DQ 3 What Has Been

DQ 3 What has been the biggest conflict that you have faced in your career or school? What was the primary underlying cause of the conflict? Would you do anything differently today? Was the conflict ever resolved? What advice would give others that face a similar situation?

The greatest conflict I have faced in my career is being overly ambitious to gain a new position that had just been announced by the company I was working for at the time. The position was a promotion into a new, exciting area of electronic commerce, and I'd been working very hard on the initiatives that would eventually become the job of the new director. Instead of being diplomatic about it and concentrating on cooperative and problem solving from the company's perspective. I immediately went to a very high level of assertiveness and mediating level of cooperativeness. In effect, I tried to push myself into the position by stating I was doing the work already. This strategy obviously did not work and just made the human resources teams defensive and reluctant to recommend me for the job. In the end, I did not get the job and had to leave the company to get to my goal of being a director.

In retrospect I should have concentrated more on the problem-solving aspects of the job and found out what the biggest problems that needed to be solved were. Then I could have re-aligned my resume and my efforts to match those unique needs. If I can been more emotionally intelligent I could have potentially at least gotten in the department (Shih, Susanto, 2010). In giving advice to others on this issue of going for a promotion when a new position opens up, I would say rely ob the concepts of looking at high assertiveness and high cooperativeness, in other words make it clear you have the abilities to solve the problems that the position entails. Get the focus off yourself and on the needs of the position you want.

DQ4 Please review slide 46 PowerPoint presentation. What is your most common conflict management style at work and in your personal life? Is it the same? Why or Why not? Do you use all the styles? Would you like to use one more often than you do?

The most common conflict management style varies by the situation and the people involved. In my personal life I am very confident and are very assertive, often with little cooperativeness at times. As I am responsible for making a part of my family function I have to focus on getting things done, being assertive and not necessarily bending with exceptional cooperativeness. In my professional life I try to be not as assertive and also cooperate more, partially out of wanting to learn by doing and also due to the fact I respect those I work for. This shifts my conflict management style to more of a compromising role. As my personal and work roles are quite different, I use different conflict management styles to manage them. I could improve frankly in both areas.