Conflict is Like PDF

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Madison Bluth COMM 450 Conflict is Like Assignment 05/06/2020

Conflict is Like... In order to collect responses to the prompt, “Conflict is like...” I created a very basic Qualtrics survey with an openended response question for the prompt, a gender question, and an age group question. I posted this survey link on Facebook and asked my friends to respond. Then I texted the link to about 20 people I know more personally (parents, grandparents, etc.) and asked them individually to respond to the survey. By doing it this way, the respondents could not view one another’s answers and they remained confidential. One thing I think is really interesting are the responses between age groups (the table of responses is sorted from oldest to youngest). My youngest respondent made a joke about a candy wrapper not opening but my older respondents gave more legitimate answers. Some people wrote things like “annoying” or “horrible” which are pretty negative responses and I think that shows how a lot of people instantly think of the word conflict as having a negative connotation. I definitely do not love conflict and I have historically been one to avoid it at all costs, so I can definitely relate to those people. On the flip side, there were quite a few responses that show certain people understand that while conflict is hard, it can be beneficial. Some of those were, “hard but necessary,” and “ironing out the kinks in a relationship”. My favorite response was “getting mad at the wall because you can’t get through while ignoring the unlocked door”. At first I didn’t get this and thought someone was trying to be funny but then I realized that they were talking about not being able to see the obvious solution to a conflict. If you’re trying to leave a room by walking through a wall when an unlocked door that leads to the other side is only 5 feet away, that person is not effectively problem-solving. In relation to the Leadership and Self- Deception r eading, times like that are when we put ourselves in a box for no reason. Sometimes we need to change our perspective to see the solution to a problem, but once we do, the conflict goes away. If the unlocked door is behind us, all we have to do is turn around to see it, we just have to be smart enough to turn around. In reading the responses it looked like about 43/51 of the responses were negative. This means that 84% of people that I surveyed view conflict as a negative versus a positive. This is interesting because I definitely think of conflict negatively right off the bat however, similar to some of my responses, conflict is necessary. I’ve heard people say a million times that not having any conflict in a relationship can be a red flag. Conflict doesn’t have to mean a knock-down drag-out fight, it could simply mean disagreeing on what to eat for dinner, how to spend money, where to shop for groceries, etc. Obviously conflict can be much more involved but conflict is a natural part of life and shouldn’t always be viewed as negative.

Madison Bluth COMM 450 Conflict is Like Assignment 05/06/2020...