Conflict is something
that occurs in all walks of life on all scales.
Conflict can be 2 countries going at each other or it could be 2
co-workers fighting over who are right in a given situation. While I have experienced conflict often
during my career, the most recent example of conflict in the workplace occurred
several weeks ago as we were looking to alter our new ascension
guidelines. In quick summary, we have a
relatively open door policy with very little screening taking place. This type of system would work if there was a
more thorough screening process occurring at ERAU, however very little
screening occurs at the university level therefor we were getting candidates
that had no real reason to be in the program.
While things clearly had to change, the powers that be were incredibly
temperamental when discussing doing so. As
such, I entered into the conflict in the subordinate role while my CO took the
role of the supervisor. While others in
the office wanted a much more strict set of guidelines than what we ended up
with, I knew that the decision maker wouldn’t buy off on a drastic change
(group think is not a problem in my office…).
As a result, I went about this conflict resolution with a deep sense of
compromising in mind. In fact, if you
look at table 7.2 from the book, there was no other option but to collaborate
as none of the other methods of solving conflict would result in a better
program (unless he accommodated me, which I knew wasn’t going to happen). The conflict started off as negations
normally do – I started high and right and he started on the other side of the
spectrum. After explaining my side of
the situation with some supporting facts, he was willing to accept that a
change needed to occur. At this point I
listened to what he had to say about the topic which was essentially he was
only going to implement the most basic of screening situations (which I had
anticipated and was ready for a proposal).
At this point I directly engaged him with what were the criteria he
wanted to use to screen. He stated some
ideas that were still a little low compared to my supporting documentation. After presenting him with the document, he
agreed that this was in the realm of possibility. Following this revelation, we proceeded to
hammer out the details of the new screening criteria and then I was sent out to
implement the plan. This whole process
took about 1 hour in his office but required many more hours for preparation
and for production of the finalized recruiting plan. I knew exactly where he would go with the
discussion and had done the background studying to know what was legit and
not. As a result, I was able to make him
think that he came up with a bunch of the ideas (even though they were really
strait from the manual) while keeping his superfluous ideas out of the final
agreement. This resulted in a cut and
dry screening process with objective criteria that few can argue with.
I’m not sure that this
conflict could have gone any better from my side of the fence. I got a better screening process that
captured most of my ideas and definitely all of them that were based on
supporting documentation. The actual argument
remained cordial and professional at all times which was crucial considering
our somewhat strained working relationship.
Looking at the selection factors outlined in the book, I had my personal
preferences on how the problem should be solved but walked in with flexibility
in where I wanted the decision to go (Whetten & Cameron, 2011). Looking at the situational considerations, it
was an important decision in a critical relationship with a high relative level
of power but with low time constraints (Whetten & Cameron, 2011). If you compare this situation with table 7.4,
compromising was the way to go (Whetten & Cameron, 2011). To note, the time factor was going to be my
ace of spades – had he not given in on some of his ideas, I was going to break
contact with him and reengage a couple of weeks (if not months) later to see if
I could break the deadlock. As I scan
through the rest of the book, I would say that most of the methods could be
used to describe at least some of this conflict resolution.
Going back to the discussion board, one of the cool
things about NROTC is the fact that each community from the Navy is generally
represented in a single unit. As a
result, we have a vast background of knowledge to draw from with completely different
experiences to compare situations to. My
experience as a submarine JO is in no way similar to that of a pilot. This leads to a variety of different viewpoints
any time we have a problem that needs to be solved. Very rarely is there solution that everyone
agrees on because each of us is drawing from our own unique backgrounds to
create it. Due to this I’d say that our
decision making ability as a group is better than that of my submarine’s
wardroom where everyone was the product of the same training and command style –
we each only had 1 pool of knowledge to draw from since most of our experiences
were similar. My experience with the
unit and learning from this curriculum has definitely given me a new found
appreciation for diversity in the workplace.
Whetten,
D., & Cameron, K. (2011). Developing management skills. (Eighth
ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education Inc.
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