One of the biggest obstacles to productive conflict resolution is that people often don't say what they mean, or what they are truly feeling. Here's a typical example:
"You look upset, honey. What's wrong?"
"Nothing, I'm just tired."
"Are you still angry at me for being late this afternoon?"
Silence.
"I said I was sorry."
"I don't want to talk about it. It's history, okay?"

Refusing to acknowledge the existence of a conflict doesn't make the conflict go away. Some people have a habit of gunnysacking irritations—hiding their immediate feelings while saving up a big pile of grievances to dump on the other person when they least expect it. It's a lot easier to solve one or two problems at a time than to try to wade through a month's, six month's or two year's worth. Take responsibility for the accuracy of your own communication, and encourage those you live, play and work with to do the same.

Here are the last two conflict strategies in this series:

Integrating
Integrating focuses on gathering and organizing information; at the same time, it encourages creative thinking and welcomes diverse perspectives. Suppose, for example, that the conflict concerns a major financial outlay. You don't like the direction things are going, but lack all the facts and figures. The other person doesn't have complete information either, but sees no reason to change course. Instead of continuing to argue, you agree to integrate—to pool all of the information you can get your hands on, put your differences on the table and examine them along with any data that might contribute to a resolution. Integrating turns you and your opponent into allies on a mission to master the complexities of the issue and thereby develop alternative solutions. Integrating is often a prelude to collaboration and problem solving.

What to say:
Appeal to your opponent's capacity for thinking and reasoning by saying something like: Let's sort out the tangles and look at what's really going on.—or—We don't have enough facts to be arguing about solutions. Let's put our energy into learning all we can about this.

Cautions:

Integrating is not an effective strategy when one person lacks commitment or when a deadline is looming. Integrating takes time and energy.

If the emotional content of the conflict is extremely high, integrating may not work. When reason is overshadowed by anger, frustration or fear, many people don't give a fig about the facts, they just want to fight. Similarly, being asked to go "gather all the facts" may seem like a cold, uncaring response when what the other person wants to do first is unload strong feelings. Feelings should never be completely ignored.

When gathering and sharing information, be careful not to leave anyone out. An excluded person may feel offended and create problems later.

Collaboration
Collaborating means working together to resolve the conflict, and necessitates information gathering as well as some form of problem solving. In order to collaborate, you and your opponent must be able and willing to contribute time, energy and resources to finding and implementing a solution. You must also trust each other to a degree. Trust grows as you cooperate in finding a solution to the problem. A typical problem-solving process includes these steps:

1. Accurately define the conflict, including all parts.
2. Gather information (Integration), enlarging the data pool for solutions.
3. When as much is known about the issue as can be reasonably expected, start generating alternatives.
4. Evaluate the alternatives. Predict the impact and consequences of each.
5. Get consensus on the best alternative (or combination of alternatives).
6. Implement
7. Evaluate. Give the solution a reasonable trial. If all or part of the conflict remains unresolved, return to step 5. If you encounter information gaps, return to step 2.

What to say:

Verbalize confidence in your ability to work things out with the other person. For example, say: Both of us deserve to feel good about what happens. That means we're going to have to work side by side to find the best solution.—or—Together, we can't fail to resolve this. We've got the resources and we're both committed to finding a solution.

Cautions:

Complex issues usually have several parts. When you develop a solution, be sure that the chosen alternative (or combination of alternatives) addresses all parts of the conflict. If it doesn't, the conflict will not be completely resolved.

See WomensMedia Conflict Management Series: