Psychological mechanisms of conflict in business communication

Conflict situations occur in all spheres of human life, including business communication conflicts.

In order for a person’s personal and working life to be successful, comfortable and interesting, it is important to be able to eliminate any social tensions with maximum benefit for the parties.

Business conflict - what is it?

Conflicts are a constant part of human existence.

They are not only a destructive link in social interaction, but also productive, because they can push people to develop, improve communication skills and emotional intelligence in general.

Conflict - The ultimate way to resolve contradictions between the parties. In turn, each side of the conflict has goals, interests and motives that they intend to implement.

To put it in a nutshell, business conflict - a kind of social conflict in which people involved in the work process conflict.

In 80% of cases, the conflict appears in the absence of direct desires of the participants regarding its occurrence, which is associated with:

lack of ability of participants to use their own emotional intelligence;
inability to properly implement communication skills;
insufficient attention to the socio-psychological characteristics of social contacts.

Business conflict. The main rules of business ethics:

Kinds

Conflicts, depending on the position of the participants in the working hierarchy, are divided into:

Horizontal. Such conflict situations occur between employees who are at the same level in the hierarchical system.
Vertical. Vertical is a conflict that occurs between participants who are at different levels of the hierarchical system. For example, the vertical conflict can be attributed to the boss and the employee or the conflict of the group of employees and the management of the company, which could be expressed in the form of strikes, mass layoffs of their own accord.

Horizontal and vertical conflicts have different features and, as a rule, different solutions, since the participant who is higher on the social ladder has power and can use it more effectively influence the course of a conflict situation in an effort to get what you want.

Conflicts, depending on the number of participants, are divided into:

Interpersonal. If there is a personal conflict between two employees of the organization (who may not even have a direct connection with the work activity), it is called interpersonal.
Intergroup. If the conflicting parties consist of several participants, which can be combined into a conditional group, this conflict belongs to the intergroup ones. In some cases, people in these groups are united according to certain criteria. For example, several colleagues belonging to a Caucasoid race spoke rudely about the people of the Negroid race, which led to an interracial conflict in the workplace, because black colleagues heard this and were offended. Accordingly, in one group of conflicting - people with fair skin, and in the other - people with dark skin.

Personality and team. One side of the conflict is a group of people, and the other is one person. If the conflict situation is related to the horizontal one, the conflict behavior of a group of people in relation to the individual can be extremely cruel, since a person who does not have the power to protect him will be especially vulnerable. Such conflict situations often occur with the use of harassment, boycott, insults, various types of mental and sometimes physical violence. For example, the working team learned that one of the participants belongs to the LGBT community.
If the collective is dominated by conservative, intolerant views, this can lead to a “personality-collective” conflict.

Also, conflicts, depending on the degree of openness, are divided into:

Open Nobody tries to hide the presence of the conflict, so everyone around him knows about him, including his superiors. The methods used in open conflicts are more straightforward, expressed in the form of public quarrels, protests. In turn, the reaction of each side can also be open or hidden (ignoring the attacks of the party acting openly, refusing to enter into direct social contact). But, of course, an open conflict cannot be called if at least one side does not act directly.
Hidden. All parties to the conflict are trying to hide from others that the conflict exists. The methods used in the development of a conflict situation are more indirect, for example boycot, ignoring the needs of one side, the desire to make opponents get the most disadvantageous position in the process of work (one party can deliberately throw off the most unpleasant part of the work).

Depending on the possibility of reaching mutual understanding, conflicts are divided into:

Agonistic. Parties can reach mutual understanding by various methods.
Antagonistic. This type of conflict includes situations in which it is impossible to achieve mutual understanding between the parties for various reasons. Under the most successful set of circumstances, the flame of conflict will simply diminish, and between opponents a kind of cold war may begin, at any moment capable of becoming a full-fledged one.

Examples

Due to the exacerbation of the economic crisis, the company cannot pay wages to employees on time. The patience of a group of workers ends, and they are promoting the idea of a strike in a team. Most workers pick up this idea, and an open vertical conflict begins.
A girl with a speech impediment, reticent, not interested in active communication with colleagues, clumsy. At the same time, her personal views are different from the views of the main part of the team, and in the process of discussions she several times carefully expresses them, which leads to a conflict situation. Her opponents recall her and other “blunders”, for example, how she accidentally spilled coffee on the documentation, accused of lack of initiative, insulted her appearance and features of the pronunciation of words. This is an open horizontal conflict of the “person and team” format.

A young man for the position of lawyer, the boss of the company is satisfied "to pull", because he is the son of his friend. This is not pleasant to the core team, and he is wary of the new employee. Over time, a secret leaks into the team: a man knocked a man to death at a pedestrian crossing a few years ago, but thanks to his father’s finances he did not go to prison. Very few people want to directly conflict with an influential employee, but no one has positive feelings for him, so they are trying in every possible way to refuse support and help, no one wants to work with him in a team. The man quickly notices this and begins to openly express his indignation at the situation.
This is an open horizontal conflict of the “personality and collective” format, in which one side acts hidden.

