Creative Brainstorming in Conflict Management
Identifying a conflict on its early stages can benefit people’s overall happiness and wellbeing. Once people meet conflict it becomes vital to challenge them and to be able to overcome them in a constructive way.
In order to analyze what does it mean to have a conflict and what are possible ways of meeting such challenge, it is better to examine a particular case. The situation was of usual business when two colleagues in one of the outstanding American companies faced up with an issue. Both of them had their own viewpoints how to deal with the problem and they thought that their own way is the only one for the company to proceed. They were very passionate in proving and explaining that their ways of solving the problem were the only right. Thus, a big conflict appeared not only between two of them, but also among their colleagues. Fortunately, a manager of the company proposed to vote every staff member of the company for the best problem solution. The manager used a Cognitive or C-type of conflict (Thompson et al. 218). The manager asked all his staff to express their ideas on those two viewpoints and then to vote for the best one. In that case, it was important to look at the situation from several various points of view and, afterwards, to find a consensus.
Mostly people feel uncomfortable about the conflict and usually they tend to think that conflicts are non-productive. However, researchers found that some types of conflict can have a positive effect on people’s behavior, for instance, stimulation of thinking (Thompson). Thus, thinking “out of the box” (Thompson) lead the company to find its best solution and they were successfully doing their business again. It is obvious that C-type conflict was the best way to deal with the challenge that the company faced up.
To sum up, conflicts of different types are important, because they always teach people something new.
Works Cited
Thompson, Leigh. “Negotiation Behavior and Outcomes: Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Issues.” Psychological Bulletin, vol. 108, no. 3, 1990, pp. 515–532, http://www.ilo.bwl.uni-muenchen.de/download/unterlagen-ws1415/thompson-1990.pdf, 10.1037//0033-2909.108.3.515. Accessed 11 Nov. …
