Section Seven
Module 26: Conflicts, Mistakes, and Conflict Management
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How can we resolve the mistakes and disagreements that will occur when we try to incorporate culture, language, and identity into our practice?
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After working with the material in this module, readers will be able to
describe several known predictors of conflict
use the evaluation of Intent, Impact, Responsibility, and Reaction as a conflict-management system
use Thomas & Kilmann’s (1974) notions of Collaborate, Compromise, Compete, Accept, and Avoid as a conflict-management system
distinguish between the underlying positions or values and the specific demands or needs being expressed in any conflict
use a shared decision-making model such as STAND Together as a conflict-management system
describe the use of multiple conflict management systems for the particular application of cultural or identity-related conflicts in speech-language pathology clinical or professional practice
Despite our best efforts, we will occasionally make cultural or identity-based mistakes, and we will occasionally find ourselves in the midst of brief or ongoing culturally-influenced conflicts. How should we respond? Module 26 provides several models that can help us think about about conflicts, mistakes, and conflict management.
Understanding the Known Predictors of Conflict
Conflict occurs when two or more people (or groups or institutions) want different and mutually incompatible outcomes, or when people are trying to address different needs through incompatible actions. If there is one more cookie, and you and I both want it, we will find ourselves in conflict. Similarly, if I am trying to satisfy my desire to bake cookies at the same time that you are trying to satisfy your desire to clean the oven, we will also find ourselves in conflict – even if both of us would generally describe ourselves as fans of both cookies and clean ovens.
In speech-language pathology, and in working with people whose group-based backgrounds and individual characteristics differ from our own, conflict is inevitable. Some of these conflicts will be brief, simple, and almost unrelated to culture, language, or identities; people from different backgrounds can have simple disagreements about the last cookie, too.
More frequently, however, when conflicts occur between people from different backgrounds, or between people whose identities differ in fundamental ways that matter to both of them, their conflicts will be more complex and more deeply rooted. The conflict will not feel as simple as two people each hoping for another cookie. The conflict will involve deep-seated assumptions and beliefs about which people deserve cookies; which people should know to give up the last cookie; what cookies represent; and who is allowed or required to take, offer, reject, or accept which cookies.
Cultural and identity-based conflicts emerge from differences in people’s underlying assumptions about the world and about what they believe to be fundamental basic principles.
A conflict with a client or a colleague whose cultural background and identities differ from yours will probably not be a straightforward, single, solvable disagreement.
Instead, you might both find yourselves upset that the other person is always so disrespectful, hasty, slow, presumptuous, lazy, overbearing, rude, wasteful, thin-skinned about such small issues, and determined not to understand what you really meant.
How can we prevent these kinds of conflicts?
Much of the material from throughout this website can help. The 16 Questions matrix, for example, helps us recognize the pieces of what is happening, when we are approaching a situation using one set of assumptions while another person is approaching the same situation with another set of assumptions. Focusing on who, what, and when we and the other person are each from, in, and with, and then focusing on who and what we are both for, can help us understand what is happening, understand our own reactions, and understand the other person’s views and needs. From that base, our fundamental goal and method of recognizing, respecting, and responding to another person’s needs, even and especially when they are different from our own, can then help us to reduce and solve the conflict.
Reducing or preventing some culture- and identity-based conflicts can also be helped by knowledge about groups, identities, continua, and interactions. As we have addressed throughout these modules, high-quality and respectful care occurs when we remember that groups and individuals can fall anywhere along the many continuous dimensions that describe them, and when we remember that all places along the many defining continua are equally reasonable. The more we understand our own assumptions, and the more we come to realize that everyone else is acting from a different but equally acceptable set of assumptions, the less surprised we are to come across a new set of assumptions and the less likely we are to perceive someone else’s assumptions as in conflict with our own. We also have specific multicultural, cross-cultural, multilinguistic, and cross-linguistic skills (from Sections Five and Six) that can help us to work effectively with people who differ from us, as well as Cross et al.’s (1989) models (Module 25) for evaluating how groups of people are working.
And finally, it also helps to understand that conflicts occur under known and predictable circumstances.
The causes of specific conflicts obviously vary across situations, but the core elements that lead people to find themselves in conflict are amazingly stable across time and circumstances. (You might enjoy comparing, for example, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, which focuses on global geopolitical conflicts, and any advice column from any magazine or website that addresses, among other conflicts, why Great Aunt Tilda is upset that her new son-in-law has not written his thank-you notes yet.)
