Changing the Conflict in the Workplace Into Cooperation

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Human relationships are an important question nowadays, especially, if they are related to the professional relationships, “It has become almost axiomatic that women live in a web of relationships” (Heim and Murphy 22). The book by Pat Heim and Susan Murphy In the Company of Women is written for women who have difficult relationships in the workplace with other women. Pat Heim and Susan Murphy are two leading experts on gender relationships.

In their book, they explore the essence of women communication with their female and male colleagues and answers the question how indirect conflict (aggressive behavior) can influence on women’s career success and personal life. Thus, relationships among woman are rather difficult, especially, if these women are in conflict with each other. One should develop special skills and use different methods of communication with women in order to build successful relationships and friendly environment with female colleagues.

So, the book consists of two parts which explore the nature of women relationships in the workplace. It is a guide which is aimed at educating women how to handle conflicts with female colleagues. The authors start with the description and exploring of women’s conflict behavior and the reasons of it. They explore the question of “hidden aggression” and the roots of it. The book also presents the differences in communication between men and woman. The second part is more analytical and critical than a first one.

The second part of the book is a “guide” how to turn the conflict into successful collaboration, how to handle the conflict and how woman can become a successful female leader. In addition, the authors give an advice how to build a good team. A very important and useful aspect of the book is that the target audience in not only female, men also can read it in order to be well aware of how to be a leader of the female staff and how communicate with women in order to avoid the conflict.

Relationships between women have a special character and several aspects that differ greatly from men’s communication, thus one should be aware of these peculiarities and differences working with women.

Woman’s behavior depends on her emotions. She greatly influenced by these emotions even in communication in the business world. A woman is sure that relationships can help her achieve a career success, “women often define career success by their ability to create affiliation with others and develop relationships in the work setting” (Heim and Murphy 22).

However, the woman’s work relationships with other woman are tenser and conflict in the majority of cases. Women often gossip about each other and sabotage. On the contrary, women’s work relationships with men are more friendly. What is the reason of this phenomenon? The thing is that women are socialized in a different way, they mix work and emotions.

They cannot separate personal feelings in their communication with other people in the work place. Social communication and friendly relationships are very important for women. The authors of the book assume that the causes of it are the brain’s structure and evolution of women in the society. So, such relationships cab be the best thing in woman’s life or the worst one that greatly influences on her performance.

Men are more practical and conscious, “work is work” and there should be no place for feelings in the work place. They focus their attention on professional goals while women are preoccupied with maintaining relationships with other workers. “The importance of social interactions in the workplace is the most significant difference between the genders” (Heim and Murphy 23).

As it has already been mentioned, women’s career and professional life depend much on her emotions and feelings. If her relationships with the colleagues are good, her professional life is great. At the same time, if a woman in a conflict with another woman, both of them can reveal “indirect conflict” or “indirect aggression”, “women have been socialized to use indirect aggression to emotionally cripple those who are standing in their way” (Heim and Murphy 3) Women are great masters of it.

There are several forms of “indirect conflict” women can reveal. Gossips and spreading rumors and divulging secrets are the most “popular” strategies to hurt another woman and another woman will not even know about it. These strategies are usually very effective and something like “cold and hidden war” can continue for a very long time, until one of the opponents give in. The reasons of the indirect conflict can be quite various: envy, other’s success, competitiveness, etc.

The authors of the book not only describe the conflict, aggression and their influence on women’s professional life, but also provide a great guide to solve the conflict and build successful relationships with female colleagues. The authors emphasize that learning to manage conflict situations is very important. Dealing with conflict and developing skills and peculiarities of communication is crucial for a successful functioning of every organization and for becoming a successful leaded.

There are five ways to handle the conflict (competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating). Each of them is useful in a certain situation. These situations are described in the book in the form of scenarios that present real life situations to help the reader handling the conflict. Thus, one should develop corresponding skills. It is a hard work to handle the conflict, but it is possible.

Woman should be more conscious if other woman tries to harm her interests, “that is the price we have to pay for the strong alliances we make with other women.” (Heim and Murphy 56) The authors also provide few other methods to prevent “woman-to-woman workplace conflict”. One should “find or become a mentor” (307), to start a woman’s group on the Internet or in person. By the way, starting a group is a very effective way to share personal problems, find like-minded people and gain valuable experience from other women.

Thus, the book is very useful guide for those who have conflict work relationships with the female colleagues. It also presents a number of techniques which can help you learn effective methods of handling the conflict between woman and become a successful female leader.

Obviously, it is very important for one’s professional life to be able to deal with the conflict. In order to manage these skills, first of all, one should understand the principles of woman-to-woman communication and become aware of the dynamics of development of relationships between women who work together.

In addition, it should be mentioned that the problem of woman-to-woman work relationships is worth developing and exploring. The idea of creation of women groups on the Internet can greatly improve the theoretical and practical premises of the researches in the field of gender relationships.

Works Cited

Heim, Patricia, and Susan Murphy. In the Company of Women: Turning Workplace Conflict into Powerful Alliances. New York: Putnam, 2001

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Changing the Conflict in the Workplace Into Cooperation

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