of your career and personal success.

Major Causes of Conflict

Opposing interests (or what we think are opposing interests)are at the core of most conflicts. In a modern complex society, we confront these situations many times a day. The modern organisation adds a whole new group of potential causes of conflict that are already present:

? competition over scarce resources

? ambiguity over responsibility and authority

? increasing interdependence as boundaries between individuals and groups become blurred

? reward systems: we work in situations with complex and often contradictory incentive systems

? differentiation: division of labour which is the basis for any organisation that causes people and groups to see situations differently and have different goals

? equity vs. equality: continuous tension that exists between equity (the belief that we should be rewarded relative to our contributions) and equality (belief that everyone should receive the same or similar outcomes).

The Five Modes of Responding to Conflict

It is useful to categorise the various responses we have to conflict in terms of two dimensions:

1. how important or unimportant it is to satisfy our needs and

2. how important or unimportant it is to satisfy the other person's needs.

Answering this questions results in the following five modes of conflict resolution.

None is these is "right" or "wrong". There are situations where any would be appropriate. For example, if we are cut off driving to work, we may decide "avoidance" is the best option. Other times "avoidance" may be a poor alternative. Similarly, collaboration may be appropriate sometimes but not at other times.

Competing: Distributive (win-lose) bargaining: Satisfying your needs is important; satisfying the other's needs isn't important to you.

Collaboration: Integrative (win-win): Satisfying both your needs and the other's needs is important.

Compromising: Satisfying both your needs and the other's are moderately important.

Avoiding: you are indifferent about satisfying either your needs or the other's needs; no action is likely.

Accommodating: simply yield (it doesn't matter to you and it matters to the other person).

In general, most successful negotiators start on assuming collaborative (integrative) or win-win negotiation. Most good negotiators will try for a win-win or aim to a situation where both sides feel they won.

Negotiations tend to go much better if both sides perceive they are in a win-win situation or both sides approach the negotiation wanting to "create value" or satisfy both their own needs and the other's needs.

We will focus on the two most problematic types: Collaborative (integrative) and Competitive (Distributive).

Of the two, the most important is Collaborative since most of your negotiation and conflict resolution in your personal and professional life will (or should) be of this nature. This is because most negotiations involve situations where we want or need an on-going relationship with the other person. While it is important to develop skills in "competitive" bargaining (e.g. when buying a car), or skills that allow us to satisfy our concerns while ignoring the other's goals, this approach has many negative consequences for both our personal lives and for our professional careers especially if we are to have an on-going relationship with the other person.

The key to successful negotiation is to shift the situation to a "win-win" even if it looks like a "win-lose" situation. Almost all negotiations have at least some elements of win-win. Successful negotiations often depend on finding the win-win aspects in any situation. Only shift to a win-lose mode if all else fails.

Rational vs. the Emotional Components of Conflict

All negotiations involve two levels: a rational decision making (substantive) process and a psychological (emotional) process. The outcome of a conflict is as likely to be a result of the psychological elements as it is the rational element. In most cases, the failure of two people to reach the "optimal" resolution or best alternative stems from intangible factors such as:

Psychological Factors that will affect conflicts

? how comfortable each feels about conflict

? how each perceives or miss-perceives the other

? the assumptions each makes about the other and the problem

? the attitudes and expectations about the other

? the decisions each makes about trust, about how important "winning" is, how important it is to avoid conflict, how much one likes or dislikes the other; how important it is to "not look foolish."

Understanding the "rational" part of the conflict is relatively easy. Understanding the "psychological" part is more difficult. We need to understand ourselves and our opponents psychologically. Failure to understand these psychological needs and issues is at the root of most unsuccessful negotiations. This is made more difficult because norms in most organisations discourage open expression of negative personal feelings. Thus intense emotional conflicts are often expressed and rationalised as substantive issues. People often drum up disagreements on trivial issues to provide justification for an emotional conflict with another individual.

The Two Most Important Kinds of Bargaining: Distributive (win-lose) vs. Integrative (win-win)

All bargaining situations can be divided into two categories:

1. Distributive (also called competitive, zero sum, win-lose or claiming value).

In this kind of bargaining, one side "wins" and one side "loses." In this situation there are fixed resources to be divided so that the more one gets, the less the other gets. In this situation, one person's interests oppose the others. In many "buying" situations, the more the other person gets of your money, the less you have left. The dominant concern in this type of bargaining is usually maximising one's own interests. Dominant strategies in this mode include manipulation, forcing, and withholding information. This version is also called "value" since the goal in this type of situation is to increase your own value and decrease your opponent's.

