What Is Conflict

What is Conflict? The simple meaning of conflict is basically a disagreement through which the person or people involved recognize a threat to their needs, interests or concerns. With how things are now in modern life conflicts are inevitable. Anyone can get into a conflict. Sometimes little arguments lead to an intense conflict. Also, sometimes people overcome their conflicts quickly. I believe that some conflicts can be easily resolved because it teaches people how to deal with situations like that, and leads people to think about the conflicts.

It means that people learn from their mistakes.

Also, if the person has enough experience about dealing with conflicts, he or she will be able to resolve it easily. For example if someone was speaking aloud and was interrupted instead of straight away starting an argument they could remind the person to respect other people when speaking. We can understand from this that because of his or her knowledge in dealing with conflicts, she was able to solve it quickly before it increase into serious fight.

How we respond to conflict is in two ways, we have emotional responses which are the feelings we experience in conflict, reaching from anger and fear to depression and confusion.

Emotional responses are often misunderstood, as people tend to believe that others feel the same as they do. Therefore, differing emotional responses are confusing and, at times, threatening. We also have physical responses to conflict which play an important role in our ability to meet our needs in the conflict.

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They include high stress levels, body tension, and increased sweat, shallow or accelerated breathing, and rapid heartbeat. These responses are similar to those we experience in high-anxiety situations, and they may be managed through stress management techniques used by many people.

Establishing a calmer environment in which emotions can be managed is more likely if the physical response is addressed effectively. These are important factors into our experience during conflict, because they often tell us more about what is the true source of threat that we notice; by understanding our thoughts, feelings and physical responses to conflict, we may get better insights into the best potential solutions to the situation. One key point to understanding conflicts is seeing that each person may have a different view onto any given situation.

This could also be called the role of Perception. Some of these views would be one of which, gender and sexuality. Men and women often observe situations rather differently, based on both their experiences in the world. As a result, men and women will often approach conflictive situations with differing mind-sets about the desired outcomes from the situation, as well as the set of possible solutions that may exist. Another would be Knowledge (general and situational). People respond to given conflicts on the basis of the knowledge they may have about the issue at hand.

This includes specific knowledge about the situation (i. e. , “Do I understand what is going on here? “) and general knowledge (i. e. , “Have I experienced this type of situation before? “). Such information can influence the person’s willingness to engage in efforts to manage the conflict, either reinforcing confidence to deal with the dilemma or deflating the person’s willingness to openly consider alternatives. This can decide the confidence of a person when they going into a conflict. Although it is usually best to have a minimal amount of conflicts it is useful in some place such as in organisations.

In fact, conflict can be good for organizations because it encourages open-mindedness and helps avoid the trend toward group think that many organizations fall prey to. The key is learning how to manage conflict effectively so that it can serve as a catalyst, rather than a burden, to organizational improvement. Although it is often assumed that people avoid conflict, many people actually enjoy conflict to a certain degree because it can be the motivation for new thinking. Considering a different point of view which represents conflict can open up new possibilities and help to generate new ideas that might otherwise have not been considered.

It is like when you are in a race you will run faster when your second rather than first because you have that person in front of you pushing you to go faster. My final point about conflict is the reason why most people tend to avoid getting into conflict. Engaging in discussion and negotiation around conflict is something we normally approach with fear and hesitation, afraid that the conversation will go worse than the conflict has gone so far. In my opinion our responses, as said earlier, are likely to to include behaviours, feelings, thoughts and physical responses. If any of these responses shows tress factors that make us reluctant to talk things out, we are more inclined to follow the pathway of avoidance, basically because where scared. In addition, consider that our society tends to reward alternative responses to conflict, rather than negotiation, people who aggressively pursue their needs, arguing rather than co-operating with a situation, are often satisfied by others who prefer to put up with this. Managers and leaders are often rewarded for their aggressive, controlling approaches to problems, rather than taking a more compassionate approach to issues that may seem less decisive to the public or their staffs.

I find this to be unfair but it is my opinion on it. To conclude I believe that Conflict can be easily initiated but also easily resolved if handled in the right way or if he or she has experience. There are different responses to conflict which can lead to different outcomes of the conflict. Different people have different view on situations causing controversy between them. There can be use of conflict in organisations by making it beneficial to the person or company. Finally how I believe society sees conflict and why it is normally avoided which in my opinion it should be.