You may face conflict of different types – within yourself, between you and other persons, and between other persons which affects you. Conflict within you may be in the form of goal conflict or role conflict. Goal conflict arises when you have two attractive goals but you cannot choose both but only one. The conflict arises in your mind: which goal should be chosen and which goal should be left. For example, you are promoted by your employer but this promotion is attached with a transfer to a place for which your liking is lesser than your present place of working. You have two options: either accept promotion with transfer or remain at the same work place without a promotion and wait for your next turn of promotion.
This is just an example. You may face several such situations. Role conflict arises because you have to perform variety of roles simultaneously. You have to fulfill your obligations which are contradictory to each other, the conflict arises in your mind: which obligation should be give the highest priority. Take an example. Suppose you are a medical practitioner. The marriage ceremony of your daughter is in progress and the time of Kanyadan is very near. You get a phone call from your clinic that a patient requires urgent operation. You are committed to both. What will you do in such a case? Numerous such occasions come in the life.
Conflict may arise between you and other persons. These other persons may be your family members, your neighbors, your colleagues, or others. Each of these parties has certain expectations from you in the same way as you have expectations from them. When two sets of expectations do not match each other, either in real terms or in perceptual terms, conflict arises.
Besides the conflicts in which you are a party, there may be conflicts in other persons which may affect you adversely even though you are not a party. Consider what happens to you when your parents fight among themselves, your friends fight among themselves, and so on.
If you analyze the basic nature of all these above crucial conflicts, you may find that the real issues involved in a conflict are not as contentious as these have been made to be because of the persons concerned. Because of the involvement of their emotions in the issues of conflict, they tend not to analyze issues deeply but take only a limited view. With the result, they may reach win-lose situation or point of no return. You might have observed that when children of housing society play together, sometimes they start abusing and fighting among themselves even on minor issues.
In many cases, such an episode leads their parents come out and take the side of their own children without analyzing the real issues. In such a situation, it also happens that parents continue their fight among themselves while children start playing among themselves as they tend to overcome their emotional problems much quicker as compared to elders. All such thins happen because of emotions.
There is a story which shows how emotions create problems to others and how these problems may be overcome by the use of emotional intelligence:
My accountant is fool:
An employee of a government department fell sick and was hospitalized. After his sickness was over, he resumed his duty. He was entitled foe medical expense reimbursement. Before claiming this reimbursement, he was transferred to another place. At the new place of his posting, he claimed the medical expense reimbursement. The accountant put an objection that since the employee fell sick to his previous place of posting, he would get his reimbursement from that place only. His file of reimbursement was sent to his previous place of posting where the accountant putt the objection that since the employee has been transferred to another place, he would get reimbursement from his present place of posting. With this objection, the file was returned.
The matter did not end here and it invited more objections and counter objections from accountant at both places. With the result, file of reimbursement got thicker and thicker. Each accountant made it a point that reimbursement would not be made from his place. Perturbed by the undue delay in getting reimbursement, the employee approached the head of department of his present place of posting with a request to look into the matter. The head of department looked into the matter and sent the file to his counterpart with a covering letter. The reimbursement amount came from the employee’s previous place of posting within a week. The accountant of the employees present place of posting was surprised on this and enquired from the head of department about the contents of the letter written to his counterpart. The head of department gave the copy of the letter to the accountant to read himself. The letter contained, “My accountant is fool, what about your accountant?”
Look at how simple use of emotional intelligence solved the problem. Thus resolving conflicts by breaking emotional impasse as these conflicts are the by-products of wrong emotions.
Previous Page | Next Page
Subscribe
For Free Newsletter !