Some of the many common predictors of conflict are summarized in Box 26.1. Try to think of a range of examples for each predictor, as you read Box 26.1, and notice especially that all of them can be exacerbated if the parties are starting from culturally or individually very different starting points.
Box 26.1. Predictors of Conflict
Differences in the Parties’ Values, Information, Assumptions, and Interpretations
Conflict can occur when people or groups disagree about what matters, about what has happened, about what should happen, or about what something means.
Divergent Goals
Conflict can occur when people are trying to achieve different, diverging, or mutually incompatible goals in the same space, at the same time, or using the same resources.
Unrecognized Needs
Conflict can occur when people or groups are unaware of their own needs or unaware of the other party’s needs.
Real or Perceived Lack of Resources or Options
Conflict can occur when there is not enough of a material or other resource to go around, when there is not enough time to complete a desired task, or when there are not enough people to achieve what some parties to the conflict had assume would be achieved. Similarly, conflict can occur when participants feel limited by a lack of options. These predictors of conflict are important enough that believing they exist is as problematic as their true existence; people or groups who believe that resources are short or that they are out of options will hoard what they do have, fight to protect it, and/or fight to get more, whether those resources and options are objectively limited or not.
Controlling Behaviors
The presence of attempted or successful controlling behaviors on the part of either or both of two individuals or groups predicts future or continued conflict between the two. Controlling behaviors include interrupting the other person, monopolizing the conversation, and attempts at blocking the other party from engaging in the task, in related efforts, or in negotiations intended to solve the conflict. Controlling behaviors can be attempted by individuals or achieved through procedural, legislative, or political means.
Unrelated Anger
Conflict is more likely when one or more of the people involved are already mad, even if the previous anger is about something else. (Have you ever warned your loved ones, “Don’t push me this evening! I had a rough day at work?”) At the organizational or political level, groups’ or individuals’ continuing anger about previous events also often precedes current or ongoing conflicts, even if that pre-existing anger is about almost unrelated issues.
Intent to Harm or a Determination Not to Resolve the Conflict
Finally, conflict becomes relatively likely when people are actively seeking conflict, when one party is objectively intending to harm the other person or group, or when one party is objectively seeking to continue an existing conflict for any reason.
Did you recognize how common and widespread these issues are, as you read Box 26.1? You were probably reminded of personal examples you have experienced, global political or historical examples, the plots of fictional movies or novels, and examples in the realm of culturally influenced speech-language pathology practice, for each of these same general predictors of conflict. We like to think of ourselves as unique and our conflicts as special, but we are all actually very predictable sometimes!
Your Turn
If it feels safe for you to do so, think about a personal or professional conflict from your past in terms of the predictors of conflict described in Box 26.1. If you would prefer, stick with a historical or fictional example that you can think about with some detachment or that feels safe for you to discuss. Which of the predictors of conflict were in place, for the situation you are thinking about? How might changes in one or more of these predictors have prevented or changed the conflict?
The predictors of conflict in Box 26.1 can exist in situations that have almost nothing to do with culture or identity. They also describe many culturally-based conflicts. For each predictor, try to think of an example that would have less to do with culture or identity and an example that would have more to do with culture or identity.
One response to the known predictors of conflict described in Box 26.1 might be to try to avoid all such situations. Why won’t that solution work? When might such a solution be at least partially successful?
Conflict Management
Because conflict is predictable and inevitable among human beings, professionals in many disciplines attempt to manage conflicts – from international diplomats to marriage counselors. The appropriate way to manage a conflict depends in part on the specific circumstances, but all conflict management methods are also similar in many ways.
Let’s think about three general ways to think about conflict management that can each be appropriate, in some circumstances, as we work in multi-cultural, multi-lingual, cross-cultural, and cross-lingual speech-language pathology.
Conflict Management Model #1: Intent, Impact, Responsibility, Reaction
Many conflicts can be managed by thinking about these four constructs. Read our first example, in Box 26.2. (Which of the predictors of conflict from Box 26.1 do you recognize?)
Box 26.2. A Literal Impact
Betty was driving and accidentally hit someone else’s car. It was completely her fault.
Intent: What did Betty want to happen?
Betty’s intent in this situation was probably to drive to her desired destination without hitting anything.
Impact: What has happened?
Regardless of her intent, what was the actual impact of Betty’s actions? “Impact” here was a literal impact; Betty hit the other car.
Responsibility: Is any part of what has happened Betty’s responsibility?
