It is important for each party to begin the conflict resolution process with the genuine willingness to come together in good faith. Please consider the following statements.
- Direct face-to-face communication is the best way to move forward and resolve conflict.
- If the relationship matters to you (personal or professional), do not walk away.
- Put yourself in the other party’s position–their feelings, their stresses, their emotions, their position individually, in the family, or in the business.
- Ignoring a conflict does not resolve the conflict.
- Everyone involved contributes in some manner to the conflict, explicitly or implicitly.
- Take responsibility for your actions, whether it is the action that initiated the conflict or the action in response to the conflict.
- Everyone can learn from a conflict. The given relationship or business entity can be stronger following a conflict when both parties work in a positive and respectful way toward resolution.
- Continued conflict creates more divisiveness, added resentment, and lack of personal productivity.
- Assumptions, speculations, and accusations will diminish your own credibility and prolong the conflict further.
- The longer the conflict goes on, the more difficult it is to resolve the conflict.
- You can disagree with others without being disagreeable.
- Take responsibility for your actions or inactions that are feeding the conflict and dragging it out.
- When we fail to forgive others, we are not only hurting our relationship with others in our personal life or professional life, but we are hurting ourselves.
- We are unable to be the best version of ourselves when we fail to forgive others.
- We need to take responsibility for judging others.
- Forgive one another as you would want to be forgiven.
- Self-righteous is egotistic, intolerant of other views or opinions, and indignant about supposed wrongs and mistakes of other people. Self-righteousness has no place in a good faith resolution. Find common ground with the other party rather than acting self-righteous.
- Your position in business, birth order in your family, job title, age, gender, race, education, or financial security is not a substitute for taking responsibility for your own actions or inactions.
- Be open to other ideas, views, positions, emotions, and feelings.
- When in a conflict, it is important to seek to understand the other party. Most conflicts are the result of a misunderstanding. Seeking to understand the other is critical and will take patience. Making judgments, assumptions, and speculations about the other party is divisive and will not help solve the disagreement or conflict.
- Think about whether this conflict is all about the present conflict, or are there other issues involved, or unresolved issues in the past (with or without the present party) that is adding to the conflict at issue. If so, acknowledge and take responsibility.
- Participating with the other party in a conflict resolution process means that you want to resolve the conflict in a respectful manner.