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http://www.mediate.com/articles/taylor.cfm
Read Informal Conflict Resolution: A Workplace Case Study, which describes a workplace conflict, and address the following aspects of this case study: The link is above!
Answer the following questions below!
Issues Inventory: List as many salient issues as you can derive from the case study that appear to impact on the origin, perpetuation, and resolution fo the workplace conflict. What specific aspects of conflict in this case study appear to be inherent in the workplace that gave rise to the conflict?
Intervention: What personal insights do you derive from the case study regarding how you might have managed and/or provided leadership to settle this conflict after learning of the conflict between Laura and Tim?
Expert Answer
Following are the issues:
- Sexual harrasment at the workplace, how it devalues human beings in their own eyes ( Laura felt devalued that she is being treated as a sexual object and not being recognized for her merit.)
- A private conflict between two can be a source of flying anxiety affecting all stake holders. People who are not directly involved also gets affected. Its baffling when they are unable to identify the reason or cause of anxiety.
- Verbal communication, wrong interpretation and the underlying anxiety generated out of it
- Cycles of paradox- The more Tom aplogized, the more defensive Laura became. Her defensiveness and anxiety gave made her confide in her other colleagues which further made them anxious.
Intervention: What personal insights do you derive from the case study regarding how you might have managed and/or provided leadership to settle this conflict after learning of the conflict between Laura and Tim?
I have no hesitations in admitting that the ombudsman had handled the case far better and with maturity than I could have handled. There was a lot of learnings for me here. She provided both of them a platform to discuss, uninterruptedly and gave them the opportunity to acknowledge their own as well as other party’s emotions for bringing the issue to a closure. She made sure that her position remains neutral, she herself does not add to the anxiety quotient in the situation and instead of evolving this in to a triangular transaction, she allowed it to be closed between two mature persons.