Yes. She had not intended to hit the other car, but she hit the other car. The accident was her responsibility. (No need to start parceling blame or identifying all causes. You are correct if you are thinking that the accident could not have happened if the other car had not been there. In this framework, though, assume that the other car deserved to be where it was and did nothing wrong, and think in simple terms about what happened: Betty hit the other car.)
Reaction: What would Betty do?
Assume for everyone’s sake that the accident was minor, and assume that Betty is honest with everyone about what has happened. Her reaction will probably include some combination of asking if anyone in the other car needs first aid, calling a tow truck, admitting to the police that she hit the other car, and calling her insurance company. She might also make some longer-term changes to her behavior; if she recognizes that she hit the other car because she was looking at her phone or racing a yellow light, for example, she might be careful not to make those mistakes again.
Did you see how the thought process helps us distinguish between four important aspects of the conflict and our reactions? Notice, and this is important, that Betty’s reaction was based on the impact of her behavior, not on her intent. Everyone knows that Betty did not intend for any of this to happen, but we also expect that her response will be a better match to what has actually happened than standing in the street insisting she did not intend to hit the other car.
Now try the clinical example, in Box 26.3.
Box 26.3. Clinical Decision-Making
You are providing intervention for a client who has a good prognosis for improvements. The client is committed to the program, working hard, and doing everything you ask, with terrific family support. After several weeks of treatment, however, despite their outstanding effort, the client has made no progress.
Intent: What did you want to happen?
Impact: What has happened?
Responsibility: Is any part of what has happened your responsibility?
Reaction: What would you do?
Did this one feel different from Betty’s car accident? You might not have thought of this example as demonstrating a conflict at all, but the thought process here turns out to be similar in some important ways.
Your intent, in a clinical scenario like this, was obviously for the client to improve. If the impact of your treatment was that the client did not improve, then you would recognize the mismatch (or conflict) between your intent and the impact of your choices, accept at least part of the responsibility for what is happening (or not happening), and make some changes to the client’s therapy program.
We make such changes routinely, as clinicians; this is why we gather progress monitoring data and make client-centered clinical decisions as independent professionals. In a clinical situation like this, there might be some room for starting to divide up the responsibility for the impact, because the client’s underlying condition or some other unknown variables could be part of why they are not improving (and in some situations, although not in this particular hypothetical, the client’s actions might share some of the responsibility for a lack of progress). Even if part of the responsibility lies elsewhere, however, we easily accept as clinicians that obtained treatment outcomes are at least partially our responsibility, and we react by changing our treatment methods when our clients are not making the gains that we had intended for them to make. Remember that; it’s important.
Now try analyzing the conversation in Box 26.4.
Box 26.4. A Surprise Compliment
You are talking with a friend, just chatting. You are not fishing for compliments or expecting them to compliment you about anything; you’re just talking. After something you’ve said, your friend says, “Cool! That was great of you.”
Intent: What did you want to happen?
Impact: What has happened?
Responsibility: Is any part of what has happened your responsibility?
Reaction: What would you do?
In this situation, your intent was merely to talk, but the impact of your talking was that your friend was impressed and surprised you with a compliment. You would probably, at least to yourself, accept part of the responsibility for impressing them, for the compliment, and also for whatever your previous action had been that you are being complimented for (you did in fact say the thing that you are being complimented for, and you did in fact previously think or do whatever the previous thing was you were describing in your conversation). Your external reaction might include some socially appropriate deflection (the “oh, it’s nothing” response), but you might also thank your friend for the compliment or return a compliment to them about something they have done or said. If you tend to think in terms of “paying it forward,” you might react by complimenting a couple other people that day. And you might even find yourself, later, remembering that your friend had been impressed and repeating the behavior that had resulted in the compliment.
Notice, here, that you were surprised by your conversational partner’s reaction (your intent was not to be impressing them or finagling a compliment out of them), but you still accepted their comment as true – just as we had accepted that Betty did hit the other car, and just as we accept that sometimes our clinical choices are not leading to our desired outcomes and need to be changed.
Now think about one last example. Try Box 26.5.
Box 26.5. A Surprise Conflict
You are talking with a friend, just chatting. You are not fishing for compliments, and you certainly are not trying to be culturally inappropriate or offensive. The topic is not even especially culturally oriented, as far as you are aware. You are just talking, and you thought it was all going perfectly well. After something you said, though, your friend says, “Oof. That was pretty culturally offensive.” They are not referring to someone else’s action that you were describing, or anything external; they are telling you that they find something you said or did to be culturally inappropriate or culturally offensive.
