Causes of conflict!

Causes of conflict - 115/365: Anger Management Style #1 (Photo credit: by Janine)

What are the causes of conflict? It is too late to think of the cause if you are already in a conflict. The best time to think of the causes of conflict is during peacetime so to speak. 

How many times have you made the same mistake repeatedly and triggered the causes of conflict? 

Given below are the common causes of conflict:

• Mind reading – you assume negative things the other person is thinking about you and feel angry.
• You are so self-centered that you fail to consider other person’s needs.
• You are carrying a heavy baggage of hurts, insults, and suspicions.
• Your Leadership and management styles are authoritarian.
• Your Leadership and management styles do not leave any room for listening.
• You are taking relationships for granted.
• You are under tremendous stress, or you are unable to spot the stress in others.
• You have a suboptimal Leadership and management styles.
• You have poor conflict resolution skills.
• Your empathy is so low that you are unable to put yourself in other’s shoes.
• You have differences in values with others, and you are not even aware of it.
• Your goals are misaligned with others, and you are pulling in different directions.
• You have an inbuilt prejudice that you are not even aware of, and it is affecting your relationship with certain kinds of people repeatedly. 
• You have very poor listening skills and most of the time you are not registering in what others say.
• You are very selfish, and you are concerned only of your needs and wants.

These are some of the main causes of conflict. A lot of it has to do with your personality and some of it has to do with your Leadership and management styles.

The bad news is that you will find it difficult to change as these are hardened habits of behavior. However, the good news is that you can change if you are determined and work hard.

The first step you can take is to increase your awareness of these causes of conflict and resolve to remove the causes one by one. 

It will also be a good idea to go for some excellent training programs where they teach you leadership management styles that are based on sound leadership and management values.

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Communication strategy in a conflict-making the first move!

Communication strategy - Two-way communication (Photo credit: @boetter)

Conflicts are a common place in modern day to day living. When was the last time you had a conflict and what was your communication strategy to resolve it? 

There are typical ways people react when they are in a conflict -read through the list while checking how many of these approaches you follow in handling conflict.

Strategy variations in handling conflicts are:

• Withdrawal
• Feeling sorry for yourself
• Blaming yourself
• Labeling yourself as a failure
• Labeling others
• Silent treatment
• Mind reading
• Shunning away from resolving the conflict
• Passing sarcastic remarks
• Attacking the other person at every opportunity
• Planning and setting a trap
• Complaining
• Gossiping about the person you are in conflict with
• Self-pity
• Depression
• Emotional outbursts
• Indulging in fear
• Open transparent two-way communication

The list can go on and on. Create your own list of behaviors that you use to cope with conflict. 

If you look at the list above, you will see that most of the strategies for dealing with a conflict move away from communication even though communication is the key to resolving conflict.

Conflicts can be resolved through open communication. You have to think through a communication strategy before you attempt to resolve the conflict. The biggest dilemma you will experience is the million dollars question “Who will make the first move?” The greatest temptation is to postpone resolving the conflict and hope things will get better. Conflicts rarely solve itself and there are great benefits if you make the first move to resolve the conflict.

The benefits are the following:

• You will feel better because you are taking some action
• Further conflicts will not pile up over the current one
• You will have a great chance to diffuse the tension
• You will be able to maintain the relationship and perhaps even grow it
• You will get peace of mind
• You will be in the driver’s seat

Your communication strategy should always be to be the first one to take the step to resolve the conflict. 

Even if you follow this one strategy you will end up resolving much more conflicts than others, and you will be at peace. 

Look back at all the conflicts you have had and how many of them, you took charge to resolve the conflict?

Commit today that in all conflicts in the future you will make the first move to resolve them.

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Are you the change agent in your life?

Are you the change agent in your life? - Rolê em Vila Velha - Praia de Itapoã (Photo credit: Lia Scarton Carreira)

You are living in turbulent times just like all of us are. The amount of change you are experience in your work as well as your personal life is much greater than what your ancestors might have experienced. 

Hence change management is not just for organizations; it is also for you and your family too. Change management is one of the most important skills you need to do day in day out. 

It is very vital that you add the role of a change agent to all other roles you are playing. The role of a change agent is a very important role, and a role that you will have to play throughout your life.
 

The definition of a change agent: Change agent is a person who will facilitate the change within an organization or a team. 

Applying this definition to your life you need to find out who is in charge of change management in your life?

Who is the change agent in your life? Have you ever thought about this very important subject? Many people have consciously or unconsciously abdicated this role to others.

Here are a few questions you need to ask yourself to ensure effective change management in your life:

• Are you aware of the concept of change management?
• Who is the change agent in your life?
• Who are the people who are calling the shots in your life?
• How many times have you played the role of a change agent in your life?

Playing the role of a change agent means that you are taking charge of your life and being responsible for all aspects of your life. It is one of the most important roles you will ever play.

Here is an exercise for you to do after you read this post. 

Take an inventory of all the events that have brought about major changes in your life and make a detailed list of them. Ask yourself how many of these change events you actively participated as a change agent? You may be surprised at the results!

Take charge and be the change agent in your life! 

 

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Competitive advantage

Competitive Advantage (Image by Getty Images via @daylife)

Ten powerful tips for competitive advantage for your company. 

How do you get a competitive advantage and make the products and/or services of your company sell like hot cakes? You may be a head of a start up company or a seasoned CEO of a large company wanting to create breakthrough products that will bring a lot of revenue for your company. 

There is a way to nurture and evolve your product to the point that it gets a mind of its own and grows in sales exponentially. An example of such a product is Facebook. In this highly changing global environment the half-life of your competitive advantage is very short.
 

Here are some tips that will get you started and help you to maintain and increase your competitive advantage :

1. Acknowledge that your product can be improved in different ways
2. Listen to your customer for clues of the kind of value addition they are looking for
3. If it is a new product, allow at least six months to one year for the concept of the product to evolve
4. Be aware of the product and scan the environment constantly
5. Capture all the ideas with respect to the product-good, bad, and brilliant
6. Piggy back on others invention
7. Whenever you come across a new idea, an invention, or a market immediately try to correlate it to your product
8. Nurture, modify and finalize the product after preset attempts
9. Trust your intuition to tell you when your product is ready for the launch or the redesign
10. Take these steps and give yourself sufficient time to evolve the product into something your competitor will find it very difficult to emulate.

The same steps can be applied to a service offering.

I would recommend a training program to start you on this journey and get you quick results.

You can get the training program here: 

http://ude.my/wNUYps

Start applying this to a select number of products in your company, and you will find that your competitive advantage soaring high. 

This approach should become a part of your long term strategy to develop and maintain your competitive advantage.