2. Integrative (collaborative, win-win or creating value).

In this kind of bargaining, there is a variable amount of resources to be divided and both sides can "win." The dominant concern here is to maximise joint outcomes. An example is resolving a different opinion about where you and a friend want to go to dinner. Another example is a performance appraisal situation with a subordinate or resolving a situation of a subordinate who keeps coming in late to work.

Dominant strategies in this mode include cooperation, sharing information, and mutual problem solving. This type is also called "creating value" since the goal here is to have both sides leave the negotiating feeling they had greater value than before.

It needs to be emphasised that many situations contain elements of both distributive and integrative bargaining. For example, in negotiating a price with a customer, to some degree your interests oppose the customer (you want a higher price; he wants a lower one) but to some degree you want your interests to coincide (you want both your customer and you to satisfy both of your interests - you want to be happy; you want your customer to be happy).

Principles of Harvard-model for conflicts and negotiations

1. Separate People from the Problem

Address problems, not personalities: Avoid the tendency to attack your opponent personally; if the other person feels threatened, he defends his self-esteem and makes attacking the real problem more difficult; separate the people issues from the problem; maintain a rational, goal oriented frame of mind: if your opponent attacks you personally, don't let him hook you into an emotional reaction; let the other blow off steam without taking it personally; try to understand the problem behind the aggression.

2. Emphasise win-win solutions:

Even in what appears to be win-lose situations, there are often win-win solutions; look for an integrative solution; create additional alternatives, such as low cost concessions that might have high value to the other person; frame options in terms of the other person's interests; look for alternatives that allow your opponent to declare victory.

3. Find Underlying Interests

A key to success is finding the "integrative" issues - often they can be found in underlying interests.

We are used to identify our own interests, but a critical element in negotiation is to come to understanding the other person's underlying interests and underlying needs. With probing and exchanging information we can find the commonalities between us and minimise the differences that seem to be evident. Understanding these interests is the key to "integrative bargaining."

The biggest source of failure in negotiation is the failure to see the "integrative" element of most negotiation. Too often we think a situation is win-lose when it is actually a win-win situation. This erroneous view causes us to often use the wrong strategy.

Consider a situation where your boss rates you lower on a performance appraisal than you think you deserve. We often tend to see this as win-lose - either than he/she gives in or I give in. There is probably a much higher chance of a successful negotiation if you can turn this to a win-win negotiation.

A key part in finding common interests is the problem identification. It is important to define the problem in a way that is mutually acceptable to both sides. This involves depersonalising the problem so as not to raise the defensiveness of the other person. Thus the student negotiating a problem with a professor is likely to be more effective by defining the problem as "I need to understand this material better" or "I don't understand this" rather than "You're not teaching the material very well."

4. Use an Objective Standard

Try to get the result based on some objective standard. Make your negotiated decision based on principles and results, not emotions or pressure. Try to find objective criteria that both parties can use to evaluate alternatives, don't succumb to emotional please, assertiveness, or stubbornness.

5. Try to Understand the Other Person: Know his/her situation

Often we tend to focus on our needs, our goals, and our positions. To successfully resolve conflict, it is important to focus also on the other person. We need to figure out what the other's goals, needs, and positions are as well as their underlying interests. We need to think about the personality of the other person, how far we can push, how open or concealed we should make our positions.

Acquire as much information about the other's interests and goals. What are the real needs vs. wants. What constituencies must he or she appease? What is his/ her strategy? Be prepared to frame solutions in terms of his/ her interests.

An important part of this is to recognise that people place very different values on issues than ourselves. For example, a clean room may be much more important to you than it is to your partner. We must understand how the other person sees reality, not just how we see reality.

If through pressure, deception or sheer aggressiveness, we push people to the point where they see themselves as likely to lose and this creates problems. The opponent will retaliate and fight back; losers often lose commitment to their bargain. Also, negotiators get reputations that can backfire. Remember that settlements which are most satisfactory and durable are the ones that address the needs of both parties.

6. Know Your Best Alternative

Try to explore the other side's BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Alternative) and certainly be aware of your own. See if you can change the other person's BATNA. If the other person's BATNA is poor (the alternatives to reaching an agreement with you are unattractive), you are in a better position.

To summarise the most important keys to successful conflict resolution:

? bargain over interests, not predetermined positions

? depersonalise the problem (separate the person from the problem)

? separate the problem definition from the search for solutions

? try to generate alternative solutions

? try to use objective criteria as much as possible

? learn from your successes and mistakes