Intent: What did you want to happen?
Impact: What has happened?
Responsibility: Is any part of what has happened your responsibility?
Reaction: What would you do?
Does the example in Box 26.5 feel different for some reason? Why?
Let’s use the same four questions.
Intent: What did you want to happen?
You wanted to be chatting with someone. You did not intend to be culturally offensive; you did not really intend to be particularly cultural in any specific way at all.
Impact: What has happened?
The impact of what you said is again that your conversational partner reacted in a way that surprised you, but this time they were not impressed and have not complimented you; this time it is a complaint or a criticism. Depending on what you said or what the other person has reacted to, part of the impact might be that you have hurt someone you care about, that you have angered your conversational partner, that you have embarrassed yourself, or that you have now created a situation where another person thinks something about you that you do not want them to be thinking.
Responsibility: Is any part of what has happened your responsibility?
Yes. Just as we accept responsibility for hitting someone else’s car, for treatment choices that did not help our clients after all, and for saying things that result in unexpected compliments, we need to accept responsibility for our statements and actions when someone else finds them culturally problematic, inappropriate, or offensive.
But are you resisting this answer about responsibility for this example?
Many people do resist, when the topic is culture or identity. Is it really your responsibility that your conversational partner chose to be offended by something you said, when you genuinely did not mean to be offensive? How do we know that the other person is not overinterpreting, misinterpreting, or layering their own issues on top of your perfectly acceptable statement or behavior? This very common resistance, in situations of cultural differences, is actually part of the fourth element: your reaction to what has happened.
Reaction: What would you do? What should you do? And why do our reactions in cultural situations differ from our reactions in other situations?
One very common reaction, in situations of cultural differences, is that people often deny the impact by insisting on the intent. We fall back on responses like “I didn’t mean to,” “I didn’t mean it that way,” “The other person misunderstood me,” or “The other person overreacted.” For everything from jokes about a group of people to comments about a person’s general tendencies to a specific action someone has taken, you have probably overheard or been part of conversations that included explanations such as “That’s just how I was raised,” “They are overreacting,” and “I didn’t mean anything by it.” At the societal level, the negative or continuing impacts of large decisions, histories, policies, and procedures are also routinely minimized or denied with some version of insisting on the intent or insisting that the obtained impact was not the intent.
Why?
Notice that denying the impact by insisting on the intent was possible as a reaction in all of our previous scenarios. Betty could have asserted, honestly, that she did not intend to hit the other car. You did not intend to select a treatment that would result in no benefit for your client. You were not trying to impress your friend or fishing for a compliment. Moreover, the way you were talking that led to the compliment probably did reflect “how you were raised,” and your complimentary friend probably was “overreacting” to something you meant merely as a simple story, not as a request for a compliment.
Question: Why is denying the intent a more common reaction in cultural situations than in the others?
Answer: The difference is that in the other scenarios most of us are ready to pivot, change, or learn, meaning that we can quickly move beyond “I didn’t mean to.”
Whether we meant to or not, in our first three scenarios, we recognized and accepted the rest of what has happened. Similarly, in cultural or identity-based conflicts, we need to recognize that, whether we meant to or not, our words or our behavior had a certain impact on someone, in a way that we are at least partially responsible for.
In cultural situations, as in most other situations, the appropriate reaction needs to accept and address the impact, in the context of or to the extent of our responsibility, not deny the impact or stop at insisting on our original intent.
Most multi-cultural and cross-cultural learning focuses on our positive intents and on strategies, approaches, information, or specific ways that seek to make our impacts match our positive intents. We intend to serve all populations; we intend to recognize, respect, and respond to all clients’ cultural needs; we try to work correctly with interpreters; we want to use our clients’ foods in dysphagia therapy, and so on.
The first point here, as we think about conflict management techniques, is that multi-cultural and cross-cultural work must also include thinking about what our reaction should be when the impact of our action does not match our intent.
The second point here is that you already know what your reaction should be when the impact of your action does not match your intent. You do it in other realms of your life all the time.
The only trick, the hard part, the next step, is being able to do it in multi-cultural, cross-cultural, or other culturally-influenced situations and interactions.
