Lesson # 5 Conflict in Communication

I believe conflict is inevitable, and as my husband states” especially in marriage.”  Throughout our life from early childhood to adult hood, we all have to face different degrees of conflict whether intentional or unintentional.  Most of the time in my own experience I find that negative outcomes occur when two people have dissimilar ways of communicating and are not willing to stop and look at the other persons perspective or point of view.  Defenses are up, and compromising is nowhere in sight. The book states in chapter 4 “When enacting a conflict style, people also employ both strategies and tactics.  While both styles and strategies refer to overall plans for dealing with conflict, styles differ from strategies in their scope” (Cahn, 2007, p.7.7).  

What makes a conflict end negatively is when those styles and tactics are different.  I feel people don’t like to lose and if the ego has anything to do with it, then you can rest assured winning and being right will be the focus; everything else is secondary. Some ways to ensure healthier conflicts are compromising, collaboration, understanding, respect and the avoidance of defense mechanism. However, most importantly two people must want to achieve the same goal, and that is to succeed at better communication.