How Is Understanding Conflict Important For Its Resolution?

Being in a conflict is very stressful and frustrating. The conflicting party might be your close family members, friends, neighbours, or work colleagues.

Such conflicts not only affect your relationships with that person but also adversely impact your daily life. Many people may try to ignore these conflicts. However, this often leads to unresolved conflicts which is even worse.

Resolving conflicts is a critical procedure to make peace with the conflicting party and yourself. Unfortunately, not many people understand how to resolve conflicts to save their relationships from deteriorating. For this, Mediation Services in Winnipeg offers several workshops on managing conflicts and learning conflict resolution.

This blog post discusses what conflict is. We will talk about the consequences of different responses and how Mediation Services can help you overcome those negative consequences and resolve your conflicts.

What Is A Conflict?

A conflict is a clash of interests between two independent parties due to their differences in attitude, understandings, interests, and perceptions. When two parties don’t agree on a common goal, a conflict may arise. This results in heated arguments, verbal abuses, and sometimes, even physical abuses.

Some people consider conflict to be bad and avoid it at all costs, while others consider it an opportunity to grow and learn or compel others to accept or understand their viewpoints.

Your beliefs, behaviour, and attitude directly contribute to conflict situations. Therefore, understanding your beliefs, the consequences of your actions and your attitude in a particular conflict situation is crucial. That is what conflict management courses aim to teach you so you can gain better control over the situation.

What Are Beliefs In Conflicts?

Your beliefs determine your point of view, which might be different from the other person’s. A conflict will arise when there is a difference in beliefs, how you respond to those differences, and ultimately the consequences of those responses.

The first step towards conflict resolution is to believe that conflicts are natural and will exist. When there are two parties involved, there will be some differences of opinion. But, how to handle those differences is what really matters. Therefore, understanding how conflict operates in our lives is important.

However, many people tend to go into denial and have an ignorant attitude towards conflicts. The most common beliefs in people about conflict include:

• Conflict is bad.
• A good person doesn’t rock the boat (can have conflicting opinions).
• Good relationships don’t have conflicts.
• A Conflict means verbal or physical aggression.
• Working out a conflict takes too much time.
• I have to win in my argument.
• I won’t be liked if I raise objections.

However, everybody must be accepting of conflicts and believe that they are inevitable.

What Are The Common Responses And Consequences Of A Conflict?

Below are some of the common responses and consequences that are usually seen during conflicts:

Responses To Conflicts

• Rebuking oneself.
• Becoming sarcastic.
• Pretending nothing is wrong.
• Venting to someone.
• Smiling no matter how stressful the situation is.
• Slight seething.
• Reflecting or journaling.
• Discussing with an authority figure.
• Discussing with the person.

Consequences Of Conflict

• Confusions or clarity
• Hurt feelings
• Anger
• Shame
• Escalation or de-escalation
• Poor relationship
• Decrease or increase of trust
• Loss or gain of confidence/self-esteem

A New Paradigm For The Beliefs About Conflict

The first thing you need to understand is that conflict is a natural and inevitable part of life and happens in the best personal and professional relationships. It can be constructive if you handle it well but destructive if handled poorly. All this depends on your response to a conflict.

To resolve a conflict, understanding what has happened requires that every voice in the conflict be heard. You can shift another’s competitive energy towards a win/win situation instead of win/lose. Gaining better control of yourself can control your negative emotional response and thus, help in resolving conflict.

Participate In Our Conflict Resolution Courses

If you have been thinking about resolving your conflicts in a peaceful way, Mediation Services in Winnipeg is your go-to option to learn about conflict resolution skills. We have been offering conflict resolution services and training for years. If you would like to learn some skills for conflict resolution or more, you can check out our online Zoom and asynchronous webinars here.

In this webinar, we will help you learn conflict resolution by:

• Exploring personal case studies.
• Learning communications skills and styles which you can use in a conflicting situation.
• Increasing your ability to proactively engage others to resolve conflicts.
• Learning and practicing processes for clearing up misunderstandings, recovering from mistakes, and resolving disagreements.

If you want to know more about us, contact us here.