We are going to make mistakes, as we work with other people in multi-cultural, cross-cultural, multi-linguistic, and cross-linguistic situations. We are going to say the wrong thing, not say something we should have said, do the wrong thing, or not do something we should have done. Mistakes happen as we are learning, and mistakes happen as the world changes around us. What should our reaction be, when the impact of our behavior did not match the intent of our behavior – i.e., when we have made a mistake?
Use the examples of Betty’s car accident, your routine decisions to change clients’ treatment programs, and your friend’s compliment to help you think about what a good reaction to a cultural or identity-related mistake might look like. Box 26.6 provides some possibilities.
Box 26.6. Possible Productive, Solution-Oriented Reactions to Cultural Mistakes, All Based on Our Common, Productive, Solution-Oriented Reactions to Other Mistakes
If you have said or done the wrong thing: Apologize.
You might say, “I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me.”
If someone tells you that you have said or done something culturally inappropriate: Thank them for the information, as you would thank them for a compliment or thank anyone who had helped you learn something.
You might say, “Thanks for letting me know.”
Clarify your original intent and link the actual obtained outcome to your new action, the same way you might as you introduce a new treatment approach. (Be sure you understand the complexities about this option, as described in the main text.)
Clinically, you probably say, “The first treatment I tried doesn’t seem to be helping the way I had hoped it would. Let’s try something else.”
Socially, you might say, “I did not mean to be offensive. I won’t use that phrasing anymore.”
Depending on who has pointed something out to you, you might ask them to help you learn about the issue or learn about what to do instead. (Be sure you understand the complexities about this option, as described in the main text.)
You might say, “Would you mind explaining why? I would genuinely like to understand more about this” or “Thanks for letting me know. What do you think I should do instead in the future?”
If you have made a cultural, linguistic, or identity-related mistake, think of it like having made a mistake on a test. Maybe you thought you knew the answer and turned out to be wrong. Maybe you were aware that you did not know the answer. Maybe you didn’t even know the question existed, much less understand the answer.
Now you know! You have learned. You accept the new correct information, and you move on.
If you have made a cultural, linguistic, or identity-related mistake, think of it like having missed one serve during a tennis game or having missed one shot during basketball practice.
If you understand even a small part of what went wrong, you can use that information as feedback about your performance and try something different next time.
Do some of these options feel easier for some mistakes than for others? They will be, that’s true.
And notice two important sets of caveats and details about two of these options.
When we choose to react by clarifying our intent, we need to link our intent, the actual impact of our first action, our acceptance of some responsibility for the impact, and our new reaction. “I didn’t mean it that way” is not productive; that’s getting stuck at denying the impact by insisting on the intent. If you choose to clarify your intent, keep going: “My goal was not to offend you. I can see that I have offended you. I am sorry, and I am going act this different way in the future.”
Similarly, when we choose to react by asking for an explanation, we need to be very careful about who we are asking to do what work for us. It is inappropriate to expect the person you have hurt to teach you things that it is not their responsibility to have to teach you, a point that the car accident and treatment selection parallels might help make. You would never ask the driver of the car you hit to explain to you why it is wrong that you hit them, and you certainly would not expect them to give you driving lessons. You won’t ask your client to do the professional work of finding another treatment option to try. Similarly, in culturally complex situations, we do not ask the people we have harmed through our cultural stereotypes or other mistakes to do the work of teaching us how not to discriminate against them (unless they are volunteering to help us understand them and their needs; that is a different situation entirely, and we should listen to them). Asking for an explanation is a good option when someone you trust has informed you that your words or actions have hurt someone else or are culturally problematic with respect to some other people. Listening to other people explain their views and their needs is always a good option, too. But never expect the driver of the car you hit to give you driving lessons.
Your Turn
Think about a specific cultural, linguistic, or identity-related mistake that you can imagine yourself making, given your own journeys, knowledge, activities, and geographic area. How would Intent-Impact-Responsibility-Reaction play out for that mistake? Which of the reactions in Box 26.6 might be appropriate, and which would not?
Conflict Management Model #2: Collaborate, Compromise, Compete, Accept, Avoid
Have you ever completed a quiz that attempted to identify your “conflict management style,” maybe at a pop-psychology website or in a management training seminar? If so, it was probably based on Thomas and Kilmann’s original (Thomas, 1976; Thomas & Kilmann, 1974) and continuing research in industrial and organizational psychology.
As described in Thomas and Kilmann’s systems, conflict management styles reflect the interaction of two underlying dimensions of human behavior: assertiveness and cooperativeness. Combinations of higher or lower assertiveness with higher or lower cooperativeness are then described as resulting in five basic conflict management approaches: collaborating, compromising, competing, accommodating, and avoiding.
