Conflict Goals, Power Dynamics, and Communication Strategies in Interpersonal Conflict

Interests / goals

What people want from engaging in conflict. Conflict develops when interdependent parties perceive their goals as incompatible and experience interference.

TRIP framework

A four-part lens for identifying conflict goals: Topic, Relational, Identity or face, and Process. The four goals overlap and can shift during interaction.

Topic goal

A desired concrete outcome, decision, object, resource, or action. It answers: What do we want?

Relational goal

A goal about how the parties should treat one another, how much influence each should have, how connected they are, or what kind of relationship they have.

Identity / face-saving goal

A goal that protects or repairs a desired sense of self, such as being competent, honest, caring, responsible, trustworthy, or worthy of respect.

Facework

Communication used to save, restore, support one’s self-identity, or damage another person's social identity or sense of dignity during conflict.

Face-saving tactics

Moves used to protect identity, including claiming unjust intimidation, refusing to back down, or suppressing the conflict issue.

Promoting face

Communication that supports another person's self-esteem and dignity by listening, avoiding unnecessary threats or humiliation, and asking non-cornering questions.

Process goal

A goal about how the conflict should be discussed or decided, including timing, participation, speaking rules, voting, consensus, and allowed behaviors.

Overlapping TRIP goals

The idea that one statement or conflict move can pursue topic, relational, identity, and process goals at the same time.

Moving goals

The principle that the goal driving a conflict can change. A topic dispute may become a process, relational, or face-saving struggle as interaction unfolds.

Prospective goal

A goal formed before the interaction - what a person thinks they want as they enter the conflict. It may be rehearsed or planned.

Transactive goal

A goal discovered, revised, traded, or replaced during the interaction as the parties respond to each other.

Retrospective goal

The meaning assigned to the conflict after the interaction. Reflection may reveal what mattered and what should happen next.

Goal clarity

A clear understanding of what one wants and why. Clear goals are easier to share, revise, recognize solutions for, and reach.

Estimating the other's goals

Inferring what the other person wants. Because confidence can exceed accuracy, productive conflict requires asking, listening, and checking assumptions.

Collaborative goal

A clear goal designed to help the parties resolve conflict while preserving their ability to work, live, or interact constructively.

Behaviorally specific goal

A goal stated as an observable action that can be checked, such as asking before borrowing, rather than a vague request such as showing more respect.

Interpersonal power

The ability to produce intended effects, especially to influence another person's behavior and resist another person's influence attempts.

Designated power

Potential power attached to a formal role or position, such as professor, manager, parent, police officer, or president.

Either/or power

A competitive, distributive view in which one person's gain is treated as the other's loss. Influence becomes a contest of wills.

Both/and power

Shared, integrative power in which both parties can gain influence through mutual dependence, empathy, responsibility, and empowerment.

• WIN/WIN

Power denial

Reluctance to acknowledge or discuss influence while still shaping the interaction. Denying power does not eliminate its use.

Four forms of power denial

Deny that you communicated; deny that a message was communicated; deny that it was directed at the other; or deny that the situation existed or applied.

High-power blind spot

The tendency of high-power people to underestimate how their role makes others more cautious, withholding, publicly agreeable, or afraid to speak upward.

Relational theory of power

The view that power is created by a particular social relationship, not owned as a fixed individual trait. It is fluid and context-specific.

Power-dependence principle

A has power over B to the extent that B depends on A for important goals. Dependence increases when the goal matters and alternatives are limited.

Power currency

A resource that can be used to influence a relationship. It creates power only when the other person values it in that context.

RICE

The four interpersonal power currencies: Resource control, Interpersonal linkages, Communication skills, and Expertise.

Resource control

Power based on controlling rewards, punishments, money, time, freedom, access, privileges, or other desired resources.

Interpersonal linkages

Power based on connections, networks, allies, coalitions, or a central and bridging position in a larger system.

Communication skills

Power based on the ability to listen, persuade, lead, organize discussion, build relationships, and help others feel understood.

Expertise

Power based on special knowledge, skill, experience, or talent that is useful for the task and valued by another person.

Power play

A conflict move aimed at defining the situation, claiming the right to decide, resisting, interrupting, keeping score, or moving one-up.

Distressed system

A conflict system in which power dominates attention and parties use either/or thinking, escalation, coercion, and one-up moves.

Effective system

A system that emphasizes interests and shared problem solving while keeping rights and power available as smaller parts of the process.

Passive-aggressive behavior

Behavior that is passive when a direct response is needed but aggressive because it advances self-interest while disregarding the other person.

Indirect noncompliance

A passive-aggressive pattern of resisting without openly refusing, such as forgetting commitments, double-booking, or doing a task in an inconvenient way.

Deniable hostility

Indirect hostility that can be disowned, such as slamming something while denying anger, making a revealing slip, or using sarcasm and then denying its meaning.

Online indirectness

Passive-aggressive online behavior such as vaguebooking, coded posts, strategic blocking or unfollowing, unflattering tags, or denying the importance of a public complaint.

Power imbalance

A disparity in influence that can push interaction toward ineffective behavior. Both too little power and excessive power can damage communication.

Too much power

Excessive influence that can produce overcontrol, blame, hypocrisy, demeaning behavior, distorted feedback, and blindness to genuine problems.

Too little power

Insufficient influence that can produce withdrawal, apathy, aggression, retaliation, passive-aggressive behavior, or desperate relationship-damaging moves.

Sufficient power

Enough influence to address a conflict effectively. It lies between inadequate power and excessive, abusive power.

Constructive power balancing

Temporarily realigning influence so the parties have enough power to address the conflict productively.

Dialogue

Honest two-way conversation using questions and listening to learn intentions and needs instead of relying on mind-reading or assumptions.

Restraint

A higher-power party's refusal to use every available currency, such as threats, humiliation, punishment, money, or force.

Empowerment

A higher-power party's effort to expand a lower-power person's currencies through training, decision authority, freedom, support, or third-party protection.

Interdependence as balancing

A lower-power strategy of highlighting what the parties need from one another and the contribution each makes.

Calm persistence

A lower-power strategy of making respectful, well-supported requests repeatedly without exploding or giving up.

Active engagement

A lower-power strategy of speaking up, stating strengths and needs, clarifying values, remaining connected, and naming differences.

Metacommunication

Speaking explicitly about the communication itself or about the rules the parties will use to handle conflict.

Bullying

Ongoing, persistent badgering, harassment, or psychological terrorizing that demoralizes, dehumanizes, and isolates a target in an extreme power difference.

Cyberbullying

Repeated hostile or aggressive electronic behavior intended to cause harm or discomfort when the target experiences powerlessness.

Mutual dependence

A relationship pattern in which both parties rely on each other's strengths, expanding both parties' sources of power rather than creating codependence.

Third-party empowerment

Increasing a lower-power person's protection or influence by giving an outside person or institution authority to intervene on that person's behalf.