Conflict Behaviour is not the same as Conflict Personality.
Personality is hard-wired, behaviour is modifiable, and it’s the behaviour that affects you and those around you.
Conflict Behaviour determines whether disputants are going to get stuck or are going to go forward.
When faced with conflict, it can be hidden, avoided, unmanaged, or mismanaged. All of them are destructive because all of them do not deal effectively with the conflict at hand.
Conflict Behaviour determines the ways we react to a given set of conflict situations.
It also deals with our so-called ‘Hot Buttons’: behaviours that are likely to get a rise out of you and your counterpart. It focusses on common reactions to these behaviours:
- Over-analytical
- Unappreciative
- Aloof
- Micro-Managing
- Self-Centred
- Abrasive
- Untrustworthy
- Hostile
You’ll find two or three very high on your own list of buttons and others that are medium or low. Being aware of your own Hot Buttons gives you a chance to behave differently.
Being aware that everyone has Hot Buttons provides an opportunity to explore and acknowledge those in others, and that also contributes to positive shifts in the ways you handle conflict.
Owning your Hot Buttons is prerequisite for good conflict management, helping to figure out the best ways to interact with those that irk you the most. If you can moderate your own behaviour to respond in ways that defuse and lead to better interaction, your own conflict competence levels will improve.
You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist
~ Indira Gandhi