Conflict Negotiation - Workplace Experience - Essay Example

?Portfolio Project Conflict Negotiation: A Case Study of My Own Workplace Experience (Insert s Here) (Insert Here) Thisportfolio project is about my own workplace experience involving a conflict negotiation. In the project, I have explained an encounter in which I had to resolve a conflict between two of my junior staffs. The project explains briefly the result of that conflict, and the impact it had on both of them. It also explains how I used my interpersonal skills to resolve the matter. The project brings out the importance of strong negotiation skills and convincing ability in resolving conflict. In addition, I have shown how various factors like power, influence, and organizational politics can help in settling organizational conflicts. Lastly the project gives a warning on the impact which can result from unethical use of power, influence and organizational politics. Conflict Negotiation According to Zartman (2008) conflict negotiation is the process of combining of divergence or conflicting positions through communication to a joint decision and it actually involve giving something to get something. It is paramount when managing organizational conflicts like interpersonal conflicts, intragroup conflicts and intergroup conflicts and thus every manager is expected to have good negotiation skills. The principled negotiation is the most used conflict negotiation method. It requires problem solving and uses the integrating style of handling conflicts. This method comprise components like separating people from the problem, focusing on interests and not on position, inventing options for mutual gains and insisting on using objective criteria(Rahim, 2010). Various styles, which an organizational can adopt to settle organizational conflicts are integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding and compromising. All this styles are important depending on the situation. A model, which contains antecedent, perceptual and behavior change, structural formation, decision process and conflict aftermath, can be developed to illustrate the dynamics of these conflicts. This can helps us in understanding organizational conflict better and thus enhance our ability to resolve them (Rahim, 2010). According to Rahim (2010) a manager should have good negotiation skills. This is because as a manager you cannot completely avoid encountering conflicting parties. You can either have the supervisors assigned to you conflicting among themselves, the subordinates conflicting among themselves or a supervisor and a subordinate conflicting. I have encountered all the three types of conflict throughout my career as a manager several times and luckily enough I have been able to resolve them. The most recent case, which is the one that I will talk about, consisted of a conflict between a supervisor and his junior subordinate staff. This case was complicated because these employees could not even speak to each other. The supervisor could only communicate to the employee through other employees and the employee could not communicate to the supervisor at all. This actually eliminated teamwork among them thus making the working conditions very tough for both parties. I discovered this by coincident when I was going around to check the progress achieved on the work that I had assigned them. Being a good manager that I am I did not expect such a thing among my junior staffs. I am a person with good negotiation skills and an ability to convince. In addition, I am a good listener with good analytical and problem solving skills. These skills have helped me a lot throughout my career as a manager and every time I have applied them, they have yield good results. Conflict management as Rahim (2010) shows, can be affected by factors like personality, base of power, organizational culture and referent role. I knew this but I also knew that if I applied my interpersonal skills, the chance of me failing to mediate these two employees was not there. I decided that I had to resolve that conflict as early as possible so that it would not affect the productivity of my department. To resolve the conflict I called the two individuals each one at a time and listened to each one’s part of the story before allowing them to a negotiating table. I did this so that I can have the glimpse of what had caused the conflict. This is because I knew that for me not to have a repeat of the same I had to address the root cause of the conflict. Using my listening and analytical skills, I was able to identify the root cause of the problem that was just a little misunderstanding between them. The cause was too small and several times I had considered it very trivial and thus failing to address it. I called the two employees to a negotiation, which I believed would resolve the conflict. It was not a simple task since each of them had interest and was reluctant to compromise them but since they feared my capacity as their manager, they were more than willing to listening to me. I took advantage of this and using my negotiation and convincing skills, I was able to bring them to a point where each of them was willing to compromise something to gain something which is the major aspect of conflict negotiation. The issue of power was clearly revealed during the process of settling that conflict. Because of the powers I had due to my capacity as their manager I was able to call both the conflicting parties to the negotiating table. Also due to the powers I had they were keen to listen to my advice and caution. If I did not have the powers I have, I am certain that despite my personal ability I could not have been able to resolve the conflict. The issue of power can also be reveal by the fact that I could not be the first person to realize the conflict. Other team members could also have seen the same but due to lack of powers, they could not have resolved the problem. As I later realized other employees had tried to talk to the two who had conflict but their efforts were not fruitful. Ethical use of power is clearly revealed in this case of conflict negotiation. This is because I did not use my capacity to victimize any of the conflicting parties. I had the powers to have any of them fired but I chose not to do that. I only used the powers given to me by my capacity as a manager to help the two employees settle the conflict. I also did not reinforce anything on any of the conflicting parties. Instead, I chose to make each one of them see sense in what the other was complaining about and see the way out. The reason why I chose this approach is so that the solution to the conflict would come from the conflicting parties and thus they will not find it hard to abide by. This case can also reveal organizational politics. The politics revealed is that position is power in which people with highly ranked positions in an organization are respected and feared by their juniors. My position as their manager earned me respect and thus I was able to manage the negotiations. It also made these employees to somehow fear me and thus could not react badly to each other in my presence. The two employees also knew that if they do not settle the matter on this stage with me I might take the case to the senior manager who might have them fired. In this case we can say that the issue of politics helped in bringing the two conflicting parties to a compromising point where they were willing to give away in order to get. On my side, I did not politicize the issue. I took it, as a normal thing, which can happen to any individual, and only focused on finding the solution, which I knew, will improve the working conditions of each of the two employees and thus making them more efficient. Any manager should be able to use the power and influence given to him by his capacity as a manager and organizational politics to settle any organizational conflict occurring among his junior staffs. For someone to be able to do these, good interpersonal skills is required as well as good listening ability, good analytical skills and negotiation skills. In this case, power can be used to earn respect, influence can be used to strengthen the earned respect as well as creating an interpersonal relationship between the manager and other employees and politics can be used to bring the conflicting parties to a point where each one is willing to compromise some of his demands. I used power, influence, and organizational politics to resolve that conflict and it proved to be efficient. I managed to resolve the matter while maintaining a good reputation as a good manager among my junior staffs. A major lesson about power, influence and organizational politics that my career has provided me is that power earns you respect, influence strengthens the respect and builds an interpersonal relationship and politics causes fear among the conflicting parties. I have learned that if all the three are used in a balanced way, they can be very effective in settling any kind of conflict. I also learned that an unbalance us of the three aspects of management can result to unethical practices which can magnify the conflict instead of solving it. Reference Rahim, M. A. (2010). Managing Conflicts in Organizations, (4th Ed.). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Zartman, W. (2008). Negotiation and Conflict Management: Essay on Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Routledge. Read More