Accountability is the Key by John Hunt

Author:John Hunt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: R&L Education
Published: 2012-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

Conflict Resolution Strategies

There are skills, strategies, and specific approaches administrators use to attempt to resolve conflict, and the strategies employed by administrators in conflict resolution depend, in part, upon the particular leadership style of each administrator. Many authors have written about transactional and transformational leadership and while transformational leadership is often touted as the more progressive or creative model, this may or may not be true regarding conflict resolution. This relates back, to some extent, to cognitive and affective conflict. A transactional leader, by definition, provides contingent rewards for reaching designated performance levels. When dealing with decision-making tasks that are not routine, transactional leaders can be directive and set boundaries and clarify roles. Such leaders can also provide feedback and rewards and can help ensure that group interactions remain positive (House, 1996).

While transactional leaders can lay the groundwork to implement and utilize cognitive conflict, transformational leaders are likely to stimulate higher levels of cognitive conflict (Kotlyar & Karakowsky, 2006). Transformational leaders do this by encouraging group members to engage in behaviors that demonstrate a personal commitment to the goals and values that the leader promotes. The group members may soon have their self-concepts engaged in a manner that is aligned with the group leader’s mission (Kotlyar & Karakowsky, 2006, p. 382). Although transformational leaders may be more skilled at encouraging cognitive conflict within a group, these same leaders may have more difficulty reducing the concomitant affective conflict which may arise through the intensified group dynamics. In other words, they may have more difficulty in “talking the group down” even if they are so inclined.

The actions employed by transactional leaders may be more successful in controlling and reducing the presence of affective conflict in group situations. Such leaders often manage expectations and promote rules of conduct during group activities. These actions may help reduce frustration levels among group participants. A good transactional leader can help group members understand why their feelings are so intense and help them channel their energy in a constructive direction. Conversely, because groups led by transformational leaders are more likely to have their self-concepts involved in the decision-making process, affective conflict may increase in the attempt to salve damaged egos.

Another way of comparing transformational and transactional leadership is to understand that transformational leaders have greater potential for generating both functional (cognitive) and dysfunctional (affective) conflict within groups. In other words, such leadership can present a double-edged sword (Kotlyar & Karakowsky, 2006, p. 397). Transactional leaders tend to operate within a narrower range. It may be that the more effective leadership style for reducing negative conflict is transactional leadership, which may sound counterintuitive, since transactional leadership is most often equated with more traditional leadership, which may have a negative connotation. However, skilled transactional leaders can have a calming influence in a conflict situation.

During a public school administrative career spanning approximately a quarter of a century, the author worked with and supervised approximately fifty principals. He found that when faced with conflict, principals tended to take one of three primary paths.

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