Name the conflict mode you use most and what it costs you when you use it too often.
At work, the same person tends to handle disagreements the same way each time. Of the five modes in Lesson 5.1, "Five ways people handle conflict, and when each one fits", most people rely on one or two. Those modes are competing, avoiding, accommodating, compromising and collaborating. People usually pick a mode out of habit, and whether it suits the situation rarely comes into the choice.
Your default is the mode you use before you've stopped to think about what the situation needs. Nearly everyone has one. Plenty of people have two: one for juniors and peers, and another for anyone more senior. Defaults set in early. Your family, your school, your first few managers and whatever got results for you in the past all shape them. If shouting got things done in the home you grew up in, you may compete automatically. If you learned as a child that arguments upset people, you may avoid or accommodate without realising it.
Having a default doesn't mean something is wrong with you. Often it started as something that served you well in one setting. It causes trouble because it switches on whether or not it fits, and each of the five modes has a cost once you use it more than situations call for.
Start with the five conflicts you listed for the Lesson 5.1 activity. Next to each one, write the mode you used. If a mode shows up three or more times, it is probably your default. Then look separately at any conflicts with someone senior to you, because your pattern there may be different. If you still can't see it, ask someone who has worked alongside you for a good while. They tend to know.
Wei Jie (an invented example) manages a team that looks after several stores. Supervisors report to him, he deals with store managers, and he answers to his director, Karen. When he went through his five conflicts from the past year, he saw that he had handled four by competing. The fifth was a disagreement with Karen, and he had put off raising it for three months. He competed with people below him and alongside him, and he avoided the person above him.
Both habits cost him. In a dispute over the roster he came out ahead in the meeting, but the store manager on the other side withheld goodwill for a month afterwards. The issue he kept from Karen was the team budget, which he believed was too small for the number of stores. Bringing it up felt to him like criticising her. When he finally did raise it, two of his supervisors had already resigned and he was angry, so the conversation was much harder than it needed to be.
Over-avoiding lets problems get bigger. Something you leave unsaid in January is usually still waiting in April, and by then it has picked up three months of history and resentment. People who avoid too much often say that things piled up where nobody could see them and then spilled out all at once over something minor. The person who had the outburst is often the one most taken aback by it.
Over-accommodating teaches people that your needs can be set aside. Colleagues pick this up without any ill intent and start overlooking your preferences, and more requests land on your desk because you never turn any down. In time, over-accommodators feel taken for granted. That feeling is partly fair, though they also trained others to treat them this way. If this is your pattern, Module 7 deals with saying no and setting boundaries.
Over-competing wins you arguments and loses you cooperation. When people are overruled again and again, they stop putting forward ideas and stop flagging problems. They nod along in meetings and then go off and do what they planned anyway. The less visible loss is information. People who expect not to be heard stop telling you things, so managers who over-compete are often the last to learn of bad news.
Over-compromising looks fair and is often lazy. Meeting halfway is fast, but it can leave both sides without what they actually needed. Suppose marketing needs a launch in March and operations needs the stock in first. If they settle on February, marketing is short of time and operations is short of stock. Some differences need a proper solution, and splitting them only covers the problem for a few weeks.
Collaborating aims to meet everyone's needs, but it still costs time and energy. You have to bring out what each side needs, work through the options, and usually talk more than once. Using it to decide whether the team lunch is at a hawker centre or a restaurant uses up everyone's afternoon. People who over-collaborate are often slow to decide and can wear out colleagues who just want an answer. In a team that makes many small decisions, that adds up. Keep collaborating for important issues where both sides' needs matter. For small ones, a quick compromise or simply accommodating is often kinder.
Knowing your default only helps once you act differently at least one time. Choose an upcoming situation where your usual mode would be a poor fit, and decide in advance which mode you'll use instead. For an important issue where both sides' needs count, consider collaborating. For a minor one, a quick compromise or accommodating may suit it better.
Wei Jie picked the budget conversation with Karen. The issue mattered to both of them, so he chose to collaborate. He didn't want to keep avoiding it, and he didn't want to arrive angry and compete. He planned to bring the numbers, ask Karen what constraints she was working under, and work out a solution with her. To plan how to raise it with his director, he used Lesson 5.3, "Conflict in Singapore workplaces: hierarchy, face and indirect signals". If your hardest conflicts are with people senior to you, start there.
In the activity below, write down your default mode, one recent cost of overusing it, and one situation this month where you'll try a different mode.
Write down your default mode, one recent time that overusing it cost you something, and one situation this month where you will try a different mode.
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