Conflict Reolution

I am just about as non confrontational as they come.  In ninety-nine percent of situations, I actively try to avoid conflict.  I simply do not see a purpose to run in to a conflict when there is any way to avoid it.  I am a happy person who tries to be around people who are happy so I just do not like being around anger.  With that being said, I have been in my fair share of conflicts.

I worked at a country club for 4 years as a lifeguard.  After my third year as a guard, our manager announced that he was going to quit and nominate a successor.  There were really only two candidates for the position.  It was one of my good friends at the club, code named Beth, and myself.  I ended up getting the position because of my great relationship with my boss.  My boss and I really had become very close. 

At first, there did not seem to be any sort of conflict at all.  For the first few weeks of the summer, there was never any problem in terms of scheduling or problems at the club.  Then a problem arose.  There was a concert on a Friday afternoon that a ton of our employees wanted to go to.  I had already decided that I was going to work the event.  A little background about our policies.  We do not schedule shifts based on seniority.  Unless previously notified, I was in charge of choosing who works when. 

Since this event was one of the biggest events of the year for the club, I scheduled our most experienced employees.  There were five of us working that day and everything seemed to be going just fine.  The event ended and Beth came up to me and told me that due to the decisions I had made that she was going to quit.  At first I was taken back.  At the moment I could not realize that I had made any terrible decisions that could lead to a person quitting, especially one of my friends.  Instead of arguing with Beth at the time, I asked her if we could meet the next day so we both had some time to think it over and she agreed. 

Over the next 24 hours I thought about a lot of things.  I took this very personally as I was in charge of the operations of the pool and Beth is one of my friends.  I tried to look at the conflict through Beth’s eyes.  She was upset that she could not go to this concert.  In my opinion that was no reason to quit. 

The next day we met and we both had a chance to say our piece.  I told her that I was sorry for putting her on that day, but she was very understanding of what I had to do.  I tried to put her into my shoes and let her see the situation that was presented to me.  She ended up talking to me about how she realized that she may have overreacted a little.  She clearly had thought about the conflict a lot as well.  She told me that her biggest problem with the situation was that we had been working together for 3 full years together and that she had no say in the situation.  That was the first time that she had shown any animosity towards me about being elected pool manager over her. 

Clearly the source of this problem was that I was given hierarchy over Beth.  Once everything cleared up, we both new that we had both made some minor errors in the situation and that we both would like to redo some actions we took.  This was a huge learning experience for me.  I really learned a lot about conflict resolution and leadership. 

My favorite part of the situation was that it was handled between Beth and I.  We were the most mature and had been there the longest and it was imperative that we handled it just between us.  I feel as though the conflict could not have been avoided because even if it did not happen right then, there were emotions building up towards what happened.  Overall, I am happy with how the situation ended as Beth stayed at the pool and that helped me grow as a person.