When Conflict Crosses Cultural Lines: How Culture Informs Conflict

Diverse cultural experience provides tremendous educational value. At the same time, it presents the possibility for increased misunderstanding and conflict. While conflict can happen with students of the same background, cross-cultural dynamics tend to add complexities to tension. Using a tool such as the Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory, we Mve helped college student leaders build stronger teams, with a better and deeper ability to navigate, mediate and mitigate conflict among their leadership teams and peers . When Conflict Crosses Cultural Lines Introduction A large part of our institutional student-leader training is focused on cultivating student competencies in relational and personal development. Of equal importance has been encouraging students to develop cultural humility. With these priorities in mind we, as trainers, want students to understand their own personal responses to conflict. We want to help students discern how their own approach has been shaped by their cultural corrfmunity and to recognize that as they matured, they may have attained attitudes and strategies for responding to conflict prevalent in their culture. Of particular importance has been how we train student leaders to mediate and help resolve conflict as our campus becomes more culturally diverse. Traditionally, our university has been a fairly white, middle-class, rural/suburban, evangelical and regional campus. With a large influx of international students and a growing number of domestic students from urban settings, our campus is changing. Peer institutions are on similar trajectories and we believe our experiences may be of benefit to others. Literature Review We believe this diverse cultural experience provides tremertdous educational value. At the same time, it presents the possibility for increased misunderstanding and conflict. While conflict can happen with students of the same background, cross-cultural dynamics tend to add complexities to tension. Previous writers have described the complexity of what is unseen behind our cultural dynamics. In her research on multicultural conflict, Francine Kemp (2009) divided the world into two spheres: Low-context cultures and high-context cultures. In low-context cultures, communication is verbal with strong face-to-face interaction. These are cultures that emphasize autonomy, individual rights and responsibilities. High-context cultures tend to be communal and interdependent societies that are often hierarchical and highly traditional. The concepts of shame and honor rank high in a highcontext group, while they do not in a low-context group. The behavior of one from a high-context group, due to the culture's communal focus, can affect the lives of many members within their societies. Unspoken elements (such as symbols, body language, etc.) are also important in high-context cultures. In their early conflict resolution work, Elizabeth Chua and William Godykunst (1987) noted those from low-context cultures are able to maintain their friendship by separating the individual from the reason behind the quarrel in moments of conflict. By contrast, those from a high-context find it difficult or are unable to separate the person from the conflict because of the community impact of the tension. When highand low-contexts cultures interact, their meanings, intentions and values are often misunderstood and perceived in a manner not intended. Mitchell Hammer (2009) defined conflict as a "form of social interaction in which substantive disagreements arise between two or more individuals, which gives rise to an affective or emotional reaction, often based on a perception of threat or interference by one [or] more other parties to the'' disagreement" (p. 222). The word perception should be noted, as this is a major component of conflict, including cross-cultural conflict. Martin Davidson (2001) observed that cultures tend to approach conflict in distinctive manners. Most relevant to our situation, Deborah Cai and Edward Fink (2002) noted how different cultures become associated with certain types of responses to conflict. Of course, even within the same culture, there may be diverse responses to conflict. As Kamil Kozan and Canan Ergin (1999) observed, cultures are hardly homogenous entities; frequently, subcultures form responses to tension based on region, religion, or language. Conflict is often viewed as negative and destructive, yet, as Anne Nicotera (1995) emphasized in Conflict and Organizations, conflict can go a long way toward helping members of an organization accomplish its goals. Conflict within a team can be particularly valuable for an organization trying to be creative in responding to its mission and goals. Culturally diverse teams can strengthen their ability to innovate by understanding and developing strategies on how to manage their differences. Dean Tjosvold and Alfred Wong (2004) found a team is more than just a grouping of individuals; members need to be able to interact and function with one another with high levels of efficiency. For multicultural teams, cross-cultural understanding is particularly important, as the potential for confusion is higher. These teams must be focused on cooperation, not competition. Kozan and Ergin (1999) noted when team members share cooperation as a value, it has significant bearing upon conflict behavior, leading to greater understanding and communication. Our challenge and goal was to train student-leaders to move beyond the traditional conflict mediation skills we had used. We wondered how to train student leaders to consider the dynamics of culture and background as they encountered conflict and sought to provide mediation. We desired they develop more complex skills and understanding in order to maneuver through cross-culturally informed conflict with confidence. Such training involved developing skills and competencies in self-awareness, relational development, and a sense of cultural humility. From our viewpoint, the competency of cultural humility was particularly critical. When Conflict Crosses