This document discusses conflict resolution. It defines conflict as a situation where one party feels negatively affected by another. The main causes of conflicts are poor communication, personal biases, differing priorities and resource scarcity. There are four types of conflicts: intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup. While escalated conflicts damage relationships, resolved conflicts can benefit managers through trust and growth, and organizations through productivity. Five styles of resolving conflicts are outlined: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating.

1. Conflicts Resolution.
By natunga ronald DCNE2.

2. Learning Objectives
At the end of this session, participants
should be able to:
• Define Conflicts
• Outline the causes of conflicts
• Describe the types of conflicts
• List the indications for conflicts

3. Cont
• Outline the advantages and disadvantages
of conflicts
• Outline the benefits of resolving conflicts
• Outline styles of resolving conflicts
• Resolve conflicts in their work stations.

4. Introduction:
• Conflicts at work places are inevitable
because individuals from different
backgrounds work together to accomplish
one complex task.
• It is important for managers at all levels to
poses a diverse set of skills including
conflict resolutions because:

5. Cont.
• Managers handle conflicts at their places
of work and they spend about 42% of their
time in reaching agreement with others
when conflicts occur.
• They are responsible for creating a
conducive working environment and
keeping healthy working environment.

6. Cont.
• Conflicts are natural parts of any team or
relationship.
• Depending on how they are resolved,
conflicts can lead to a healthy or unhealthy
relationship.

7. What is a conflict?
• Is a situation in which one party perceives
that its interests have been oppressed,
opposed or negatively affected by another
party.
• Conflicts occur between parties whose
tasks are interdependent, who are angry
with one another, perceive the other party
being faulty and whose actions cause
business problems.

8. What are the Causes of
Conflicts?
• Poor communication
• Personal biases
• Preferred methods of doing things
• Sharing or scarcity of resources
• Individual priorities
• Personality style differences
• Power struggle

9. Cont.
• Individual values
• Lack of clear jurisdiction
• Unclear tasks / assignments / job
description
• Operational or staff changes.
• Incompatibilities or disagreement based
on differences of temperaments or
attitudes.

10. Poor communication.
• Infrequent or inefficient communication
such as lack of feedback, Lack of
meetings, rumours, faulty perceptions or
assumptions leading to misunderstanding,
lying, criticism, etc leads to conflicts.

11. Causes of conflicts Cont.
Personal Cause: Conflict can arise from
personal ego, biases, lack of empathy,
perceived disrespect, past friction, differing
backgrounds, etc.
Personality style differences: People have
different personalities, values, attitudes,
needs, expectation and social styles.
Conflicts are common in people who think
and communicate differently.

12. Cont
• Priorities / preferred methods: some
people often think that their way of dong
things or priorities are the only right ways
/priorities and should therefore be followed
by all people in the organization. This
faulty perception or assumptions causes
misunderstanding and brakes relationship.

13. Cont.
Sharing or scarcity of resources: with
limited resources, most organization share
resources thus resulting into conflicts over
personnel, budgets, equipment, cars, etc.
where resources are limited, conflicts are
unavoidable.

14. Cont.
Operational or Staff Changes:
• Whenever there are staff or functional
changes, conflicts are bound to occur due
to differing views on what should be done,
and how it should be done, differing
approaches to the problem, goals,
perspectives and sources of information.

15. Cont.
Lack of Jurisdiction: when limits of power
are not well spelt out, disputes erupt.
Conflicts may arise over funds, space,
time, personnel and equipment.
Values: people in the work place judge their
own behaviour as well as those of others
by what they believe should be done as
per the values the hold.

16. Cont.
Incompatibility or disagreement based on
differences of temperaments or
attitudes:
• These are often complex with overlays of
race, religion, nationality, age, policies,
ethics and values. For example: a nurse
and a doctor may disagree on how a dying
patient should be dealt with.

17. Types of Conflicts
• Interpersonal conflicts
• Interpersonal conflicts
• Intragroup conflicts
• Intergroup conflicts

18. Cont.
• Intrapersonal conflicts occur within us
especially when we are not happy with
ourselves for example: when we are torn
apart in making decisions or when we are
frustrated due to failure in achieving our
objectives.
• Intrapersonal conflicts often leads to
interpersonal conflicts.

19. cont
• Interpersonal conflicts occur between
two or more individuals e.g. disagreement
with the colleague.
• Intergroup conflicts occur between
different groups at work places or
departments.
• Intragroup conflicts occur within the
group.

20. What are Dangers of Escalating or
Suppressed Conflicts?
• When conflicts are allowed to escalate, the
parties involved become impatient, angry
or frustrated. They turn away their
attention from problem solving to attacking
the opponent with different views.
• Blame and threat become common and
issues proliferate from one person to
many.

21. Cont.
• Old grievances emerge to compound /
worsen the situation.
• Relationships are damaged.
• Bitterness leading to thoughts on how to
get rid of the opponents rather than how to
solve the problem.
• Eventually, parties may enlist support from
bystanders leading to formation of
opposing cliques in the organisation.

22. Consequences of suppressed
conflicts are:
• Chronic complaints
• Decline in productivity, attendance and
morale
• Increased stress and possible sabotage or
violence
• Unresolved conflicts can be detrimental to
the organisation because it leads to
disunity.

23. Advantages of Conflicts.
• Conflicts can be constructive depending
on how it has been resolved.
• Conflicts help to bring to light underlying
issues.
• They can force people to confront possible
short comings and choose a better
solution to the problem

24. Cont.
• They lead to better understanding of each
individuals real interests, goals and needs.
• Communication around conflicting issues
is induced and involvement of parties
affected in resolving the conflicts promotes
cohesiveness among the team members.
• When conflicts are resolved, people
change and grow positively towards
achieving organizational goals.

25. Benefits of Resolving Conflicts to:
the manager:
• Increased self respect
• Stronger relationship
• Gains trust from others
• Promotes personal development and
growth of a manager (Experience)

26. Benefits of Resolving Conflicts to:
the organisation:
• Creates a conducive working environment
thus promoting productivity.
• Employee become more focused and
concentrate in their tasks, leading to
improved efficiency.
• promotes creative thinking.
• Leads to low absenteeism and turnover.

27. Five Styles of resolving Conflicts.
• Competing (forcing) style
• Collaborating / confronting style
• Compromising / give and take style
• Avoiding / withdrawal style
• Accommodating / Smoothening style

28. Forcing / competing / controlling/
dominating style.
• Forcing occurs when one party goes all
out to win its position while ignoring the
needs of the other party.
• It results in a win- lose situation (one party
wins at the expense of the other)

29. Cont
Forcing should only be used when:
• A “do or die” situation is present.
• When a quick action is necessary to save
the situation e.g. when someone is
violating an important safety regulation or
when you have observed severe ethical or
legal violation.

30. Cont.
• Relationship among parties is not
important
• Remember: even if you win, your
opponents may regroup and return to
the fray or wait for another opportunity
to retaliate or become saboteurs.