Conflict Process Stage III.

 

We now continue with our conflict model to the Stage III where we discuss intentions.

 

Intentions

Intentions intervene between people’s perceptions and emotions and their overt behavior. They are decisions to act in a given way. A lot of conflicts are escalated simply because one party attributes the wrong intentions to the other. There is also typically a great deal of slippage between intentions and behavior, so behavior does not always accurately reflect a person's intentions. 

 

Using two dimensions or perspectives:

Cooperativeness = The degree to which one party attempts to satisfy the other party’s concerns.

Assertiveness = the degree to which one party attempts to satisfy his or her own concerns.

We can identify five conflict-handling intentions:

 

1. Competing (assertive and uncooperative) - When one person seeks to satisfy his or her own interests regardless of the impact on the other parties to the conflict, that person is competing. You compete when you place a bet that only one person can win, for example.

2. Collaborating (assertive and cooperative) - When parties in conflict desire to fully satisfy the concerns of all parties, there is cooperation and a search for mutually beneficial outcome. In collaborating, the parties intend to solve a problem by clarifying differences rather than accommodating various points of view. If you attempt to find a win-win solution that allows both parties’ goals to be completely achieved, that is collaborating.

3. Avoiding (unassertive and uncooperative) - A person may recognize a conflict exists and want to withdraw from or suppress it. Examples of avoiding include trying to ignore a conflict and avoiding others with whom you disagree.

4. Accommodating (unassertive and cooperative) - A party who seeks to appease an opponent may be willing to place the opponentäs interests above his or her own, sacrificing to maintain the relationship. We refer to this intention as accommodating. Supporting someone else’s opinion despite your reservations about it, for example, is accommodating.

5. Compromising (midrange on both assertiveness and cooperativeness) - In compromising there is no clear winner or loser. Rather, there is a willingness to ration the object of the conflict and accept a solution that provides incomplete satisfaction for both parties’ concerns. The distinguishing characteristic of compromising, therefore, is that each party intends to give up something.

 

Intentions are not always fixed. During the course of a conflict, they might change if the parties are able to see each other’s point of view or respond emotionally to the other’s behavior. However, research indicates people have preferences among the five conflict-handling intentions we just described and tend to rely on them quite consistently. We can predict a person’s intentions rather well from a combination of intellectual and personality characteristics.