Enhancing Managers' Skills through Conflict Process Review

Abstract

Conflict needs to be constructively managed if it is to have positive outcomes for the organizations and the individuals concerned. A study was carried out among Nigerian managers who were asked to remember a conflict episode in which they had been involved in the past and to evaluate, in retrospect, the way they had handled the conflict. Results revealed that a majority of respondents showed evidence of positive learning as a result of the process review, that more respondents seemed to have learned from their mistakes than from their successes, that women managers were more likely to recall unsatisfactory conflict episodes and men satisfactory ones but that both men and women were equally likely to learn from the process review. Respondents who learned from the review of conflict episodes were those who examined themselves critically and made a conscious effort to understand the opposite side's point of view.



IFE PsychologIA Volume 9 no 3, 2001, pp. 83-94