Hello and welcome to this legally wise mini bite. I'm Jacqui Brauman And today I wanted to talk about how you resolve conflict. So each of us have a default conflict style as to how we generally approach difficult conversations or how we deal with conflict when it might arise either in business with a supplier or a client or a staff member or at work with colleagues or clients or even at home if we can understand our default style and understand the other styles as well, we're more likely to be able to be conscious of when we can apply a different style from our default style, which might work better in the situation. We can often have better results in resolving disputes earlier, preventing them from even escalating to a dispute in the first place because we've approached the hard conversation as early as possible. Being able to better express and negotiate what you want as well as being able to keep people happy.

Can be really important to making sure that conflicts are easy rather than escalate into huge issues. So there's five Main conflict styles or five ways that people generally approach conflict avoidant accommodating competitive, collaborative or compromising so of these five styles, you're more than likely going to default to one of those styles. You may default to a different style depending on what situation you're in like a business or work versus your home life. But it's important to think about what we do default to and whether it's really working for us. Sometimes our default style may work for us. But if it's not working for us, which situations work for us in and how could we do it better. Quite often it comes down to what is really important to you, the outcome or the relationship. This can help you decide which style to use.

So if the dispute is with a business partner, for example, maintaining the relationship is probably pretty high on the list of needs, but what you want may also be equally as high. So in that case you need to apply a compromising or collaborative approach for the dispute rather than being avoidant or competitive. If it's a relationship that you don't want to maintain or uh there is no relationship, then a competitive style can be appropriate. So this might be where it's a one off transaction black buying a car or buying a house, you're never going to deal with the person that you're buying from again. Or it might be when a relationship is over like ending a business partnership or ending a marriage in this case, negotiating for what you want is more important than saving the relationship or a different situation again might be where you're dealing with a staff member or work colleague um or your dealing with a close family member.

So keeping that person happy and making sure their needs are met is sometimes more important than what you actually want. Or there might be a different way of getting what you want. If this initial dispute is resolved. So having a more accommodating style when you negotiate too, put the priority on the relationship is often a good style to adopt. I am running a quiz at the moment. If you wanted to work out what your default style is and then start working on how to adopt different styles depending on different situations. So reach out to me, Jacqui at Legally Wise Women dot com dot au and I can give you that link to do the quiz. Talk to you soon.