Hi, I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today, we're going to talk about interpersonal and structural conflicts in the workplace or organizational settings.
First, let's start out by talking about attribution bias. So we have in-group. And an in-group are people or groups that we share similar interests with or maybe cultural backgrounds or affiliations. So we have this sense of belonging. And with other members in our own in-group, we give them positive attributions. And this is usually due to their personal qualities, traits, and skills.
Whereas the out-group, especially when we are in conflict with somebody, we tend to attribute negative actions towards those people, and that they have negative intentions against us. And this is all based upon their personal qualities. So that is really heightened especially when we are in a conflict.
So let's say we're in a conflict at work or in an organization. And it may appear to us that the conflict is interpersonal. So the person that we're in conflict with is really related to relational issues and based upon our relationship. But actually the conflict may be due to rules or practices that require us or the other party to act or behave in a certain way.
So let's look at some examples here. Let's say you want to have some time off. And so you put your request in, and it's denied. Your boss denied you your time off. And you're really upset at your boss because you've been talking about what you're going to do to him and he thinks it's great. And all of a sudden he just goes behind your back and says no.
But actually he feels really bad because two people already asked for that day off. And due to rules of the organization he can't have more than two people off in a day. And so he had to deny you.
Another example could be socialization outside of work. Let's say you have a new manager and you think she's really great. And you want to get to know her more as a person.
And so you invite her out to dinner or over to your house. And she keeps on declining your requests. And so you think, wow, she's really a jerk. She doesn't want to get to know her new employees. She's not friendly. What's the deal here?
But actually, she was told by upper management that she needs to establish some boundaries and not socialize outside of work. She would really like to get to know her employees. It's more style. But due to the rules and procedures of the organization, she's prohibited from doing so.
Maybe you're friends with somebody at work and something big is about to go down. And you know this, but you don't know the specifics. But your friend sure does. And so you are asking your friend to give up the goods.
And they say, I'm sorry, I can't give you that information. And you're really offended by that. And you're really mad at them. And it sparks a conflict.
And really they want to really share this information with you because it's big and you're their friend. But due to the rules, he can't give you that information because it's too sensitive. And eventually you will get to know all the details. But for now, he has to follow the rules and keep that private.
So we're talking about how workplace or organizational conflict may just be around those structural issues or the rules and practices of the organization. Well, they may also have a mix of both interpersonal and rules-based conflict.
And we want to handle the interpersonal first normally if there are both of those in a conflict. And we then can move on to joint problem solving session to look at how we can solve the rules-based conflict.
So going to the interpersonal part, we want to handle that as we would handle normal conflict between parties where we identify their interests and have a brainstorming session to generate some options. And we evaluate the options and possibly come up with an agreement or a solution on how we're going to interact with each other at work.
So once we have gone over all those interpersonal issues, we then can move on to the rules-based issues. And we can do this through a joint problem-solving session. So we can start out by asking ourselves, how can we prevent the conflict. Can we change the rules here that are creating this conflict?
If we can, great. How are we going to do That if we can't, how can we work around it? How can we manage these rules so we can prevent conflicts in the future?
So now that we've gone over the interpersonal and structural conflicts in workplaces and organizational settings, let's look at our key points. So we have this attribution bias, especially when we are in conflict, where we attribute more negative actions and intents about others that we're in conflict with.
And when we're at work or in an organization, the conflict on the surface can appear to be rather at an interpersonal level, so based upon our relationships with the other person. Or it could be really at a structural conflict. So the conflict is based upon the rules or practices of the organization.
Or it can be a mix of both. And if that happens, we need to tackle those interpersonal issues first before we can move on to those structural or rules-based issues and see how we can work around them to prevent future conflict.
Well, that's all I have for you today. Please check out your key terms here. Feel free to pause and look them over a little closer.
Thank you so much for taking the time out to view this tutorial. I really hope that you've learned something. And I can't wait to catch you again next time.