Key Dimensions of Relationship in Negotiating Conflicts - Book Report/Review Example

Key Dimensions of Relationship in Negotiating Conflicts Key dimensions of relationship in negotiating conflicts include building rapport and trust. This also concerns with reliability, interpersonal integrity, and altruism. It involves trust repair, as most people in conflicts do not trust each other. It involves managing multiparty negotiation, group member roles, conceptualizing culture and negotiation, and best practices. Building rapport and trust requires creative communication. It requires rational thinking and interpersonal integrity to require rational thinking. In most negotiation, problem exists when the negotiator tries to get the parties to listen to one another and there is lack of trust among them. However, a negotiation will likely produce a win-win solution if the negotiator is able to build rapport and establish a trusting relationship among the parties in conflict. This requires creative communication and creative venues. For example, it may require a neutral forum that is more reliable, less formal, and less hostile. An informal setting, yet reliable, can help the participants to feel more comfortable to communicate directly and openly to each other. Besides creative communication, it also requires creative agenda. When there is a deadlock during communication, it requires the negotiator to break down the main issue into several different parts and align them into a sequence of negotiator that will allow flexible solution. For example, parties involved may come into a disagreement concerning certain facts. Rather than put pressure and focus on these issues, break the issues into several parts and try to solve them in sequence. The other creative steps may involve facilitating communication, relationship, and the result of the negotiation. It is essentials though to ensure that negotiator should use effective communication. Maintain personal integrity and altruism when negotiation reaches a deadlock. In fact, trust is the essential key concept of negotiation and it is a determinant factor of people working together effectively. Trust is the foundation of collaboration and cooperation to achieve maximum result. Trust is very important factor in conflict negotiation. Generally, as said, parties are coming to the negotiation table with low or high level of distrust to other parties. Therefore, the negotiator is required to encourage the parties involved so that they can move forward and hence, there is likely a position solution can be achieved. When there is trust, there is likely the conflict can be solved effectively. When there are more than two parties involved in disputes, the fast response to the solution would be collaboration. Collaboration would likely produce good result or positive result because parties are not competing. Rather than competing, the parties involved are no longer focusing on the efforts to win at the expense of the other party. Collaboration requires trust. With trust, parties in conflict are more willing to work with each other to create as much values as possible, and not to win but to achieve common goals. In the process of negotiating conflicts, the group members can act as an advocate, a builder, and a practitioner. As a negotiator, his role is to maintain good relationship among the parties involved regardless of the disagreement. As an advocate, he prefers to reach agreement and encourages the parties to change their behaviors, and solve the conflict. The parties may manage their own interests and handles conflict through skilled negotiation. As an advocate, the parties involved are persuaded to take their own problem and solve it among themselves. When they are able to solve the problem and they do not need to negotiate. The cost of solving a problem through advocating the parties is significantly reduced. These parties can also become problem solvers themselves and may create some economic advantage. As a builder, the negotiator helps the parties involved to identify, construct the skills needed and that negotiation should become a core competency. This allows the negotiator to guide the parties to have their own vision. In fact, effective negotiator or builder will try to accomplish vision. He perceives negotiation as an opportunity to accomplish his own vision. He will not stay focus on a deadlock but will continue even though the problem has not been solved. A builder should have effective communication skills. A builder is required to be open- minded and persistent when he is facing with his enemies even when there is strong resentment. With their open mindedness and trust, the negotiator is more tolerance toward criticism, disagreement, participating in collaborative manners, and it is likely that he will take the risk. A practitioner is another role the group member can play. Practitioner indicates that the negotiator is to lead by example. His negotiation skills developed through his leadership responsibilities or practice- from hiring of employees, to design executive compensation packages, to transfer and dismissal, to develop new personnel and practice, and to the sign of labor management contract. By content, culture involves actual sets of social ideas, beliefs, values, behaviors, symbols, rituals, traditions, and the likes. Politics, religion, even language are part of culture. Culture is in the field of organizational theory and it describes social structure. In an organization, culture has different point of view and different functional context. Generally, culture can be collective and individualistic. It indicates that culture can guide and control individuals behavior and their relationship with other individuals. The fundamental view of culture, when observed, involves cognitive, structure, and system. Culture teaches how people behave, act, and Culture is different from one social setting to the other. It indicates that, for example, the Chinese and Japanese are considered as high-context culture while the European and North Americans are low-context culture. The Chinese and Japanese are said to be high-context culture because they value people from their behavior, the way they sit down, their body language, their belief, their visual expression, even though when they are silent. The European and North American, on the contrary, are considered, as low-context perceives culture from face-to-face communication and material valued. In terms of solving conflict, Kevin Avrunch suggested that it is important to consider culture as the main tool – from language to traditions, words of expressions, behavior, even social and visual expressions. Then learn to accommodate them as you are trying to solve the conflict. Since countries are different one to another, even within a country, the social construction of the society makes the culture is different from one social class to another, and this makes it difficult to apply “one size fits all” approach. Even people who are involved in the conflict are different from one class to another and this makes the approach of conflict resolution to be dynamic. The common process of conflict resolution used in different social groups is different from one group to the other group. Conflict resolution comes in multi forms, including operational conflict prevention, structural conflict prevention, post-conflict procedure, and relational process reestablishment. For (a) primary group, the dispute is often very emotional. To solve conflict in this set of group, practitioners can use direct and indirect approach dealing with emotions and disagreements, & emotionally restrained. Theoretically, approach is very beneficial as the practitioners can use it to understand the different emotional expressions. For example, using discussion style (direct and emotional restrained), engagement style (direct and emotionally expressive), accommodation style (direct and emotional restrained), and dynamic style (indirect and emotional expressive). No one is perfect. However, in negotiation, the best practice is to demonstrate trustworthy behavior, build reputation to influence others in the most ethical way and to maintain interpersonal integrity. Indeed, negotiator should be able to maintain ethical integrity at all time. Don’t let your bias or values affect the way you solve the conflicts between the different parties involved. Remove self-bias and nurture impartiality because in a negotiation process, the negotiator should not emphasize on his own values or bias but ones that are acceptable to the parties involved in the conflict. Improve self-knowledge and honesty as your core values. Experience is always the best teacher but each conflict has different scenario and different circumstances that may not be suitable to be applied in negotiating process of certain conflict. Therefore, the negotiator should be aware of these issues. Treat every case differently and be creative. Read More