Conflict Resolution and Prevention

When it comes to the herb cilantro, people either love it or they hate it because it tastes like soap. Conflict is much the same way: either you see it as constructive or destructive. In my case, I used to think cilantro tasted like soap and it would ruin any food it came near. When I became a teenager, my taste buds changed. Now I will eat an entire bunch of cilantro on top of a taco or khao tom. Similarly, I used to feel conflict was a destructive force, and now I sometimes even look forward to a conflict (assuming it’s handled effectively) because it is an essential stage of team development.

The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) gives you insights into how you prefer to manage conflict, whether that is through:

• Competing
• Collaborating
• Compromising
• Avoiding
• Accommodating

Knowing what your go to method is for handling conflict allows you to actively increase your skills in the other conflict modes and applying each mode when the situation requires it. Having more than one or two management skills will allow you to respond to different types of conflict effectively and nip unnecessary conflict in the bud.

-Lotte Mulder earned her Master’s of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2013, where she focused on Leadership and Group Development. She’s currently working toward a PhD in Organizational Leadership. At ASCP, Lotte designs and facilitates the ASCP Leadership Institute, an online leadership certificate program. She has also built ASCP’s first patient ambassador program, called Patient Champions, which leverages patient stories as they relate to the value of the lab.

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Do you know that we have a comfort zone when we are handling conflicts? The Conflict Management course conducted by ASCP’s Leadership Academy offers an assessment of your conflict management style using the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI). This assessment is eye-opening and helped me gain a better appreciation of my management style.

I scored high on “accommodating skills” on the TKI, meaning that when in conflict, I tend to be reasonable and accommodating with others, creating goodwill in the process. This method is particularly helpful for managers who inherit a new department through restructuring and aim to preserve harmony and avoid disruption to the work process. It is also helpful for building social credits to be use in the future for more important tasks that need larger buy-ins. As companies in the healthcare and diagnostic testing sectors evolve and adapt to the new regulatory and fiscal environment, departments within companies will continue to be restructured to ensure efficiency and relevancy. In my current position as a manager, I find these skills to be immensely useful, particularly as I’m recently given oversight responsibilities of new departments. The skills are helpful to ensure seamless transition while continuing to provide patients with unsurpassed diagnostic insights and innovation.

The course also asks us to look at our blind spots. I find that I tend to spend too little time discussing issues in depth and hashing out personal differences. “Collaborating mode” encourages us to work through issues, think outside the box, and to create a win-win solution. I’m learning to set aside time to proactively reach out to others with varying views and to understand their thoughts and evaluate their viabilities and applications. This gives me an opportunity for integrative solutions to merge insights from people with different perspectives on a problem and gain commitment from various stakeholders.

The ASCP Leadership program and the TKI gave me important revelations into my conflict management comfort styles and provided insights into my blind spots. While my favorite conflict behaviors are results of both my personal predispositions and the requirements of my work situations, I try to utilize other management styles based on the specifics of the situation. I have no doubt that the leadership program has augmented my management tool box. Now I have different tools at my disposal, whether it be “kill your enemies with kindness” (accommodating), “two heads are better than one” (collaborating), “Leave well enough alone” (avoiding), “might makes right” (competing), or “split the difference” (compromising), to approach future conflicts.

-Paul Chiou, MPH, SCT (ASCP) ^CM is a supervisor of Cytology and FISH at Miraca Life Sciences. Paul is a CAP inspector and an active member of the laboratory community having served on various professional committees over the years.