Think about how you handled your last tiff with a colleague. Did you address the issues at hand and talk it over or avoid the conflict altogether “until things cool down”? When dealing with a conflict, people can use many strategies in attempts to mitigate or resolve the dispute. Contrary to what one may expect, avoidant conflict management strategies are beneficial to teams when the conflict is relational and stems from interpersonal differences rather than task-driven conflict.

Until recently, little research has focused on how using the avoidance strategy makes impacts on individual people. Bear, Weingart, and Todorova (2014) posited that men, more so than women, benefit from the avoidant conflict management strategy. They draw on gender role theory, which suggests that men are typically characterized as independent and self-oriented whereas women are seen as concerned with the well-being of others. Thus, they reasoned that men avoid conflict because maintaining a relationship via resolving a conflict is not of primary importance to them, and since this orientation is expected with men, negative social perceptions are unlikely. However, avoidance would not be as beneficial for women.

The researchers studied healthcare employees and found that the more conflict people experienced, the more negative emotions they felt which explained their subsequent emotional exhaustion. However, avoiding the conflict affected men and women differently. When avoidant strategies were used, more workplace conflict did not reliably result in emotional exhaustion for men, supporting their well-being. However, the conflict avoidance strategy did not benefit the women and more workplace conflict still tracked with more emotional exhaustion.

Understanding the effectiveness of the conflict avoidance strategy for employees of both genders in teams, rather than just teams overall is of crucial importance for practitioners. Employee stress and emotional exhaustion stemming from conflict can have a tremendous impact on work productivity and retention of employees. This should be an important consideration for practitioners when deciding whether it would be beneficial to address the conflict directly or simply move on and skirt the issue.