Relationship Paper – Conflict Management at Work

Relationship Paper – Conflict Management at Work

I had originally committed to writing a paper that was directed specifically at an ongoing conflict that I have at work with a specific individual. During the thought gathering process, I realized that I cannot assume what this individual's motivation or point of view is, and therefore cannot make any accurate statement about what sort of change this person may require. I emphatically believe that I don't even have the right to do so, and trying to will only bring out emotions in me that could widen the gap in our relationship. With that being said, this paper is an examination of how I perceive myself to address and handle conflict at work and what I can do to improve my skills.

Through the course of this semester, I have overall come to realize that I have communication issues, specifically at work. If you look at the different conflict management styles, I perceive myself to excel at 3 of them out of the 5. The 3 conflict management styles that I utilize are "avoidance", "accommodation", and "competition", all of which I tend to use in a negative manner. Unfortunately, "compromise" and "collaboration", the two most positive conflict management styles, I do not regularly leverage (Beebe 231-235).

In regards to "avoidance", I often find myself ignoring issues specifically with the person that I have an ongoing conflict with, whom I will refer to as Jason. We do not get along with each other on a personal level, so I find myself hoping that the issue goes away without addressing them. An example would be from the past 2 months. There was a Sunchips promotion at Meijer a while back, and I have a terrible time with Sunchips promotions; I never get them right. It was hot pricing at 2/$4, but with our recent bag size change, no one really knew what to expect out of it. I planned that the promotion would exceed expectations and we would over-ship our forecast, because that's what happened the last time that they were on promotion. However, I was wrong. We ended up with about 70 days on hand worth of product in the warehouse, which is a problem because the bag date is only 56 days. Instead of bringing this to Jason's attention, I let it go. I checked on the issue almost every day, hoping that there would be divine intervention and the problem would be gone, but there were no miracles. Just 2 weeks ago, the warehouse had to stale all of that product out at cost; it never even made it to the store. Had I not avoided this conflict, the outcome may have been different.

In regards to "accommodation", I sometimes find myself bending to meet the needs of others, even though I know that their solution is not a good decision. In fact, I did it just this morning. I'm always trying to meet the needs of one of my peers, simply because he does a really