Understanding Goals and Conflicts: Navigating Incompatible Interests in Interactions
Conflicts arise when individuals perceive their goals as incompatible with others, often leading to emotional strife. Key factors underpinning these conflicts include self-esteem, cultural violations, and personal values. Additionally, understanding different personality types—such as Myers-Briggs distinctions—can illuminate how preferences and approaches vary. Effective conflict management hinges on setting clear goals that are specific, adaptable, and mutually beneficial. This guide discusses the types of goals involved in conflicts and outlines collaborative strategies for resolution, recognizing that goals can evolve through interactions.
Understanding Goals and Conflicts: Navigating Incompatible Interests in Interactions
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Presentation Transcript
Chapter 3 Interests and Goals
Goals and conflict • At some level, all conflicts involve people who think (perceive) that their goals are incompatible with another person’s • Usually, people believe that one person is blocking another from achieving a goal • Self Esteem underlies many conflicts
Factors underlying goals • Core concerns • Values and attitudes • Preferences • Personal approaches
Core personal issues • These are at the heart of conflict, but are almost never brought up by the parties • Need for self esteem • Violation of cultural rules • Gender identity and expectations • Religion • Emotional concerns
Attitudes, Attributions, Values • People think their own goals are right because they are thinking of them in terms of their own attitudes and values • Exercise – identify and discuss a conflict and then list the attitudes, attributions, and values for both parties
Preferences, Orientations, Approaches • These vary by personality types, for example, the Myers-Briggs types: • Extrovert and Introvert • Sensing vs. Perceiving • Thinking and Feeling • Judging and Perceiving
Types of Goals also vary • Content Goals • Wht do we want? • Relational Goals • What are we to each other? How much interdependence do we want? • Identity or face-saving Goals • Who am I in this interaction? Am I being respected? • Process Goals • What communication processes/approaches will be used?
Overlapping nature of goals • Most often, there are multiple goals underlying a conflict • Let’s think of examples and diagram the overlap!
An interesting and important fact about goals • They often emerge and transform themselves during an interaction • Prospective Goals – intentions people hold before they engage in conflict • Transactive Goals – goals discovered during the conflict itself • Retrospective Goals – justifications for decisions/actions and formation of new goals
Improving Conflict Goals • Clear goals are essential to effective conflict management • Advantages of clear goals: • Solutions won’t go unrecognized • Clear goals are easier to share • Clear goals can be altered more easily than vague ones • Clear goals are reached far more often
Collaborative Goals • Guidelines for effective collaborative goals: • They should address short-medium-long range • They specify the desired behaviors • They orient towards the present and future (not the past • They recognize interdependence • They recognize that conflict resolution is an ongoing process
