Conflict Management: Self-Reflection Paper On The Game "Love Letter"

As I reflect on the improbable escapes game now, I could understand now the various human relations strategies and methods that we unconsciously used to find out the puzzle or to organize and plan the next step for the group.

During the game of ‘Love Letter ‘or ‘the dungeon’ I found that the conflicts that arised in our group was both functional as well as dysfunctional. During the first half of each game we started off as being functional type – brainstorming ideas, listening to each other, working out together as a group. However when time constraint happened, there were times when group dynamics were disrupted and caused the development of dysfunctional conflicts. This lead to further time delay and broke the team’s unity and trust on each other.

During these times, groups were created inside the original groups who either spoke same language or were from same place from India. So during this time protests happened to include all people and thus functionality of the group was restored. According to me arise of dysfunctional conflict caused us to lose time and ideas so it should be encouraged to take up functional conflict.

After reviewing the ‘Thomas –Kilman Self-Assessment‘ I feel that the best approach for the conflict resolution would be a collaborator style of approach. This type of strategy could bring harmony and focus into the group. They create a win – win situation and have open communication channel. This would provide a strong base for the group dynamics and growth of trust between the people. However this type of method is time consuming so a better one would be a combination of Competitor and Collaborative style.

The competitive strategy could bring the aggressiveness, winning mentality; quick solution to the table along with the gentle natured collaborative style .This combined strategy could help in dealing with problems with time constraint without weakening group rapport or dealings. The most challenging style to work in such time constraint work environment would be With avoidance style of management. They deny all the issues needed to be resolved and internalize stress which in turn could effect the whole group and affect the quality and efficiency of the group.

According to the ‘Thomas-Killman Assessment test’, the style of approach for conflict management for me is Compromising method. In this method, assertiveness has mild usefulness. However, for such a time allotted game this strategy should provide harmony in groups and to find immediate solution. I just used this strategy for game planning and playing. However I had to change my Style of approach from compromising to assertive style intermittently when I found clue or answer to puzzle.

Likewise in our group, competiting, accommodating, compromising styles also emerged during various stages of game playing. According to the situation many of us had to adopt a different strategy or conflict management style so that our goal- to open the box containing ‘Love Letter’ could be attained. Due to this I had to overcome my personal conflicts of doubt and had to adopt thinking like a group instead of just being an individual.

I would have tried to do joint problem solving approach. This would help me in getting to understand the different perspectives of the ideas of each person in the group to solve puzzles or problems. This method improves group dynamics and reduce hard feelings and internal conflicts that could have been interfering with an interpersonal relationship. We could improve upon our collaborative style of approach and do a little bit of research on the type of puzzles and games which could be included in the activity.

This could help us to give an idea of what and where the clue or answer to a puzzle would lie and the result would be a better, efficient approach to the problem solving and time management. I could also learn to develop my communication skills, self esteem and manage my stress so that I could work efficiently in a similar scenario in job. It would also good to understand other’s viewpoints so that a better collaborative style of management could be approached.