HPI Intercultural Conflict Styles Workshop

Communication (or the lack of it) is probably the most common cause of conflicts between people. In the very diverse and multicultural environment in Canada, many miscommunications and misunderstandings based on cultural/language differences can occur. During stressful situations, we may lose patience and good intentions we have in lower-stress interactions, leading to conflicts.

Based on this, the Intercultural conflict resolution workshop was developed to help us understand our personal tendencies when dealing with a conflict and the tendencies other people may have and how this tool can be used to solve problems and resolve disagreements across cultures.

I had the great opportunity to attend this workshop hosted by HPI and facilitated by Adriana Tulissi from that Faith and Spirituality Centre at UCalgary and I learned that people from different cultural backgrounds can have different styles to deal with conflicts. Four styles of conflict resolution were discussed during the workshop: 1) the discussion style, dealing with conflict directly and with emotional restraint 2) the engagement style, direct communication but with emotional expressiveness, 3) the accommodation style, dealing with conflicts in an indirect way relying on third party intermediates and avoiding the problem with emotional restraint and 4) the dynamic style, which also deals with conflict indirectly but with emotional expressiveness.

I was not surprised with the results of my assessment showing that the accommodation style was my preferred approach for communicating and resolving conflicts, but I was totally impressed to see that this was common for people from Latin America. Furthermore, our workshop facilitator Adriana said that all four-conflict resolution patterns may exist in all cultures, but some are preferred more than others. This is because the conflict resolution style is learned during socialization in an ethnic group. Most importantly, there is no ‘right’ and ‘wrong‘ style when it comes to conflict resolution, all styles are normal and we just need to learn what are our strengths and weaknesses and try to improve our way of communication and understand others.

The workshop was very enjoyable (although I felt a bit predictable when I saw the characteristics of my style so well described). It was an amazing way to get to know myself and to understand how people sometimes respond to others who share the same conflict resolution style as myself. Thanks to HPI for organizing this great workshop and to Adriana for facilitating the valuable workshop!