Cultural Lines We determined our conflict resolution training for student-leaders was limited in its success. Our traditional training was strong but very monocultural in focus and to some extent, culture-bound. We realized there could be no standard response to the unsettling aspects of conflict affected by culture. As Nancy Evans, D. Forney, F. Guido, C. Patton, and K. Penn (2010) described in Student Development in College, providing individuals with accurate feedback about self is a vital method of promdting selflearning on college campuses. Subsequently, we turned to a tool called the lntercultural Conflict Style (ICS) Inventory (http://hammerconsulting.org/) developed by Hammer Consulting. The inventory seeks to assist students in understanding how their own heritage, communities, and families have shaped how they respond to conflict. We viewed the tool as a way for our student-leaders to understand themselves in order to begin to discern how their peers respond to conflict. The ICS inventory is a 36-question survey that initially divides an individual's preferences into two core approaches for responding or resolving conflict: (1) direct or indirect communication, and (2) emotionally expressive or emotionally restrained styles. For instance, the preference for a direct approach to conflict encourages an individual to speak their mind and rely on facetoface resolutions of disagreements. Someone who prefers the indirect conflict style would most likely be discrete about voicing their opinions and tend to utilize a third party to help resolve disagreements. In addition to the direct/ indirect dichotomy, there are emotionally expressive or restrained preferences that inform the direct and indirect styles. Individuals choose to display or disguise their emotions, visibly use their nonverbal cues (expressive) or minimally display their feelings through nonverbal behavior (restrained). The inventory then goes beyond these four general styles to begin identifying combinations of the styles to assist, specifically, the individual in understanding his or her approach to conflict. As Hammer (2003) explains, the ICS inventory takes the information gathered from the questions and categorizes it into a focused understanding for the individual. For instance, the direct style can be sub-divided into two more precise styles those who prefer discussion ( direct but emotionally restrained style) or engagement ( direct and emotionally expressive approach) responses to conflict and the indirect style can be divided into accommodation (indirect and emotionally restrained) and what the inventory calls a dynamic (indirect and emotionally expressive) style. See Table 1 for a visual representation of how the direct/indirect and emotionally expressive/ restrained styles interact. Table 1. ICS Conflict Resolution Style Matrix Emotional Expression Communication Style Expressive Restrained Direct Engagement Discussion Indirect Dynamic Accommodation The discussion style is both verbally direct and emotionally restrained. The engagement style also emphasizes being verbally direct but is infused with an emotionally expressive manner. In contrast to these two ( discussion and engagement), the indirect style of accommodation emphasizes approaching the conflict in a circuitous (indirectly responding to tension) manner. Individuals using the accommodation style seek to resolve conflict by maintaining calm, practicing emotional control, and pursuing harmony. The dynamic style is often defined by hyperbole and characterized by emotionally intense expression. The inventory is a tool for identifying preference and responses to conflict; it affirms that styles of response are often informed by worldview, heritage, and culture. It is not a tool for measuring culture, but it does acknowledge patterns that are very beneficial for students to discern when their background and culture informs their own response to tension. Methodology Originally, ICS was presented to student leaders at a private faith-based West Coast university in their fall leadership training. They took the inventory individually during a presentation by the university's chief diversity officer. After debriefing the results in a larger group, they divided into their individual staffs of about 12 students. In these groups, they explored the possible scenarios they might encounter and the possible implications of the assessment for their interaction with one another. Over a two-year period, we surveyed 50 undergraduates who participated in these sessions. Thirty-three of the respondents were women, and 17 were men; all were between the ages of 19 and 23. All were student leaders responsible for areas of residential students. All were domestic students (none were international students); 18 identified themselves as students of color, including multiracial, while 32 identified themselves as being Caucasian. The interviews were conducted three or more months after their initial training, as we desired to see if students were able to incorporate any of the teaching in their leadership roles. \Mien Cmflict Crosses Cultural Lines Results Having administered the ICS Inventory for six years, we noted some common features. Not surprisingly, considering the profile of students we hire, most of our student leaders tend to prefer the discussion style of conflict. Each year, they have comprised 60-70% of our student staff. Accommodation is the next highest preference (18-22%), with a handful of studeI1ts preferring the engagement style. Over the years as we gathered data, we only had two students ( of two hundred) who identified themselves as having a dynamic conflict style. As we began to reflect on the data, three trends stood out: (a) Respondents noted a greater awareness and understanding of their own responses to conflict and tension (Student respondent #7 [S7], Sll, S25) ; (b) There was a greater awareness of the dynamics within their own residential staff teams (S9, Sll, 516, 535); (c) There was a growing understanding of how their residents responded to conflict and a discernment of how to respond to student conflict and mediation (S2, 522, 537).