Conflict Resolution

In order to better understand conflict resolution, I took a personal conflict resolution style quiz. The quiz placed you into one of five categories (competing, avoiding, compromising, collaborating, accommodating) on an x,y plot between the traits of assertiveness and cooperativeness. My personal style was identified as collaborating. I see this as accurate, I always look to find the best option and try to use the ideas and perspectives of others to help. One instance where I used this style of conflict resolution was in negotiating with my local ski hill back home. There had been a long running trend of freestyle skiers and snowboarders feeling neglected by the resort, and the resort seeing these riders as unreasonable. As a way to point myself in the direction of solving the problem, I attended some of the board meetings and tried to find what they thought was reasonable and how we could best solve the issue. The resort was quite open to this approach and unfortunately, the only thing limiting a solution was the lack of volunteers to help build freestyle terrain features.

If I had one superpower that would help me solve a conflict it would be telepathic forced understanding from the other person's point of view. With a flick of the wrist, each person in an argument would understand the feelings, reasoning, and viewpoints of each other. With this power, I would bring world peace. I chose this idea as I believe that understanding is the most effective way to solve conflict, while also being one of the most difficult things to attain.

Video clip from Forum's "That" (2006)