Conflict and Negotiations Assignment - Leadership Management

This assignment delves into the intricacies of conflict and negotiations within a leadership context. It begins by examining strategies to facilitate productive discussions and address contentious issues within a work group, as well as methods for managers to address unspoken conflicts without exacerbating them. The assignment then explores how negotiators can leverage conflict management strategies to achieve positive, integrative solutions, rather than allowing differences to escalate into dysfunctional conflicts. Finally, the assignment presents a personal reflection on a situation where silence worsened a conflict, offering insights on how open communication could have fostered collaboration. References to relevant literature are included to support the analysis.

Conflict and Negotiations 1
Conflict and Negotiations
By (Student’s Name)
Name of the course
Instructor’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Department
Date

Conflict and Negotiations 2
Conflict and Negotiations
How would you ensure sufficient discussion of contentious issues in a work
group? How can managers bring unspoken conflicts into the open without making them
worse?
There are several strategies that can be used to ensure that any contentious issues in a
work group are sufficiently discussed. One of these is for the leader(s) of the group to
convene a meeting of the group members so that they can air out their concerns. In case the
group is large or there is no appropriate time all group members to meet, the members could
elect some representatives to find a resolution (Rahim, 2017). Managers can bring unspoken
conflicts to the open without making them worse by ensuring that they are objective. In
addition to being objective, managers should be weary of pointing fingers. Rather, they
should focus on managing the conflict at hand.
How can negotiators use conflict management strategies to their advantage so
that differences in interests may not lead to dysfunctional conflicts but rather to positive
integrative solutions?
There are plenty of conflict management strategies that have been unearthed by
modern research. These strategies have been proved to work in most situations and lead to
positive or constructive conflict resolution. Therefore, negotiators may utilise these strategies
to their advantage in helping the conflicting parties come together in harmonious ways. Using
these strategies would help ensure that the conflict at hand is resolved amicably and that it
doesn’t raise further issues in future. Modern conflict resolution issues focus on resolving the
conflict itself rather than focusing on emotions and other ill feelings that may be brought
about by conflicts (Hopkins and Yonker, 2015).

Conflict and Negotiations 3
Can you think of situations in your own life in which silence has worsened a
conflict between parties? What might have been done differently to ensure that open
communication facilitated collaboration instead?
There was a time our professor gave us some assignment which was supposed to be
completed in groups of ten. The assignment had exactly ten items that were supposed to be
done. We made a group of ten and selected on of us to be the leader. The leader suggested
that each member should work on one item and then we would later convene to merge those
different items. A conflict arose however. Some items were seemingly more challenging than
others and no member wanted to handle them. After discussing for several minutes, no
agreement was made. This issue was never resolved and affected our grade negatively. If we
discussed on an amicable way to deal with this, for instance having dividing the work and
assigning the challenging parts more members, we would have probably facilitated
collaboration and got a better grade.

Conflict and Negotiations 4
References
Hopkins, M.M. and Yonker, R.D., 2015. Managing conflict with emotional intelligence:
Abilities that make a difference. Journal of Management Development, 34(2), pp.226-244.
Rahim, M.A., 2017. Managing conflict in organizations. Routledge.