Conflict Resolution Skills Are Among

Conflict Resolution skills are among the skills most crucial to success in all areas of life. From kindergarteners on the playground to executives in the boardroom, those people with good conflict resolution skills tend to find greater success and experience less stress than those who are unable to manage conflict. This paper will describe research three conflict resolution strategies, and explain how those strategies can enhance group performance. These skills include outlining expectations, authentic listening, and establishing a win-win power dynamic. While these conflict resolution skills would work in any team environment, the intended audience for this research is the instructor and students in a college-level class. Therefore, the research in this paper will be geared towards demonstrating how good conflict resolution skills can enhance team work in an academic environment. This paper will make it clear that by outlining expectations, utilizing authentic listening, and establishing a win-win power dynamic, students can focus more on accomplishing the goals of a team and less on team dynamics, making them more effective and productive team members.

One of the best and most effective ways to resolve conflict is to try to avoid conflict. While avoiding conflict may not seem like a conflict resolution skill, avoiding conflict is a proactive step that good conflict resolution managers take at the beginning of a group project. Avoiding conflict does not mean that one is avoiding addressing conflict in a situation, which is actually denying conflict. Instead, avoiding conflict means that group members have taken positive steps to avoid potential problems. The first and most crucial step for conflict avoidance is to "have clear job descriptions and expectations. It is crucial that each person in the [team] understands the overall objective as well as their part in them" (McNamara, 2003). Therefore, it is important to clearly define expectations, so that each member of a group understands precisely what is expected of him or her, any timelines for the project, and the appropriate way to address any problems that arise in the project.

In a student group scenario, it is important for all students to have individual accountability for their project. However, because each student can be impacted by a team member's failure to meet group expectations, it is equally important for student team members to address how they will deal with a team member who is failing to live up to expectations. Furthermore, rather than suggesting that team members must work out their own individual differences, instructors should give credence to complaints that a group member is failing to live up to his or her individual expectations, and, if the student has failed to do so, punish that individual more severely than the entire group, but still hold the entire group accountable for the project's completion. After all, in the workforce, if a single team member was failing to perform, he or she would be subject to termination.

Event when a group has clearly defined expectations, conflict may arise in a group scenario. While it is difficult to be objective in the midst of a conflict scenario, the reality is that reasonable people can disagree about most topics and that there is rarely a single best approach to a project. Therefore, when conflict does arise, it is important for team members to try to remain as objective as possible. One way to increase one's objectivity is to use authentic listening with other team members, which may give each individual team member the best opportunity to understand other's points-of-view. Authentic listening involves: closing your mouth, not predicting or judging the outcome of a conversation before entering it, keeping open body language, asking questions when information is unclear, trying to put oneself in the other's position, listening to what is not being said, listening to how something is said, reacting to ideas rather than to the speaker, and being consistent throughout communications (ConflictResolution.com, 2009). When people actually take the time to actively listen to what the other person is saying, they have a better chance of seeing alternate solutions to the problem.