Managing and Resolving a Conflict

There is a new director who just started working at my school. Within a month of his presence, he started to create some changes which to some teachers and principals are not important and worse he presented it in a very bossy way. As a school principal, I have to have a regular meeting with him with the other principals from other units. What I noticed, the other principals preferred to just follow whatever he instructed with almost no comments, but I showed a disagreement once when I thought a change sounded so unimportant. He showed dislikes and we started a silent war for quite some time.

Two strategies I have learned from this situation to manage or resolve a conflict:

1.       Avoiding confrontation to some extent has two impacts. First is the negative impact that it causes further communication becomes stiff. People who try to avoid confrontation tend to reduce creativity. They just prefer to listen and do not want to forward ideas. Second, the positive impact is that the communication can go on and business still runs.

2.       Learning from other principals who tend to follow, I try to do the same by accepting the changes. I try to put aside my dislikes and think positively by focusing on how the changes may result. What I think is good may not be ‘that’ good in its application. This attitude has brought a peace to the atmosphere of the team work as well as my own feeling.

I could have done those strategies by looking at the other principals, and when we had chance to discuss about it they advised me to do so and see for the result first. It may be in the long run, but whatever it may come up in the future at least we can go on with what we have at present time.