What is Conflict?

Conflict is...

...defined as an incompatibility of goals or values between two or more parties in a relationship, combined with attempts to control each other and antagonistic feelings fowards each other (Fisher, 1990).

Conflict has its place in most professional and personal relationships. It can add to the relationship by stimulating creativity, excitement and growth. However, when conflict becomes unhealthy, the relationsip suffers.

For families and couples, conflict sources include financial, family, outside influences, and parenting.  Unresolved conflict can impact generations of a family.

For communities, conflict sources include neighbor and association issues, minor civil offenses, legislative and environment concerns and other sources that impact the integrity of a community.

For businesses and organizations, conflict sources include interpersonal issues between employees, differences between boards and staff, customer satisfaction issues, changes to company policy, and downsizing.  Businesses with unhealthy conflict are impacted by high costs of turnover, wasted time, and managers who can spend over 60% of their time trying to resolve conflicts between employees.

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The role of mediator is to serve as a neutral facilitator. Their function is to encourage communication and negotiation between all parties in a dispute.  The mediator structures the process to allow all sides the opportunity to speak uninterrupted and to make sure that they feel that they have been heard.  

A mediator is a communication specialist.  A mediator assists parties through a process that is confidential and collaborative, where all parties are able to determine outcomes that create common ground, resulting in a win-win situation.