An Example of a Situation
An example of a situation I have been in where I experienced a lack of power that led to poor conflict strategies occurred when I was a very young child. I was five years old and my parents had just had my little sister. My mother says that I was very jealous of all the attention the new baby was receiving. She said that I acted out and misbehaved often in the year after my sister was born, but I remember one instance when my sister was just old enough to be able to sit up on her own, I carried my sister to the top of own staircase and pushed her off of our second- floor landing. Luckily my grandfather caught her before she hit the ground. I should have been punished for trying to hurt my little sister, but instead my parents sat me down and talked to me about my responsibilities as an older brother to my younger sister, and invited me to talk with them any time. I felt I was not receiving enough attention. They also let me know that as parents they loved my sister and me both equally and that while the baby required a lot of their attention, that neither of us was more important than the other. In these ways, my parents assumed the roles of “process watchers” and demonstrated he three moves mentioned in page 171 of our textbook. This example demonstrated how this type of conflict resolution exists not only in the organization of the workplace, but in the organization of the family structure as well. Power is the architecture of conflict interaction. The moves and countermoves in a conflict are based on the party’s ability and willingness to use