Conflict Analysis

Conflict Analysis

Student’s Name

Date

University of Washington Tacoma

Conflict Analysis

My mother has always been the peace-maker, mediator, or is it the “Kofi Annan” of our sibling conflicts?  Growing up among many siblings saw us get into a myriad of fights almost every other weekrom simple conflicts of who ate the other person’s food to nasty ones. Hence, I could relate entirely to the assignment on conflict analysis.  Conflict is defined as an enduring contest, dispute, struggle, or disagreement between two or more people or parties who have different views, ideas, thoughts, and feelings regarding some particular subject matter (Deutsch et al., 2011).  Conflict is an aspect of our daily life, and it is unavoidable and inevitable. The mastery of managing conflict is, therefore, quite admirable because that is where the challenge lies. According to Wilmot & Hocker, 2010, people in happy and unhappy relationships have disagreements, but they perceive and manage them differently. This paper will do a conflict analysis of a scene between two sisters and their father’s nurse. The paper will identify and discuss the struggle involved, analyze the type of conflict, and assess the parties’ style of managing the conflict and how they affects that struggle.

Figure 1 Cartoon representation  a conflict (courtesy of dreamstime.com)

1. Identification and discussion of the struggle.
2. a)       Provide a brief summary of the scenario

The video shows two sisters who have visited their indisposed 78-year-old father at a hospital, but they find that the conditions in his room are quite disturbing. They, therefore, proceeded to ask the nurse in charge, Susan, about the situation and what can be done to fix it.  They tell the nurse that their father’s room is messy and full of garbage, his IV has stayed empty for a while, and the light remains switched on, yet it irritates their sick father. They appear to be agitated because they say in as much as they have raised the issues of their father’s condition and room management severally, nothing seems to be done.  The sisters are all talking at the same time, and at some point, it looks like they are raising their voice.

They raise the issue of the expenses they are incurring and want to talk to Susan’s supervisor and the physician when they realize that their problem is not being addressed. Nurse Susan listens to them, but then instead of addressing the issue at hand, she says she’s held up taking care of another patient. She also tells them that they appear to be struggling with some unfortunate situation and that she does not understand what their frustration is all about. Despite assuring them that she will get housekeeping personnel to handle the mess, she asks the sisters if they are the ones who came with the garbage they seem to be complaining about.  The video ends when both parties are frustrated, and the conflict remains unsolved.

1. b)       Describe the context of the scenario.

The context of the scenario between the two sisters and Nurse Susan is a conflict and conflict management one. The video shows the viewer the type of conflict, the characteristics, and the management of the dispute at hand. The scenario portrays a dysfunctional conflict with the features of polarization, opposition, escalation, negative results, and drifting between the nurse and the two sisters.  It is the sisters against the nurse, and the conflict escalates in the end where the sisters want to talk to the supervisor.

1. c)       Discuss the relationships of the individuals in this scenario

The sisters visit their sick father in the hospital. Their father has a nurse called Susan, who is responsible for looking after him. In other words, she is in charge of anything pertaining to her patient. There is an interdependent relationship between Nurse Susan and the sisters because they need her to look after their father while she lacks the sisters because they are the ones who pay the bill, which translates to her wages. An interdependent relationship is where the parties involved are mutually reliant on each other.

1. d)       Analyze the cultural variables of this interaction

Culture includes the differences in outlook, ideas, body language, thought process, behavior, and values of people from different societies.  Culture variables are the immeasurable differences in the way people handle disagreements according to their societal ideas (Adler, 2007).  What might appear as “normal” for one individual might not be the same as someone else’s. The variables include time, space, thinking, power, environment, action, communication, individualism, competitiveness, and structure (Samovar et al., 2014). Some of these variables are present in the interaction between the two sisters and Nurse Susan. The Nurse’s communication is high-context because of her professional training, but the sisters display low context communication. Nurse Susan does not raise her voice and stays in context while the sisters talk loudly and go out of context as they stress their wants explicitly. The sisters’ communication is expressive, while Nurse Susan’s is instrumental as she tries to accomplish her nurse duties.

In terms of environment, the sisters believe that the nurse and hospital personnel have control or can control their father’s situation to suit what they want.  Nurse Susan handles time with a single focus, that is, she would instead do one task at a time, but the sisters, who seem to support multi-focusing, suggest that she can also handle their father’s needs even if she has other responsibilities.  She states that she is attending to another patient, but the sisters quickly interject and suggest that she also attends to their father. In terms of actions, the Nurse is focused on doing her duties, meaning she is task-centered. The sisters’ view is that the nurse should work on their Dad and handle it at that moment. When they cannot get their situation sorted, the sisters go to the culture variable of power. They stress on talking to the nurse’s supervisor and the physician who attends to their father. They believe in hierarchy.

2. Analyze the type of conflict.  Give examples of dialogue from the interaction
3. Discuss the perceived incompatible goals

According to Adler et al. (2007), perceived incompatible goals are part of a conflict and is a situation that arises where the goals of parties in a dispute seem to be mutually exclusive, . Still, in the real sense, mutually satisfactory answers can be agreed on. In this case, the goal of the two sisters is to have their Dad’s room situation fixed by having someone attend to him as soon as possible. On the other hand, Nurse Susan’s goal is to first attend to the patient she has at hand then, later on, she can attend to the sick father or have housekeeping clean up the room. The two parties have incompatible goals.

1. Analyze the conflict as functional or dysfunctional. Explain why you would categorize this as such.

Ironically, in as much as conflicts are disagreements, they can either be harmful or beneficial to relationships. The conflict in this scenario is dysfunctional. Gottman and Driver (2005) describe those conflicts that are beneficial to relationships as functional and harmful conflicts as dysfunctional.  Adler et al. (2007) give some features that make a battle be termed as dysfunctional. They include the opposition, polarization, drifting, escalation, disconfirmation, coercion, shortsightedness, and negative results. In the conflict between the two sisters and the nurse, we see polarization because the sisters gang up against the nurse; in other words, there are opposites in this conflict. The sisters see Nurse Susan as their opponent, hence there is the feature of opposition.

Moreover, the sisters drift from their main point of getting help for their father; for instance, there is drifting when they mention that they pay 700 dollars to keep their Dad in that hospital. Further, the conflict keeps escalating the more the two parties keep talking; the sisters keep getting agitated, and the nurse keeps making unnecessary comments that made the situation worse.  There is shortsightedness in this scenario when the sisters want to report the nurse and when they get agitated by her comments instead of focusing on the original issue. Lastly, the script ends up in negative results because the sisters are more agitated than earlier and want to speak to Nurse Susan’s superiors, and the situation itself remains unsolved.

1. Assess the parties’ styles of managing conflict. How do these styles affect this conflict?

Conflict styles are the habitual approaches that people use when their needs become incompatible with what others want. Every person has a default way of handling disagreements. Adler (2013) opines that there are six conflict styles that people use to manage disputes. They include avoidance, also termed as a lose-lose style where parties intentionally ignore and stay away from the conflict either physically or through lack of conversation.  Accommodation (lose-win) occurs when a person lets another have their way in a clash instead of asserting their views.  Competition or win/lose style is where parties have a great concern for themselves and less interest of others in the conflict and usually results in either passive or direct aggression.

Also, there is the compromise (lose-lose) style of handling conflict that involves parties getting partly what they wanted, but they sacrifice their goals to solve the dispute.  Collaboration or win-win style is where parties have high regard for each other’s needs in the conflict and usually end up with a solution that satisfies both parties. Lastly, disputes can be handled depending on the situation, the opposing party, and one’s goals.  In the sisters-nurse scenario, the parties use the completion style of handling conflict.  The sisters are insistent on having the nurse attend to their father as soon as possible and disregard the fact that she is attending to another patient. Nurse Susan also asserts that she wants to attend to the patient at hand and will handle the sisters’ complains later. The situation eventually ends up in aggression because they all raise their voices in displeasure with the sisters demanding to speak to the supervisor, and the nurse tells them to go ahead and do so. The win/lose style affects the conflict negatively because both parties are left feeling displeasure at each other, and the situation is not handled.

3. Design a strategy for the resolution of the conflict
4. Application of the win-win philosophy and discussion of how this conflict might have been resolved.

