Kraybill Conflict Style focuses on addressing conflicts by concentrating on an individual’s focus on the agenda and relationship. The concentration on agenda is on the vertical scale while the relationship is on the horizontal line.
Kraybill Conflict Style has five styles of addressing any dispute. These styles are directing, avoiding, cooperating, harmonizing, and compromising. People will use different styles depending on their perception of the conflict. However, no style is right or wrong since it depends on the predominant situations.
Directing style is applicable in a case having a high focus on agenda and a low concentration on the relationship and results in a win-lose situation. The person with more power dictates how things should go without paying attention to other people’s opinions or needs. The focus is getting the assigned task completed successfully rather than creating enjoyment in the process. Happiness will only come after achieving the goals regardless of the process that was followed to deliver these objectives.
A combination of low focus on relationship and agenda is best applicable with avoiding style, which results in a lose-lose outcome. The parties engaging in the conflict ignores a conflict instead of engaging each other to resolves the situation. The parties may deny the existence of a conflict or procrastinate any efforts aiming at talking about a conflict.
When cooperating to address conflicts, both sides have high focus on the agenda and relationships. Resolving the conflict focuses on enhancing the relationship while still sticking to the objectives. Both parties have to make a deliberate commitment of both time and efforts to address the conflict through interaction and active listening. Patience is key in this style, as both parties must be honest in dealing with the issues at hand. In the end, both parties end up winning if they cooperate with each other.
Those who perceive relationships being more important than focusing on the agenda will explore harmonizing style where one party wins while the other loses. This style will see teams or individuals sacrificing their preferences or stands in the conflict for the sake of enhancing teamwork or maintaining the unity of people. Harmonization may harm achievement of goals in an organization or teams when individuals with significant relationships are working together.
The final style is compromising, whose focus is striking a balance between the relationships and getting tasks done. This method acknowledges the need to nurture, maintain, and advance relationship while still getting the objectives achieved. Such a balance results into better teamwork and enhances collective responsibility on the achievement of a common goal.
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