Avoidance: more specifically, conflict avoidance.  Conflict avoidance is hiding, retreating, or escaping from conflict rather than addressing it. Avoiding thoughts, feelings, conversations; avoiding places, people; loss of interest; negativism.

From a Life Coach perspective, you will not be able to achieve your dreams unless you have a healthy strategy for dealing with conflict.

Let me create a context for recognizing the different ways we each handle conflict.  According to Turner and Weed (1983), responses to conflict can be classified as follows:

·   Addressers are the people who are willing to take initiatives and risk to resolve conflicts by getting their opponents to agree with them on some issues.  Addressers can either be first-steppers or confronters:

Ø   First-steppers are those who believe that some trust has to be established to settle conflicts. They offer to make a gesture of affability, agreeableness or sympathy with the other person's views in exchange for a similar response.

Ø   Confronters think that things are so bad that they have nothing to lose by a confrontation. They might be confronting because they have authority and a safe position, which reduces their vulnerability to any loss.

  ·   Concealers take no risk and say nothing. They conceal their views and feelings.  Concealers can be of  three kinds:

Ø    Feeling-swallowers swallow their feelings. They smile even if the situation is causing them pain and distress. They behave thus because they consider the approval of other people important and feel that it would be dangerous to affront them by revealing their true feelings. 

Ø    Subject-changers find the real issue too difficult to handle. They change the topic by finding something on which there can be some agreement with the conflicting party. This response style usually does not solve the problem. Instead, it can create problems for the people who use this and for the organization in which such people are working.

Ø    Avoiders often go out of their way to avoid conflicts.

·   Attackers cannot keep their feelings to themselves. They are angry for one or another reason, even though it may not be anyone's fault. They express their feelings by attacking whatever they can, even though that may not be the cause of their distress.  Attackers may be up-front or behind-the-back:

Ø    Up-front attackers are the angry people who attack openly; they can actually increase support for the person who is the target, since their attack usually generates sympathy, support and agreement for the target.

Ø    Behind-the-back attackers are difficult to handle because the target person is not sure of the source of any criticism, nor even always sure that there is criticism.

Ways to resolve conflict

Now, let's look at some healthy prescriptions for dealing with conflict.

When two groups or individuals face a conflict situation, they can react in four ways (De Bono, 1985). They can:

·     Fight, which is not a beneficial, sound or gratifying approach to dealing with a conflict situation, as it involves 'tactics, strategies, offensive and defensive positions, losing and winning grounds, and exposure of weak points.'  

·     Negotiate towards a settlement with the other party. Negotiations take place within the prevailing situation and do not involve problem solving or designing. Third-party roles are very important in bringing the conflicting parties together on some common ground for negotiations.

·     Problem solve, which involves identifying and removing the cause of the conflict so as to make the situation normal again. However, this may not be easy. It is also possible that the situation may not become normal even after removing the identified cause, because of its influence on the situation.

·     Design, which is an attempt towards creativity in making the conflict situation normal. It considers conflicts as situations rather than problems. Designing is not confined to what is already there, but attempts to reach what might be created given a proper understanding of the views and situations of the conflicting parties. The proposed idea should be appropriate and acceptable to the parties in conflict. A third party participates actively in the design process rather than being just an umpire.

Some questions for you to consider:

• What is your dominant response type to conflict? 

• How can avoiding conflict hinder your own progress and life mission?

• Do you know someone you admire regarding how they handle conflict?  What strategies do they use that seem to work?