Some discussions of conflict management prioritize one style over another, often praising collaboration or criticizing people who compete too aggressively (or who avoid all conflict). Thomas and Kilmann emphasize, however, that no approach is necessarily or objectively better or worse than any other; that having all styles available in our interpersonal repertoires can be helpful; and that the goal of the framework is to help us match our response to the characteristics of any specific problem, situation, or conflict.
Let’s think about how five basic styles on two continua, inspired by Thomas and Kilmann’s original but with a few minor adjustments, might serve as a second model for helping us manage culturally relevant conflicts in speech-language pathology.
Figure 26.1, to start with, addresses the influence of our commitment to a particular outcome of the conflict on the style we might select for that conflict. This continuum is similar to Thomas and Kilmann’s “assertiveness” continuum, in that people tend to be more assertive or even aggressive within a conflict when they care about a specific outcome.
Figure 26.1. Five Possible Conflict Management Styles, Arranged on a Continuum That Reflects Commitment to a Specific Single Outcome (Based on Work Originally Completed by Thomas, 1976, and Thomas & Kilmann, 1974).
Start at the left of Figure 26.1. If I am committed to a specific outcome, I am more likely to fight for it, adopting what we might call a competitive style to the conflict. If I am not committed to any particular outcome, however, as shown toward the right in Figure 26.1, I might accept someone else’s suggestion, or I might opt out of (avoid) the conflict altogether.
(Figure 26.1 uses “accept” as a variation on Thomas and Kilmann’s idea of “accommodating” someone else’s request or suggestion. “Accept” refers to accepting another person’s request or suggestion, not accepting the conflict itself as a permanent difference of opinion or argument that will never be solved.)
At intermediate points along the continuum shown in Figure 26.1, I am somewhat committed to parts of an outcome or to a larger set of possible outcomes. In these cases, I might choose to compromise (seek a solution that gives each of us part of what we had originally asked for) or choose to collaborate (work together to develop a new and mutually acceptable solution that neither of us had originally asked for).
Now look at Figure 26.2, which places the same five conflict management approaches on another important continuum. This time, instead of thinking about the specific conflict itself, we are thinking about how committed we might be to maintaining a productive relationship with the other person(s) involved.
Figure 26.2. Five Possible Conflict Management Styles, Arranged on a Continuum That Reflects Commitment to Preserving a Positive Relationship with the Other Person or Entity (Based on Work Originally Completed by Thomas, 1976, and Thomas & Kilmann, 1974).
Notice, first of all, that accept, avoid, and compete have changed places in Figure 26.2, as compared with Figure 26.1.
If my overriding concern is not any particular outcome to our conflict, but whether I can feel good about our continuing to have a pleasant relationship in the future (toward the left, in Figure 26.2), I might be relatively likely to accept your suggestion, or to allow you to prevail in our conflict. If my relationship with you is less important to me, however (toward the middle-right, in Figure 26.2), I would be more willing to compete with you directly. Alternatively, I might not even bother to compete with you (avoid the conflict entirely, at the far right), precisely because I am not seeking to cultivate any future relationship with you. Collaborating and compromising remain intermediate options, now with the additional distinction that I will probably prefer collaborating (seeking a new solution together) if I value our continuing relationship, in part because compromising might include requiring you to give up something you had originally wanted.
The larger point of Figures 26.1 and 26.2, as Thomas and Kilmann emphasize throughout their work, is not that we each have “a style” of conflict management. The larger points are that we each have multiple styles (or reactions) at our disposal and that knowing which one or which combination to select requires us to know what we are fighting for in two distinct ways. Each approach not only reflects but also is more or less likely to lead to our achieving our original desired outcome, and each approach not only reflects but also is more or less likely to lead to our maintaining a positive and productive relationship with the other person or group involved in the conflict. We need to know which of these two outcomes matters to us, as we determine how to approach any conflict.
Your Turn
Use Figures 26.1 and 26.2 to discuss several different conflict management options for each of the following scenarios. Are you aware that you might be relatively likely to select a particular conflict management style, if you found yourself in one of these scenarios? Why? Link your explanation to something from Figure 26.1 or Figure 26.2. What would happen for you, given who you are, if you tried another style in that scenario? (Your friends and colleagues will have different answers from yours. What can you learn from their experiences and opinions?)
