Kendra Farmer
CCJ2358-12_Week4
February 8, 2013
Everest University Online
Listening and Response
The best thing for a person to do when confronted with such a statement is to defuse it. They must by all means avoid escalating the conflict through inflammatory statements of their own. What the person should do is to remove the focus from the personal issues at hand. Instead, they should do what negotiators are told to do. They should focus on the problem, not on the person. Therefore, instead of focusing on the emotion that was conveyed by the conflict starter statement, they should focus on the issue at hand.
For example, imagine that someone says "Why did you do that -- you always do that just to annoy me!" At that point, the recipient of the statement must focus on what was done, not the emotion in the statement. They should focus on what they have done that annoyed the person and how it can be fixed, not on the fact that the person has attacked them personally.
Conflict can generally be avoided through trying to compromise with the person who is trying to start the conflict. The person who is confronted with the conflict starter statement must try to find a way to acknowledge and validate the demands of the other person without giving in to them. An attempt needs to be made to make the other person feel that you acknowledge the validity of their emotions and desires. In addition to compromise, I feel that conflict can also be avoided by trying to see the other person's point of view and finding a solution where there is give and take on all sides. No one person should have the full benefit or pay the full price.
The problem with conflict resolution is that it implies that all involved parties are working in their own rational best interests. If this is the case, conflict usually does not arise in the first place, since all parties can see the benefit of working out a situation, of finding the "win-win" situation that benefits