Conflict is an inevitable part of work life. It comes from the fact that we are not clones and we have different personalities, preferences, viewpoints, and realities. But is conflict always bad? What about when conflicts are handled well?

The transformative theory of conflict by Bush and Folger articulates that in some conflicts we see a positive or upward spiral of connection and understanding between the parties. When handled well, conflict has the potential to increase performance as well as the depth and meaning of work relationships.

Everyone interprets interpersonal conflict differently and has their own unique approach or style to handling such conflict. For this part of the course, we ask you to pull out your DUTCH Conflict Handling scores. These scores identifies five distinct conflict-handling styles. Your score for each conflict style indicates how much you reported using that style. People can be high or low on multiple styles. With your scores in front of you, we want you to notice which styles you use most often. We will go through each one to discuss what it is and the best time to use each style.