Your roommate wants the last cookie.
A stranger approaches you on the street and asks for your last cookie.
In the middle of what you had thought was a perfectly fine conversation, a friend surprises you by saying, “Wow. What you just said was hugely culturally offensive.”
A child’s parents ask you to stop using some books you love in your therapy, because they are offended by how the books depict people from a particular cultural background.
The adult children of an older patient tell you that their religious leader has recommended a treatment method that you believe to be an inappropriate choice for their family member.
Your department has interviewed two people for a job, Joan and Fred. You believe Joan to be much better qualified to do the work, but some other members of your department say they are “unsure” about her. They suggest that Fred would be a “better fit” in your group. You find your colleagues’ concerns about Joan to be exaggerated, unfair, based on obvious prejudices about her background, discriminatory, and probably illegal, and you also believe that hiring Fred would prevent some growth that your department needs. The tradition in your department is for everyone to discuss both candidates and take an informal vote, before the director makes a final decision about who to hire.
Your school board is considering a new rule that would require the use of at least some multilingual materials with all children or that would prohibit the use of any multilingual materials with any children (try discussing this example in both directions!). You and several of the other speech-language pathologists and classroom teachers in your building and across your district disagree with each other about the new rule and about whether you should or should not prepare individual or group statements for the board’s next public meeting.
Conflict Management Model #3: “STAND Together”
Finally, let’s incorporate into our conflict management toolkit a distinction that is common in many conflict management methods and that we have mentioned briefly in previous modules: the difference between specific requests or immediate demands, often known as a party’s “positions,” and broader or more fundamental goals, beliefs, and underlying needs, often referred to as the parties’ general “interests.” This distinction appears often in legal mediations, including for contract disputes, divorce or parenting mediations, and other civil disputes. Often the parties begin with extreme and incompatible positions (“the divorce settlement should be that I get the house and both cars and all the money!”), and an experienced mediator then helps them recognize that their shared interests (in the children’s current and future wellbeing, or in ensuring that the divorce gets finalized quickly without paying all the money to the attorneys) can lead them to identify some solutions together.
Conflict management in this sense often combines all five of Thomas and Kilmann’s (1974) approaches with the additional dimension of using the parties’ true underlying interests as ways of solving what appear to be unresolvable differences in their surface-level positions. You might already be familiar with the distinction, and some of the methods that can help, if you have ever been involved in a conflict between a parent and a child that focused on one thing (the toddler’s refusal to stay in bed, or the teenager’s request for a tattoo) when you knew that the real issue was much larger (the child’s need to be asserting the next level of her independence, and the parent’s need to be keeping their child safe or looking out for longer-term consequences that they know the child cannot yet appreciate).
The distinction between positions and interests, and the importance of combining multiple conflict management approaches to solve any specific problem, both also characterize the many systems that are recommended for individual people who are trying to “fight fair” in ways that can both solve the problem at hand and also preserve their relationship. One example, shown in Figure 16.3, will serve the purpose here and might provide you with one more option for managing cultural differences: “Don’t fight; STAND together instead.”
Figure 26.3. A “STAND Together” Model for Conflict Resolution
Models such as the one shown in Figure 26.3 are common in interpersonal instructional or counseling situations ranging from teaching children how to resolve playground disagreements to teaching couples or families how to have productive disagreements, and you have probably seen similar models before. Instead of fighting about a swing by pulling on it, for example, children might be encouraged to take turns stating specifically what they each want and asking the other child what they want (often taught as “use your words”); recognize that they both want the swing specifically (a position or need) and also in a larger sense want something to do during recess and want friends (underlying interests); discuss and negotiate solutions that address their specific immediate needs and their larger interests (including possibly that they could take turns on the swing every 5 minutes, share the swing by dividing recess in half, push each other on the swing – or go play on the slide together instead, if the fight was never about the swing in the first place); and then decide together on one option.
The same sort of approach works for adults trying to resolve everything from who should fold the laundry to whether a state agency should fund a particular agricultural project to whether we should offer two sections of CSD 402 next semester or only one. Stating specific issues, asking for and acknowledging the other person’s specifics, distinguishing between immediate positions or needs and more fundamental interests, and deciding together, when used together as a set of strategies, has many advantages. If both partners are committed to finding a solution, this structure allows a productive conversation. The emphasis on deciding together results in solutions with shared ownership, which the parties are more likely to accept than solutions imposed upon them. This structure also prevents unproductive arguments of the form “You always…” / “Well, you never…” (which most of us have found ourselves futilely trapped in at one time or another!).
