Business Communication: Interpersonal Conflict Management

Interpersonal conflict is a fact of life and can arise in almost anywhere from organizations to personal relationships. Learning to resolve it effectively, in a way that does not increase your stress levels, is therefore important for everyone. Those with good conflict resolution skills generally help organizations and groups to work more effectively.

Interpersonal conflict may start with a simple disagreement. To become ‘conflict’, however, those involved must escalate it beyond that disagreement to something considerably more.

In a work situation, interpersonal conflict is generally happens when one person or group of people prevents, or attempts to prevent, another person or group from achieving their goals.

Types of Interpersonal Conflict:

There are three types of conflict, personal or relational conflicts, instrumental conflicts and conflicts of interest:

Personal or relational conflicts are usually about identity or self-image, or important aspects of a relationship such as loyalty, breach of confidence, perceived betrayal or lack of respect.
Instrumental conflicts are about goals, structures, procedures and means: something fairly tangible and structural within the organization or for an individual.
Conflicts of interest concern the ways in which the means of achieving goals are distributed, such as time, money, space and staff. They may also be about factors related to these, such as relative importance, or knowledge and expertise.

Resolving Conflict

It is important to emphasize that dealing with conflict early is usually easier, because positions are not so entrenched, others are less likely to have started to take sides, and the negative emotions are not so extreme. The best way to address a conflict in its early stages is through negotiation between the participants.

Later on, those in conflict are likely to need the support of mediation, or even arbitration or a court judgement, so it is much better to resolve things early.

Essential Skills for Handling Conflict

There are a wide range of useful skills for handling conflict. Possibly the most important is assertiveness.

You need to be able to express your views clearly and firmly, but without aggression. One model to use is ‘Describe the situation, Express your feelings and Specify what you want done’.

It is also helpful to think about how you communicate about the situation. When you want to talk about the effect of the conflict or the other person’s behaviour, it is most effective to use ‘I’ statements. In other words, you should explain the effect of particular behaviors or actions on you.

It is also helpful to understand and recognize emotion in both yourself and others.

Emotions are never good or bad, but simply appropriate or inappropriate. A useful skill in managing conflict is to be able to help others recognize when particular emotions are inappropriate, and when it is likely to be fine to express them. For more, look at our pages on Managing Emotions and understanding others.

One particular part of emotional intelligence which is likely to be particularly useful is empathy. This is the skill of being able to put yourself in other people’s shoes, and supporting those involved to do the same.