The theme of this week’s lecture is about Managing Conflict. We learned various strategies for resolving conflicts effectively, focusing on communication techniques and understanding different perspectives. Additionally, we also explored how to turn conflicts into opportunities for growth and collaboration. If you are new, this is a continuation of the IT2900 Weekly Reflection series where I share my responses to the weekly assignments of this course.

The previous week’s blog post was titled “Wishful Thinking, Binary Search, Fractional Knapsack, and Much More” You can take a look if you later find this article interesting.

Personal Takeaways

In this lecture, the four (+ one) approaches to resolving conflicts are the concepts that resonate with me the most. They made me think about what happens in my life regarding conflicts and made me realize that I may not have been using the correct approach in dealing with them from time to time.

The four mentioned approaches include accommodating, avoiding, collaborating, and competing. The extra one is compromising, which seems to be the middle ground among them. Upon hearing about this, I realized that when I have conflicts with a person (or a group of people) for the first time, I usually put myself on the accommodating side, even when I am correct. I found that this is also due to my nature of not wanting to get into trouble or have tensions with anyone. However, I learned in this lesson that conflicts are meant to happen, so sometimes letting other people win results in me carrying some regrets, which demotivate me from working or interacting with others in the future.

This realization is particularly important for me, as it also explains why, in dealing with further conflicts with the same group of people, I tend to avoid them instead; by letting them win multiple times, I lose confidence to confront the situation. Fortunately, I also learned in the lecture that the ideal approach to managing conflicts is to let both sides “win,” that is, the collaborative approach. It shifts my perspective from who is right or wrong to thinking that we may both be right and wrong; how can we acknowledge each other and combine our correct parts for a better outcome?

Terence mentioned that if we do not try to see how both sides can win, we are more likely to reduce each other’s views to some middle ground, and that is called compromising. For me, as someone who was previously on the avoiding and accommodating sides, I believe I would adopt compromising first to at least grasp a sense of winning. Moving forward, I can adapt my approach to be more collaborative, and that is when conflicts are managed effectively while acknowledging their frequent occurrence. I now understand that avoiding conflicts is never a solution, and taking advantage of others may not be ideal in all cases. I will try to adopt the collaborative approach first, then adjust myself accordingly based on the context.

Reflecting on Past Conflict Management

Context Description

During a university group project (intentionally not mentioning the course code or name, as none of them are in this class), I experienced a conflict between two teammates over task distribution. One member felt they were taking on too much technical work and became frustrated, while another believed they were contributing equally through documentation and design work. From my perspective, the goal was to ensure fairness and complete the project efficiently before the deadline.

How the Conflict Was Addressed

Initially, the situation was discussed briefly over Telegram, but then one member (the technical one) tried to avoid confrontation by saying “it’s fine” and quietly continued their tasks, while the other pushed harder to justify their workload (the documentation one). Eventually, we decided to redistribute the remaining work more evenly. The technical member continued coding but received help with testing and debugging, while others slightly adjusted their roles. This resolution leaned toward compromise, as each person made small concessions to move forward and meet the deadline.

Better Approach

Looking back, a more collaborative approach would have been more effective. Instead of focusing only on dividing the workload, we could have explored how each person’s strengths contributed to the project. For example, the technical member could have shared their expertise through short walkthroughes, allowing others to take on more technical parts confidently. This way, we would ensure both fairness and the growth of other team members. My takeaway from this experience is that open communication and joint problem-solving often lead to better long-term cooperation than simply settling for a middle ground.