Hi. I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today we're going to talk about the discomfort stage of conflict. So let's get started.
The discomfort stage-- the stage of conflict in which parties are aware of their needs not being met, but are not exactly aware of the details of each other's roles in needs not being met.
Conflict can be modeled as going through a number of stages, and these describe the intensity and nature of parties' behaviors and attitudes as the conflict continues. All models look at pre-conflict, conflict, and post-conflict. And conflicts may escalate or de-escalate from one stage or another, and each of these stages represent degrees of intensity in the conflict.
So before we get into discomfort, let's preview or review the prior stages of conflict. First we have pre-conflict. And this is the stage of conflict in which parties' needs are not being met, but they are unaware of the relationship between them. So they're not sure yet that a conflict is going to happen.
And that leads us to our next stage of discomfort. In the discomfort stage of conflict, we become aware that our needs are not being met, but we're just unsure exactly how or why the relationship between them might be causing the situation. And this gives us a vague feeling with no concrete details, so it's kind of the feeling that you have in your gut.
You're not sure why, but you know something's a little off. Let's use the example of a friendship. You have a really great relationship with your friend, but one day she is making little sharper comments. Her body language is a little off. You can tell that there's something wrong, but you just can't put your finger on it.
It's important to remember that beginning a conflict resolution process at the earliest possible stage tends to make the conflict easier to resolve. So let's go back to our discomfort in our friendship. And let's say that you decide to talk to your friend about saying something like, I know you have been good, but all of a sudden you said this, or I notice that you're becoming a little distant. What's going on here?
So in trying to clarify these uncertainties and have a point of curiosity in what's going on, can resolve the conflict at that stage. So now that we have covered the discomfort stage of conflict, let's go over the key points. All models of conflict resolution look at pre-conflict, conflict, and post-conflict. And conflict may escalate or de-escalate through these stages. And each of these stages represents a varying degree of intensity.
In the discomfort stage, there is awareness that our needs are not being met. But we are unsure of how or why this is happening, and there aren't too many concrete details. But we know something's off. It's a feeling that we have in our gut.
And finally, remember that starting a conflict resolution process early in the stages makes it easier to resolve this conflict. Thank you for taking the time out to review this tutorial, and I hope to catch you again next time.