Although we have talked about Michael Scott's poor leadership skills already, while I was reading Chapter 10, Conflict and Negotiations, one episode of the Office instantly came to me. In season 2, there is an episode called Conflict Resolution. Even though the entire episode is Michael "helping" his employees work out their conflicts, the conflict with Angela and Oscar is a great example of the different types of negotiations. Watch this video clip from 2:08 through 7:18.
http://www.tbs.com/video/index.jsp?eref=google&oid=185909
Toby is letting Oscar vent his issues with Angela. This is similar to an avoidance technique--after he is done, the problem won't be brought up again.
Michael decides to step in and take over. While he has Angela and Oscar in the conference room, he goes through the different ways to negotiate. He talks about lose-lose, or in our textbook it would be avoidance, win-lose (accommodating), win-win (compromising), and win-win-win (collaborating). Making the baby poster into a t-shirt is Michael's way of having a win-win-win situation, although this does not make either party happy. What could be a better way to solve their dispute?
If you go on and watch the rest of the episode, Michael takes it upon himself to help settle all the disagreements in the office. It eventually just upsets everybody, causing more animosity towards one another. Instead of having the employees vent to the human resource manager and then read aloud to the entire office, how could Dunder Mifflin better deal with conflicts?
Have you ever had a conflict with someone in the workplace? How did you come to a solution?
Written by: Jenny Liechti
When I had a conflict with someone in my place of work we worked out of problem by talking about it with each other in front of our manager. That way no matter what we said it couldn't be distorted or turned around because we had a 3rd party person present, much like Angela, Oscar, and Michael did it in the conference room. However my manager did not get into our problem like Michael did she let us work it out between the two of us and just agreed with us on our course of action after that.
ReplyDeletePosted By: Amy Beagles