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• COMPREHENSION TEST B .
Form a pair. Discuss each question and arrive at one answer that both agree is cor-
rect. Then combine with another pair and repeat the procedure, making sure/all
four individuals agree on each answer. Answers are given at the end of the chapter.
1. Match the conflict strategy with the situation in which it may be used appro-
priately.
Goal and relationship are both important a. Withdraw
Goal and relationship are moderately important b. Force
Goal and relationship are both unimportant c. Smooth
Goal is important, relationship is not d. Compromise
Goal is not important, relationship is important e. Problem solve
CHAPTER 8 • Resolving Interpersonal Conflicts 257
True False 2. It is a good idea to act the same way in every conflict.
True False 3. The conflict strategy you use depends on how important
it is to maintain a good relationship and to achieve your
goals.
True False 4. The two most effective strategies are problem solving and
compromising.
True False 5. Appropriate humor helps you resolve conflicts construc-
tively.
True False 6. Your ability to come up with wise agreements depends on
how well you understand the other person's goals, feel-
ings, and interests.
True False 7. You try to view the conflict from the other person's per-
spective so that you can better persuade him or her to
agree with you.
True False 8. If you do not want to solve the problem, ignore the con-
flict.
True False 9. If you get a chance to win, take it.
True False 10. If time if short, smooth.
willing to pay $1,500 for an antique, offer $500), compromise slowly (try
to get the other person to give in first), and be ready to walk away
with no agreement. There are, however, very few times in your life when
you negotiate with someone you will never interact with again. The
majority of the time, therefore, you will want to engage in problem-
solving negotiations.
You negotiate differently within ongoing relationships than you do
with strangers or acquaintances. Within ongoing relationships, you are
expected to show considerable concern about the other person's inter-
ests. Imagine that you and another person are rowing a boat across the
ocean and you cannot row the boat by yourself. While the two of you
may have conflicts about how to row, how much to row, and what direc-
tion to row, you seek food and water for the other person as well as for
yourself. Only as long as both of you are healthy does each have a chance
to survive. Your conflicts are mutual problems that must be solved to
both persons' satisfaction. You negotiate to solve the problem when (a)
your goals are very important to you and (b) it is important to you to
keep your ongoing cooperative relationship with the other person in
good working order. In problem-solving negotiations, the goal is to dis-
cover an agreement that benefits everyone involved. Such agreements
are called integrative solutions because they maximize joint benefits
rather than favor one disputant over another. The overall criteria for
judging the quality of an agreement that resolves a conflict are:
Conflicts begin when two people want the same thing. Everyone
has a perfect right to their wants, needs, and goals. Likewise, everyone
has a perfect right to refuse to fulfill your wants and needs or help you
achieve your goals. No one has to act against his or her best interests
just to please someone else. Two of the major mistakes in defining a
conflict are to be aggressive by demanding that the other person con-
cede to your wishes or to be too passive by keeping your wants to
yourself and saying nothing. Negotiating begins when you describe what
you want in an honest and appropriate way that respects both your-
self and the other person. You provide others with information about
your interests. To communicate your wants and goals clearly to the
other person:
cry when others are celebrating. If you are angry and upset, typically the
people you work with and the people around you will know. When you
do not recognize, accept, and express your feelings a number of difficul-
ties may arise. Relationships may deteriorate, conflicts may fester, bias
may creep into your judgments, and the insecurities of your colleagues
may increase.
Besides communicating clearly and descriptively your feelings, you
must listen carefully to the other person's feelings and communicate that
you understand them.
Once both you and the other person have expressed what you want
and how you feel, listened carefully to each other, and jointly defined the
conflict as a small and specific mutual problem, you must exchange the
reasons for your positions. To do so, negotiators have to:
(a) your long-term mutual goals and (b) the ways the two of you are in-
terdependent and how that interdependence will continue in the future.
2. Present your reasons; listen to the other person's reasons. To
say what you want and how you feel is not enough. You must also give
your reasons for wanting what you want and feeling as you do. It is not
enough to say, "I want to use the computer now and I'm angry at you for
not letting me have it." You must also say, "I have an important home-
work assignment due today and this is my only chance to get it done."
Your reasons are aimed at (a) informing the other person and (b) per-
suading him or her to agree with you.
Once both of you have explained your reasons, either of you may
agree or disagree to help the other person reach his or her goals. The de-
cision to help the other person reach his or her goals or keep negotiating
is based on a comparison between (a) how important your goal is to you
and (b) how important the other person's goal is to him or her (based on
the reasons he or she presents). You must listen carefully to the reasons
given and decide whether they are valid or not. If you decide that the
other person's goals are far more important to him or her than yours are
to you, then you may wish to switch from negotiating to smoothing. If
neither of you is convinced to give up your own goals in order to fulfill
the goals of the other person, then the two of you must reaffirm your co-
operative relationship and explore each other's reasons at a deeper level.
3. Focus on wants and interests, not positions. A classic example
of the need to separate interests from positions is that of a brother and
sister, each of whom wanted the only orange available. The sister wanted
the peel of the orange to make a cake; the brother wanted the inner part
to make orange juice. Their positions ("I want the orange!") were op-
posed, but their interests were not. Often, when conflicting parties reveal
their underlying interests, it is possible to find a solution that suits them
both. The heart of negotiations is meeting the goals of the other person
while ensuring your goals are being met. The success of negotiations de-
pends on finding out what the other person really wants, and showing
him or her a way to get it while you get what you want. For a wise de-
cision, therefore, reconcile interests, not positions. For every need or
want, there usually exist several possible positions that could satisfy it. A
common mistake is to assume that because the other person's position is
opposed to yours, his or her goals and interests must also be opposed. Be-
hind opposed positions lie shared and compatible goals, as well as con-
flicting ones. To identify the other person's wants and needs ask "why,"
ask "why not?" and think about his or her choice, and realize that the
other person has many different needs and wants.
