Nonviolent Communication and Conflict Management

The disagreement was with a co-worker from another department who did not understand the depth of an issue but decided to resolve it by dishing out blames with insults, not knowing that there was a new order from the departmental head.

The two strategies I have learned about that might help me manage or resolve the conflict more productively are to analyze the source of the conflict and also to focus on issues and not personalities as the other person has started attacking my personality by mimicking the way I speak and commenting that “this is not all about grammar…..”  I feel that these strategies might be effective in order to know if there are other underlining factor(s) that are not visible to everyone concerned and also to help in the timely resolute on the issue instead of taking time off the issue at hand to start defending behavior.

For this conflict, I feel that compromise might not be appropriate because it involves delivery on target and the departmental manager set the target.  This was communicated to me but probably not to this worker in that same department.  It has been a telephone conversation and each time I tried to call afterwards, the phone either rang ‘no reply’ or picked and replaced; I could try a face-to-face discussion.

Although the situation here is a case of misunderstanding as a result of communication break down between the other person and the group manager, I have been applying the principles of nonviolent communication to inform the person of the change in target from the departmental head.  The 3 R’s of repectful, reciprocal, and responsive might not be very effective in this contex.

 
Although I would have loved to, but it was not appropriate for me this week because many people were off duty; on training, vacation, and conferences, hence, very few of us remaining had a very busy week.