Accommodating

Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today we're going to cover the accommodating style of conflict, so let's get started. In the accommodating style, we see here on our complex styles graph, it's positioned with high cooperativeness and low assertiveness. Before we get into the accommodating style, let's go over some of the other things on this graph.

Assertiveness. Behavior in which a person confidently makes a statement without need of proof, affirming his or her rights without attacking another's. Cooperativeness. Behavior in which two parties work in concert to achieve their mutual and respective individual goals. So here, returning back to our conflict styles graph, we see assertiveness and cooperativeness positioned on the axes of the graph with varying low and high of each.

So let's get into accommodating, and that is a conflict resolution style in which one party helps out to meet another's needs at the expense of his or her own. So going back to our graph, accommodating is positioned high in cooperativeness, so we're willing to work with others, but low on assertiveness, so we're not really assertive in stating what our needs are.

So in the accommodating style, we have people or parties working to meet other's needs, even if they are perceived to be in conflict with our own, and this leads to our needs not being met. So let's look at some examples of what an accommodating style would look like.

Let's say that both you and your partner find and are fulfilled through the needs of having a job outside of the home, but there have been some complications with your child care. And so you have sacrificed your needs above your partner's needs to have a job outside of the home and you decide to stay at home with your child.

Another example could be going out to eat. Let's say you and your friend are going to go out to dinner, and you really have a strong need to eat some Italian food, but your friend has a strong need for Thai food. You don't really want to go to eat Thai because you just had that the other day, but to avoid a confrontation with your friend, you accommodate to their needs and go out for Thai.

This can also be seen in a project at work. Let's say you have a really big project with strict deadlines, and your co-worker comes and says he's falling behind and needs you to take over some of his jobs within the project. You are on task, but you know that if you take on any more work, your need to finish the job on time will be sacrificed. But to accommodate to your co-worker and to save face, you take on the extra jobs.

With each of these complex styles, there can be positive and negative outcomes, and these are resolutions to a conflict that a party perceives as meeting his or her needs and/or reducing likelihood of further conflict. This would be a positive outcome. Or not meeting his or her needs, and/or increasing likelihood of further conflict. This would be a negative outcome. So let's look at some negative and positive outcomes in the accommodating conflict style.

Positive could be the conflict resolves quickly. Because you've given in to the other's needs above your own and avoid a confrontation, the conflict ends. And it also could be seen as keeping the peace. Again, in accommodating to the other's needs over your own, you are avoiding or keeping the peace within the relationship. Also, you could be seen as a person that builds goodwill, and that your sacrificing your needs shows that you are a person of goodwill, and that could look positively upon you in your character.

Some negative outcomes of accommodating style could include resentment. When we're always giving in to the other person's needs over our own, we could become resentful towards them, because they're not recognizing or we're not making known what our needs are. We could be perceived as a pushover. We could look like we're always willing to give in, and we don't have any ground in what we believe and what we need, and we could be looked as weak.

And again, our needs are met-- are not satisfied when we are accommodating, and this could make us feel bad because we're not having our needs met, and we would like to have our needs met so we can feel satisfied and fulfilled in our lives. So now that we've covered the accommodating style, let's go over some of the key points. People are capable of using all of the conflict styles, but we tend to lean towards applying our own preferred style.

In the accommodating style, we sacrifice our own needs for others, and this could lead to positive and negative outcomes. Positive is the conflict could resolve quickly, we are-- could be perceived as a person of goodwill. Negative could be our needs are not being met, and we could build resentment towards the other party because they are not recognizing what we need or we are giving up what our needs are.

Thank you for taking the time out to view this tutorial, and I hope to catch you again next time.