Social

Building on the self-focused competencies, the second and most well-known set of competencies for CIQ involves the capacities for constructive resolution of interpersonal and intergroup conflicts. These are often the standard focus of basic trainings in conflict resolution (Deutsch 1993) integrative negotiation (Lewicki and Tomlinson 2014), and dialogue facilitation (Krauss and Morsella 2014). However, in addition to standard conflict resolution skills, CIQ adds the capacities for enacting more optimal types of contradictory conflict responses and an awareness of the effects of one’s moral scope on who we see as deserving of fair treatment when resolving conflict.

Our Interpersonal Conflict Competencies

My colleagues and I developed a holistic framework (Coleman and Lim 2001) for assessing basic conflict resolution competencies at the individual level in relevant cognitions, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors, and at the systems level in conflict outcomes and organizational climate.

This framework culminated in a comprehensive assessment technique called the Conflict Competency 360, which combines a self-report survey with a multi-rater approach to assessment, offering a more holistic view of oneself in conflict— how we view ourself when in conflict with colleagues, how they see us, and the similarities and differences between these perspectives. The survey instructs us to envision three recent conflicts—one at a time—with a) an employee or supervisee, b) a peer or friend, and c) a boss or supervisor, and then to respond to a set of questions regarding how we tend to react when in conflict with each. We are then encouraged to email a survey link to each of these individuals, where they are asked to respond to similar questions about their experience of us in conflict. This allows the survey to assess differences in how we approach conflict across different power relations at work, and to explore the differences in how we think we react in conflict and how others see us reacting. We are then encouraged to discuss these differences with each colleague or peer.

Our Capacity to Respond Optimally in Conflict

However, purely constructive approaches to conflict sometimes fall short and may need to be enhanced by an ability to respond more optimally to disputes, defined as “the capacity to navigate between competing motives, or combine contradictory approaches to conflict, to achieve desired outcomes” (Coleman 2018: 14). For example, conflict management methods that evidence more balanced ratios of inquiry behaviors (exploring the other’s positions, interests, and needs) to advocacy behaviors (arguing for one’s own positions, interests, and needs) have been found to be associated with more fruitful outcomes in the context of discussing difficult moral differences (Kugler and Coleman 2020). Another study found that more effective police officers often employed more blended approaches to resolving disputes, combining problem-solving and dominance styles when necessary (van de Vilert et al. 1995). In negotiations, optimal tactics like “logrolling” or taking a strong position on something important to oneself while accommodating on something that is more important to the other disputant, has also been shown to result in more beneficial outcomes (Mannix et al. 1989).

Understanding Our Moral Scope

Rounding out the three-legged stool of social conflict competencies is our moral orientation to others in conflict. People have been found to differ in the degree to which they view members of certain outgroups as deserving of fair and moral treatment in conflict (Opotow 1995). For instance, many of us view violent criminals, child sex offenders, or terrorists as falling outside the realm of moral treatment. Often, in times of extreme hardship or threat, our views of members of previously acceptable outgroups—immigrants, Communists, Arab-Americans—can shift to where they become seen as threats and so lose their perceived right to fair treatment. This is currently a concerning trend across the Red-Blue political division in the U.S, just one example of the shrinking of our moral scope toward exclusion of others (Elliott 2023).

Social Conflict IQ Toolkit