Effective Conflict Resolution

In any profession that deals with people, there will be times when your views and perspectives differ from those of the people with whom you are working. A main focus of professional psychology is working with people, whether they are Instructors, administrators, colleagues, or clients. As a result, it is likely you will both experience conflict and be expected to resolve conflict as a professional psychologist. Learning to identify and appropriately resolve conflicts that may arise over differences in perspectives is an especially critical skill. Your personal style of conflict resolution is influenced by past experiences, thoughts and beliefs, and personality. Conflicts may be resolved in different ways depending on the context and the individual attempting to resolve them.

To prepare for this Discussion:

• Search the Internet for “conflict resolution steps.”
• Select a website that contains a broadly applicable set of steps for resolving interpersonal conflicts.
• Use those steps to address the following conflict scenario:

Answer preview

In a conflict resolution process, the main aim is to find a solution that will bring an end to the conflict while on the other hand leave the two parties happy. In our case scenario, the first step is that of clarifying what the disagreement is (Benjamin, 2014). The dispute, in this case, is that of having ideological differences whereby each person’s views and perspectives differ from the other. Secondly one is supposedly a common goal for the two parties. As a professional psychologist am supposed to ask both parties to formulate goals that they are aiming to achieve at the end of the process

Thirdly, the next step in the conflict resolution process is that of discussing how the common goals are going to be met. Listening to the two parties, having a dialogue with them and even brainstorming helps in this process whereby all the possible options are exhausted…