Conflict Resolution – Onus Lies With Us
How many times have we felt out of place in a development organization where programmers have the first word and the last say on everything from resources to timelines? How many times have we found ourselves playing a subservient role to the development team just because we are expected to act in accordance with the business needs of the organization? How often have we wondered if there was any way to make our voice heard in the larger context of the organizational working? If you have faced one or all these situations in your career as a technical communicator, rest assured you are not alone in this.
The primary reason why technical communicators find themselves at the receiving end has a lot to do with the conflict resolution style we adopt to deal with various situations. Judith L .Glick-Smith in her article ‘Conflict Styles and Technical Communicators’ in the July/Aug 2007 issue of Intercom says that two factors are required for conflict management – personal awareness of what is happening and knowledge of how to incorporate the appropriate conflict style to facilitate resolution.
What are these conflict styles? There are five conflict styles–competition, collaboration, compromise, avoidance and accommodation. Judith excerpts Thomas and Kilmann’s conflict style matrix to describe the various conflict styles and how to adopt them for better resolution and how technical communicators can use them in different circumstances. The competitive style produces a win-lose result for the person who adopts it. Even though undesirable from an organizational perspective, it has some positive effects when adopted properly like in brainstorming and in cases where quick decisions have to be made. Similarly, the collaborative style that strives to meet the needs of all parties may not be the right style in cases where building relationships is not important and when the other party adopts a different style. The compromise style that most technical communicators adopt has a disadvantage of trying to find a resolution without extra effort required for creative solutions. The other conflict style, avoidance, is best avoided as it is an act of self-denial. On the positive side, avoidance helps the person to buy time to think of the future course of action. The last form of conflict style is accommodation that sets aside own interest in favour of pleasing other parties. Accommodation can minimize losses when you anyway know that you are going to lose.
Where do all the conflict styles leave us? As technical communicators we need to be aware of which conflict style suits what kind of situations. It is easy for technical communicators to feel and complain about not being treated on par with developers. However, it goes without saying that the onus lies with communicators to make themselves un-ignorable if not indispensable.
— Vinay Babu
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