4. Clarify the differences between your and the other's interests
before trying to integrate them into an agreement. Conflicts cannot be
264 CHAPTER 8 • Resolving Interpersonal Conflicts
resolved unless you understand what you are disagreeing about. Only
then will you be able to think of ways to satisfy both yourself and the
other person so that the conflict can be resolved constructively. The more
you differentiate between your interests and those of the other person,
the better you will be able to integrate them into a mutually satisfying
agreement. In discussing a conflict, you try to find the answers to these
questions: (a) What are the differences between my wants and goals and
the other person's, (b) Where are our wants and goals the same, (c) What
actions of the other person do I find unacceptable, and (d) What actions
of mine does the other person find unacceptable?
5. Empower the other person. Shared power and wise agree-
ments go hand in hand. There are two ways to empower the other
person. The first is by being open to negotiations and flexible about the
option you like the best. If the other person can negotiate with you,
then he or she has power and options. Willingness to negotiate is based
on being open to the possibility that there may be a better option avail-
able than you now realize. Staying tentative and flexible means that
you do not become overcommitted to any one position until an agree-
ment is reached. Second, you empower through choice among options.
Generate a variety of possible solutions before deciding what to do. The
psychological costs of being helpless to resolve grievances include frus-
tration, anxiety, and friction. When a person is powerless, hostility or
apathy may result. We all need to believe that we have been granted
a fair hearing and that we should have the power and the right to gain
justice when we have been wronged.
conflict. Knowing how your actions help create and continue the conflict
is essential for planning how to resolve it. Neglecting to do something con-
structive helps create and continue the conflict just as much as doing
something destructive. You may want the other person to change, but the
easiest thing to change is your own actions. If you wish to resolve a con-
flict, you must begin by deciding how to change your actions. It would be
nice if everyone else changed so that you would never have to, but you do
not have control over the actions of others: they do.
The major obstacles that inhibit the inventing of a number of options
are judging prematurely any new idea, searching for the single answer (which
leads to premature closure and fixation on the first proposal formulated
as the single best answer), assuming afixedpie (the less for you, the more
for me), shortsighted self-concern with your own immediate needs and
goals, and defensively sticking with the status quo (to avoid the fear of the un-
known consequences inherent in changing).
Finding potential agreements that (a) maximize joint benefits, (b)
improve the relationship with the other person, (c) increase the ability of
disputants to resolve future conflicts constructively, and (d) benefit the
wider community is difficult. It often takes considerable creativity. To in-
vent creative options, you need to (a) invent first and judge later, (b)
gather as much information as possible about the problem, (c) see the
problem from different perspectives and reformulate it in a way that lets
new orientations to a solution emerge, (d) broaden the options on the
table rather than looking for a single answer, (e) search for mutual gains,
(f) invent ways of making decisions easily, (g) propose possible agree-
ments, and (h) test each proposed agreement against reality (what are its
strengths and weaknesses, what does each person gain and lose, how
does it maximize joint outcomes?).
Possible agreements include meeting in the middle; taking turns;
sharing; letting the other person have it all; letting chance decide; pack-
age deals, in which several issues that are considered part of the agree-
ment are settled; trade-offs, in which two different things of comparable
value are exchanged; tie-ins, in which an issue considered extraneous by
the other person is introduced and you offer to accept a certain settle-
ment provided this extraneous issue will also be settled to one's satisfac-
tion; and carve-outs, in which an issue is carved out of a larger context,
leaving the related issues unsettled.
1. Maximize joint benefits (are fair to all participants and are based
on principles).
2. Strengthen participants' relationship and ability to work together
cooperatively.
3. Improve participants' ability to resolve future conflicts construc-
tively.
4. Benefit the community as a whole.
1. The ways each person will act differently in the future. These re-
sponsibilities should be stated in a way that is specific (tells who does
what when, where, and how), realistic (each can do what he or she is
agreeing to do), and shared (everyone agrees to do something different).
It is especially important that both you and the other person understand
which actions trigger anger and resentment in the other. Criticism, put-
downs, sarcasm, belittling, and other actions often trigger a conflict. If the
two of you understand what not to do as well as what to do, the conflict
will be resolved much more easily.
2. Basing the agreement on principles that can be justified on some
objective criteria (Fisher & Ury, 1981). The objective criteria may be sci-
entific merit (based on theory, tested out, evidence indicates it will work),
community or societal values, fairness (taking turns, sharing, equal use),
or even that everyone has an equal change of benefiting (such as flipping
a coin, where one cuts and the other chooses, or letting a third-party ar-
bitrator decide).
3. How the agreement will be reviewed and renegotiated if it turns
out to be unworkable. This includes (a) the ways in which cooperation
will be restored if one person slips and acts inappropriately and (b) a
schedule of when participants will meet to discuss whether the agree-
ment is working and what further steps can be taken to improve their co-
operation with each other. This is necessary as sometimes you may
discover later that you have made a bad agreement. You may have agreed
to something you should not have, or you may have changed your mind,
or you may have found out you cannot keep your side of the bargain. At
CHAPTER 8 a Resolving Interpersonal Conflicts 269
that point, you reopen negotiations and try to find a workable resolution
to the conflict.