Think About It

When disagreements come up in your relationship there are a few ways to solve them peacefully.  Abraham Greef and his collogues identified three successive positive conflict strategies that build upon one another, these are accommodating, compromising, and collaborating.

The first strategy is accommodating.  In this strategy the goal is to appease one spouse so that the conflict can end quickly and peacefully.  this strategy is often successful in ending conflict, but not ideal because one spouse has to give up everything so that the other spouse can get their way.

The next strategy is compromising.  This strategy is focused on finding a solution so that both partners are satisfied.  In this approach each partner has to give a little so that they both can also get a little.  This strategy is more ideal than accommodating and often times is the both solution, but is still less than ideal.

The final strategy is collaborating.  The goal here is to find a solution so that everyone is happy and gets exactly what they want, no one has to settle or sacrifice.  To achieve this solution both partners need to explain why they feel the way they do or have the preferences they have.  By doing this, often times a solution that serves both partners can be found 

There is a time and a place for all three strategies.  Collaborating cannon always be achieved, and compromising is sometimes not an option, but ideally you would always work towards collaborating.       

To better illustrate the importance of finding of finding a collaborative solution versus a compromise, here is a story called The Battle of The Orange Peel.  The original author of the story is unknown. 

 

After school one day Julie ran into the kitchen, excited to make a glass of fresh orange juice.  To her dismay she was too late, her sister Sarah already had the last orange in hand.  They argued for a minute, both feeling like they deserved the orange more, until finally they agreed to compromise and each take half of the orange, after all that was the only fair thing to do.  They cut the orange in half, and Julie took her half, removed the peel, tossed it into the trash, and squeezed her half into a cup, unsatisfied with how little juice it produced.  Sarah took her half, which wasn’t enough, grated her half of the peel into a pie, and tossed the undesired fruit into the trash with her sister’s peel.  By compromising, both girls got half of what they needed, which was better than getting none.  But if they had discussed their needs, they would have learned that by collaborating, they could have each obtained all that they needed.  Julie would have had as much juice as she wanted and Sarah could have had enough for her pie.  Instead, neither got what they needed.