A model such as STAND Together also helps in cultural, linguistic, or identity-based conflicts, in part because it pulls together many of the themes from throughout this discussion of mistakes and conflict management. Whether you think of your conflict management actions using Intent-Impact-Responsibility-Reaction, or using Thomas and Kilmann’s notions of goals and styles, or using a model for shared decisionmaking such as STAND Together, the larger point is that we have many options, and many ways to try to make things better, when our efforts in cultural, linguistic, and identity-based speech-language pathology seem to have gone awry.
Your Turn
Use the STAND Together framework to roleplay solution-focused conversations for any of the scenarios presented in the previous Your Turn segment.
Use the STAND Together framework to discuss these two new scenarios.
You share a small office with your building’s one other speech-language pathologist. She is noticeably younger or older than you are, and she is from a distinctly different cultural background from yours. Her patients, your colleagues, and your managers love her and respect the high quality of her work. You agree about the high quality of her work with the patients, but you perceive her desk to be messy and her interactions with the physical therapists to be inappropriately personal. You have never said anything to her about these issues, in part because you are not sure whether they are cultural differences, age-related differences, personal differences, or none of your business. One morning a coffee cup falls from her desk and breaks, in part because of the relatively crowded state of her desk. When the physical therapists stop by at lunchtime to say hello, she complains to them about her broken cup. They laugh, which upsets her, and you finally can’t help yourself. You tell her that if she wasn’t always so messy she wouldn’t break things and wouldn’t need to go running to the physical therapists for sympathy, and it’s not the physical therapists’ fault for laughing, because this whole situation is funny and completely of her own making. She launches right back at you, saying that you have obviously never liked her because of her age and her cultural background and that she’s going to go file a formal complaint against you with your manager. (What might a STAND Together conversation look like right now? When in the past could this situation have been averted? How might several STAND Together conversations at different times have helped?)
One of your clients at the middle school is a boy who stutters. He works hard and seems to enjoy his sessions with you. He has no other speech or language difficulties, but his stuttering is severe enough that it definitely interferes with his academic performance. You have been working with him for close to a year before you realize that his family moved from another country when he was an infant and his mother speaks very little English. At his spring IEP review meeting, his parents surprise everyone by refusing to sign the revised IEP for next year. His father is angry about how disrespectful you have been to their heritage and to the boy’s mother all year by treating the boy only in English. His mother is in tears and the group slowly comes to understand that this public conversation about her son’s stuttering and low grades, and about her limited knowledge of English, is embarrassing her and bringing what she perceives as shame onto the entire family. As the social studies teacher whispers in your left ear that parents from “this background” are “always difficult,” the boy whispers in your right ear that what he would really like in speech therapy next year is help making his voice sound more like a girl’s and can you please help him explain that to his parents. (What might some STAND Together conversations look like right now? Could this situation have been prevented? How can several STAND Together conversations going forward help everyone?)
Highlight Questions for Module 26
Decribe several known predictors of conflict (from Box 26.1). For each predictor, provide several distinctly different examples of relevant situations or conflicts.
Describe the Intent, Impact, Responsibility, and Reaction model. Role-play using this model in a situation where you have inadvertently said or done something that turns out to have been culturally or individually inappropriate for a client’s family.
Explain how Thomas and Kilmann’s (1974) notions of Collaborate, Compromise, Compete, Accept, and Avoid can be arranged or used if the goal is to prevail in any particular dispute versus if the goal is to maintain a positive relationship with the other person or group. Describe an example.
Think about any daily, weekly, or other routine that matters to you. Explain your desire to engage in that routine both in terms of your specific demand or need (the thing you want to do) and your underlying positions or values (why you want to do it, or what larger purpose that routine serves for you). Could you achieve your underlying goal or continue to respect your underlying positions or values if you were somehow prevented from exercising that particular specific activity or routine?
Consider the classic “the sink and the fridge in the shared breakroom are always a mess” conflict that most workgroups deal with. How could a shared decision-making model such as STAND Together help the situation? How could Intent, Impact, Responsibility, and Reaction or Thomas and Kilmann’s (1974) notions of Collaborate, Compromise, Compete, Accept, and Avoid help the situation?
Think about any cultural or identity-related conflicts that might somehow be more likely to occur in your clinical or professional practice, given who you are and where you work. Describe how you could use the three conflict management models described in this module to address those conflicts.