The win-win philosophy, also known as collaboration, is a conflict style where parties usually have high regard for each other’s views, feelings, and ideas during a clash such that they end up with a solution that is mutually satisfying to the parties’ needs.  Adler et al. (2007) posit some steps of conflict management that can be used in the win-win problem-solving philosophy. These steps would have been followed if the nurse and the two sisters used the win-win method. First, the parties would have defined their needs by deciding between their wants and needs. The pressing need in the sisters’ scenario was for their father’s IV to be refilled and probably the light to be switched off. The nurse’s need was to attend to her other patient first. The parties could then share these needs calmly to reach a point of collaboration. The other trick would be each party listening to the other and not all of them yelling their wants. Ideally, this would help the parties brainstorm, choose, and implement the most viable solution. The nurse could have listened to the sisters without making unwarranted comments, then they also hear out the nurse, and eventually, they would have reached an agreement. For instance, the nurse listens, then tells the sisters she understands their frustration and will get them another nurse or doctor to handle the situation immediately because at the moment, she also had a patient who needed urgent care. Through this style, the sisters would have remained calm and gone back to their father’s room to await help.

1. Develop a section summarizing your style for approaching conflict. You may use the first person to discuss your style and the implications of the style for approaching conflict in your personal and your professional life.

As I stated earlier, conflicts are inevitable in life. I have encountered conflicts in my personal and professional life. When I was younger, and in my teen years, I would employ the use of avoidance style of handling conflict whenever my brothers or friends did something that agitated me. However, as I grew up, I embraced the use of collaboration in managing disagreements. For instance, the other day, I had a misunderstanding with my dear friend and neighbor, Molly, concerning the guests we had invited to our home club.  Molly was furious that I had asked people she swore never to talk to. I reached out to her when we were both calm and listened to her while she expressed her displeasure, then I told her I fully understood and explained why I invited them. We reached a point of agreement eventually, and no one was at a loss. In my professional life, and as an intern during the vacations, I have also experienced work conflicts. However, I usually handle these according to the subject matter, situation, the parties involved, and the goals at hand. This is because of the hierarchy and cultural organization at work. The way I handle conflict with my fellow interns is not the same way I deal with a dispute with my supervisor or the CEO of the organization I work for.

4. Conclusion

The video gives a conflict scenario between two sisters and a nurse. The plot is more competitive, and both parties end up feeling dissatisfied as no solution is offered. Conflicts will arise in our daily lives. One minute you are at peace with your siblings, the next thing you are all fighting on what channel to watch. Therefore we should embrace them and learn to manage them.  Some conflicts are beneficial to relationships because they make bonds stringer, and these are known as functional conflicts. Dysfunctional conflicts are harmful and ruin relationships. According to Ramsbotham et al. (2011), functional disputes involve aspects of integration, de-escalation, cooperation, agreement, confirmation, foresight, focusing, and positive results while dysfunctional ones are characterized by opposition, polarization, negative consequences and escalation among others. Adler (2013) outlines several conflict styles that people use to manage disputes.

They include avoidance, collaboration, compromise, accommodation, competition, and handling conflicts depending on the situation and parties involved.  The collaboration or win-win problem-solving philosophy appears to be the best because parties respect the feelings of the parties involved, and the problem is usually deciphered with a mutually agreed resolution.  To sum up, relationships are pillars of society, and some conflicts do threaten their existence. However, we should master and learn the skills of managing conflicts well.

References

Adler, A. (2013). The practice and theory of individual psychology (Vol. 133). Routledge.

Adler, R. B., Rosenfeld, L. B., & Proctor, R. F. (2007). Interplay: The process of interpersonal communication. Oxford University Press, USA.

Deutsch, M., Coleman, P. T., & Marcus, E. C. (Eds.). (2011). The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice. John Wiley & Sons.

Gottman, J. M., & Driver, J. L. (2005). Dysfunctional marital conflict and everyday marital interaction. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 43(3-4), 63-77.

HeidiBray1. (2010, November 1). Heidi Bray. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX2LWIZjo5s

Ramsbotham, O., Miall, H., & Woodhouse, T. (2011). Contemporary conflict resolution. Polity.

Samovar, L. A., Porter, R. E., McDaniel, E. R., & Roy, C. S. (2014). Intercultural communication: A reader. Cengage Learning.

Wilmot, W. W., & Hocker, J. L. (2010). Interpersonal conflict. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.