The reasons

The main causes of conflicts in business communication:

Informational aspects. If various information can be conveyed in a distorted, false format or not at all, this can cause a conflict situation.
Features perception assessment. If certain situations and tasks are assessed (positive, negative, neutral or some other), a part of the team members may disagree with it and give their own assessment.
Incompatibility. The presence of incompatibility in the team in one or several areas: the psycho-physiological aspect, the individual psychological, socio-psychological and psychological.
Intra-collective social hierarchy. In groups, there is often some disunity in which workers are divided into conditional groups, within which they actively communicate and interact. At the same time, the interaction between the groups is reluctant or virtually absent for various reasons. In such systems, intergroup conflicts are quite frequent. Outlaws may also appear in the collectives, which become the object of attacks and insults for any reason.

Distinctions and distortions in the perception of reality. Participants of one or several parties can look at reality in a negative way, perceive rather neutral events as unequivocally negative, impermissible.
Conservatism, lack of flexibility in thinking. Participants of one or several parties are not able to put themselves in the place of opponents or do not want to do it, therefore their view of the situation is one-sided and categorical.
Natural competition. Collectives invariably have an element of competition, in the process of which conflicts often arise between competitive individuals or groups.

Background

Conflicts usually have a foundation, consisting of disagreements, differences in views, goals, motives, previous conflicts, quarrels, disputes. This foundation is called the “preconditions of conflict”.

Prerequisites are divided into:

internal. They are associated with the subjective perception of each party to the conflict and its psycho-emotional characteristics;
external. These include prerequisites that are not directly related to the subjective perception of the parties. Sometimes these are factors that cannot be fully controlled by the participants.

The main prerequisites for the emergence of conflict situations in business communication:

Features of the cognitive schemes of each participant. People in most cases are practically unable to look at the situation directly, because they have formed cognitive patterns. On the one hand, this speeds up the decision-making process, but on the other, it can be a cause for conflict if the participant’s cognitive scheme is different from the other’s cognitive scheme.
Weak ability to control emotions. Stress resistance and restraint in each person are developed to varying degrees, and where one person will be able to keep silent or calmly make arguments, the other will proceed to an aggressive offensive.
Selfishness. This premise implies the desire of one or several parties to orient themselves solely on personal desires.
Lack of objectivity in judgments. Partly related to the first point: everyone has certain beliefs and cognitive schemes that prevent them from being completely objective.
At the same time, cognitive schemes can be developed, and the ability to present oneself in the opponent's position is never superfluous.
Erroneous expectations. It is understood that one or several parties will judge opponents and assess the situation based on their own desires and perceptions.
Lack of sincerity. Insincerity in social relationships has never been to their advantage.
The derogatory position. If, in the process of social interaction, a person or a group of people treats their opponents with humiliation (mocks, uses covert insults, communicates with deliberate condescension), this will be the basis for a conflict situation in the future.

Resolution Methods

The main ways to resolve conflicts:

Normative. The parties to the conflict in the process of discussion build the optimal rules of interaction with each other and try to follow them in the future. If one side notices that the other is ignoring the rules, the conflict may recur.
Negotiation. In the course of the discussion, the parties discuss the conflict situation, seek to find optimal solutions suitable for everyone, and seek compromises.
Manipulative. In the process of resolving the conflict, one of the parties behaves deliberately gently, trying to get what they want with the help of careful manipulations.
Confrontation. When solving a conflict, the party behaves toughly, categorically defends its own point of view and offers its own way out of the conflict situation that suits it.

Psychological mechanisms to overcome business conflicts:

the need for coherence in the goals, motives and interests of all parties;
the importance of the parties' desire for a peaceful settlement of the conflict, the desire to better understand the perception of the other side
the presence of trust between the parties;
the desire to find the best balance between softness and hardness on the part of management.

Guidelines for resolving conflicts in a company:

The importance of business conversation

Polite, open, constructive conversation between opponents - the key to solving most conflict situationsarising from the process of business interaction.

In a business conversation, there are five stages:

Stage 1. Emotional contact is established between the parties, they realize that they can move on to another stage;
Stage 2 The participants in the conversation make it possible for opponents to ponder their own positions, adjust to the style of dialogue. At this stage, the discussion of important issues does not begin;
Stage 3 It includes a full discussion of everything that worries opponents in the context of a conflict situation. They politely exchange opinions and suggest methods of getting out of the conflict that are comfortable for them;
4 stage. At this stage, the parties make the optimal decision, which is openly announced in a formulation that excludes the possibility of alternative interpretations by the participants;
Stage 5 The conversation ends. The most important thing is that everyone who participated in the discussion should have a positive impression of him.
It is important to remind participants of the existence of things that unite all opponents, and express the hope that the conflict will not return in the future, and business communication will be productive and enjoyable.

If the business conversation is successful, the conflict will disappear.. Therefore, it is important that the participants in the dialogue have developed communication skills, respect opponents and are ready for a comprehensive discussion of the problems.

Conflicts and stresses in business communication and ways to prevent them: