Hi, I'm Julie Tietz. And welcome to Conflict Resolution-- putting the pieces together. Today, we're going to cover the crisis stage of conflict. So why don't we get started off with our key terms? Crisis stage of conflict-- the stage of conflict in which parties cannot communicate effectively and act intentionally to harm each other and view each other strongly negatively.
Conflict can be modeled as going through a number of stages. And each of these stages can describe the intensity of conflict. And we can escalate or de-escalate from one stage to another. And typically, models look at preconflict, conflict, and postconflict in a general sense when we're talking about the different stages.
Before we get too much into this stage of conflict, let's cover the previous stages before it. Preconflict-- this is the part of conflict or the stage of conflict where we aren't sure what's going on. Our needs are not being met. Or our needs could be met, but we aren't aware that a conflict could be starting.
The discomfort stage is where parties become aware that their needs are not being met. But we aren't sure exactly how or why the relationship between them is causing the situation. And we are feeling very vague. And there aren't any concrete details at this point.
Next is the incident stage. And this is where we become fully aware of our roles and the needs not being met. And this happens through a specific event. The misunderstanding stage is where parties are communicating but are adopting negative views of each other. And this could be due to differing interpretations of messages, actions, motives, or beliefs.
And the tension stage is where we are communicating with each other maybe. But it's very difficult or nearly impossible. And we are consistently attributing negative motives and traits about each other. And we try to enlist allies to be on our side and to see our point of view within the conflict. And this leads us to our crisis stage.
So in our crisis stage, parties are intentionally acting in ways that are detrimental to each other. So we are actively and intentionally doing things to either irritate the other person, harm them even, or do things that are not nice, basically. So we could be intentionally trying to sabotage somebody's work on our job site, or we could be intentionally leaving a mess for our roommate in the sink.
And also, we do not have any effective communication here. So we're not talking to each other at all. We are doing these mean things to each other, but there is no way we are talking to each other or texting each other or emailing each other. Or if we are, it is not effective. We could just be name calling. We could be sabotaging.
Anyway, we have strong negative perceptions of each other. We do not like this other person. This person is the worst person that could ever come into our lives at this point in our conflict. It's important to know that beginning conflict resolution process at the earliest stage of conflict tends to make the conflict easier to resolve.
In the crisis stage, it's going to require a significant conflict resolution process for an intervention to be successful here. So an example could be let's say you are having a conflict with your roommate over cleanliness.
And so you have to go through a formal mediation process to resolve this conflict because you are in one of the most intense stages of the conflict. And since there is no effective communication, you are going to need a more formal significant conflict resolution process to resolve this conflict.
So now that we have covered the crisis stage of conflict, let's go over our key points. All models of conflict resolution look at preconflict, conflict, and postconflict. And conflicts may escalate or de-escalate through the various stages. And each of these stages represents a degree of intensity.
In the crisis stage, there is no effective communication. The parties are intentionally acting detrimental towards one another. And there are strong negative perceptions of the other party. An early intervention or an early conflict resolution process, earliest that we can get in these stages of conflict, typically results in an easier resolution.
Thank you for taking the time out to view this tutorial on the crisis stage of conflict. I hope you've gained something from this. And I can't wait to catch you again next time.