Moderating Conflict

Moderating Conflict

Introduction

It’s the duty of parties to the conflict to take an initiative to try and solve their disputes. This is because dialogue and consensus allows people to have that rational thinking about their actions that lead to conflict and may be willing to accept correction or take back whatever they said so as to calm down the situation.

Approaches to Change

Basically, there approaches to resolving or altering a conflict have been described very well. They include;

Trying to change the party – in this case, Michelle’s mother seem to be having problems with the way her daughter lives her life and this begun very long ago. In attempts to change her, a lot of resistance may be met since she considers herself to be a mother to Michelle and she won’t leave her alone until she sees that the daughter is happy (Deutsch et al 2006). This model includes taking stance believed to be the best and tying to change the other person. Basically talking to Michelle’s mother is unlikely to succeed since she has held to her long belief that her daughter is not doing enough for herself. Furthermore, she is not logical in her arguments since she results to crying and avoidance like taking to her room and locking herself in to cry.

Alter/change own perceptions towards communications – this is then humility alternative and

Moderating Conflict

very difficult to carry out yet paradoxically, it’s been very successful over t the past years. Michelle and her husband can help each other about this and work on it together fro support. Basically since the mother seems to show concern she should just learn to take whatever she says lightly and not take its as if the is to be a fight. Mothers are known to be very protective and very resentful when their children seem to be having problems. Michelle can change her own perception of her mother and her way of getting back to her mother and on the whole the way she communicates to her mother.

Their method would be to try and alter the conflict itself – essentially, complying with what her mother wants is not a big problem and Michelle can do this, however the sources of conflict are just more than superficial differences that are indicated from the case study (Deutsch et al 2006).

Using Dialogue

The first step involves party’s separate meetings with the mediator and the mediator does this to be able to give explanation of the dialogue process to the parties, the duty of the facilitator as well as issues of confidentiality. Brian can play mediator or someone ca be looked for. The second stage is the actual face to face meeting for the dialogue talks. The mediator is responsible for making sure that a suitable venue is organized so that interruptions are limited and high levels of discretion can be maintained.

The dialogue is usually aimed at generating and evaluating options, enhancing resolving of the problem, acknowledgement or acceptance peace-making gesticulation, construction of a mutually satisfactory accord for a more encouraging way of working for future and to establish fall back measures (Donohue & Kolt 1994).

After the dialogue has been carried out successfully, there are always closure measures put in

Moderating Conflict

place as well as establishing the follow up scheme. There dialogue session end when the parties involved have reached an acceptable agreement that the dispute is over and the issues agreed on are clearly stated. The agreement reached will be recorded down in clear terms and everything about it clarified and the parties will assent to the accord (Donohue & Kolt 1994).

Conclusion

Family relationships are usually very complicated and handling conflicts that arise is very difficult since the interactions are emotional, affectionate, jealous and kind. Anger usually causes frustrations, people end up yelling at each other, crying, violence, avoidance and loss of control. However conflict or challenge is very important in the family relationships since it’s supposed to help build emotions, inspire rational thinking, encourage appreciation of personalities and presents an opportunity to resolve issues and offer support to each other.

References

Deutsch M, Coleman P.T& Marcus E.C. (2006). The Handbook Of Conflict Resolution: Theory And Practice. John Wiley And Sons

Donohue W.A & Kolt R. (1994). Managing Interpersonal Conflict. Vol. 4

Barttos O.J & Wehr, (E.U.) (2002)Using Conflict Theory. Cambridge University Press