Training Guides for the Head Start Learning Community:
Community Partnerships
Module 3

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Challenges of Collaboration

Handout 3: Tips for Managing Conflict²

Overview
Conflict is about personal and organizational differences and preferences. All collaboratives experience conflicts. Conflict can be managed by:

• Understanding Responses to Conflict. It is critical for partners to understand how they, as individuals, respond to conflict. People tend to respond to conflict in a number of ways. Each way has its benefits and drawbacks and strikes a different balance between personal concerns and the concerns of others. Typical responses include:
  • Competing: Focusing on winning, regardless of the cost to others.

  • Accommodating: Neglecting one's own concerns and focusing, instead, on the concerns of others.

  • Avoiding: No one's concerns are dealt with. Instead, conflict is sidestepped or put onto the back burner until a better time, or not at all.

  • Compromising: Used by people who look for a middle ground--a way to give all partners some of what they want or ask for.

  • Win-win: Seeking a solution that satisfies the concerns of everyone.

• Identifying Sources of Conflict. Uncovering conflict and pinpointing its source are two more steps toward conflict management. Typical sources of conflict include historical baggage between organizations or partners, vagueness about the collaborative's mission, low trust and/or power struggles among partners, little or no concrete proof of progress, lack of authority to act, or too many competing demands on partner time. You can bring a masked conflict to the surface and get people talking about how to resolve it by:
  • Asking questions such as, "what's happening here?" or "what's on everyone's mind?"; or

  • Initiating a discussion about the real source of a conflict.

• Learning to Be Unconditionally Constructive. Being unconditionally constructive encourages the other side to act constructively in return. Here are some key points to remember:
  • Think about your response before acting. Respond to the issue, rather than reacting to your emotions;

  • Try to understand the situation from the other person's point of view;

  • Communicate clearly and briefly. Do not monopolize center stage;

  • Listen carefully and ask questions to clarify (not attack) the other person's position;

  • Keep an open mind and look for potential points of agreement;

  • Practice backing away and letting the group process determine the action; and

  • Do not ignore hostile actions but try to identify the underlying issues and bring them to the surface.

• Creating a Conflict Resolution Process. Some tips on resolving conflict include:
  • Going back to the collaborative's mission with the question, "If we want these results, what must we do about this conflict?";

  • Get everyone's views on what the conflict is and possibilities for resolving it;

  • Search actively for a compromise or a win-win solution;

  • If settlement of a conflict seems impossible, agree to disagree while continuing to work together;

  • Call a meeting for the sole purpose of resolving the conflict or dispute;

  • Appoint a subgroup to study options for resolving or managing the conflict;

  • Get a third-party facilitator or mediator involved in finding a solution to the conflict; and

  • Establish rituals for forgiveness and healing.

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²Adapted from Atelia Melaville and Martin Blank with Gelareh Asayesh, Together We Can: A Guide for Crafting a Profamily System of Education and Human Services (Washington: D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Education and U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, 1993).

Handouts

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