Choosing one role to pull from, is my role as a real estate agent. To give this role some background, this field has more conflict than I first realized. With experience and my new found education, I see more and more how much I was surrounded daily by conflict. When I first started as an agent 5 plus years ago, we had a managing broker that took over who was very laid back, easy going, and anything that came her way, she had a way of dealing with it as it was no big deal. This was in contrast to the previous broker who had a very explosive way at dealing with conflict. As I reflect back, I can remember seeing how we all started dealing with conflict, our clients, other agents differently once our new managing broker was there for about 6 months. She created an environment that influenced our actions in dealing with difficult situations in a way that even the most explosive agent seemed to handle conflict much easier than before.

My role in helping my clients is to always recognize the history, interests, and contributing factors of a conflict. However, I think for my specific role as an agent, it was important to remember the context of the specific situation. Keeping a perspective of what the situation was often kept it from becoming an overwhelming issue. It was up to me to set the tone when a conflict presented itself. If I did not let it spiral out of control because of my values, history, or interests, than neither would my clients. "We will always reach for a "dispositional" explanation for events, as opposed to contextual explanation(160)". I think this is true as we want to make meaning for conflict. However, I have found that keeping the dispute in context, resolution may be an easier reach.