| Summary: | This paper presents three studies that examine how women can respond to conflict in assertive ways that obtain their desired result without harm to their competence and likability, thus minimizing gender backlash. In Study 1, we interviewed 29 experienced women engineers and had them read scenarios of common team conflicts and describe the exact words they would use (and the words they would avoid using) to respond in these conflicts. We inductively coded these responses to develop a positive, future-focused (PFF) script for responding to conflict that minimized gender backlash. This PFF script balances communality and agency by pointing out positives, foregrounding group goals, focusing on solutions, and avoiding emotion. In two follow-up experimental studies, we compared the PFF script to popular psychology advice that encourages individuals to foreground their personal feelings with I-focused statements. Engineering students (N = 289, Study 2; N = 279, Study 3) viewed three conflict scenarios with different response strategies and rated their impressions of the protagonist and the likelihood of a satisfactory outcome. Results demonstrated that conflict responses based on the PFF script led to significantly better impressions and outcomes for both men and women protagonists compared to responses based on I-focused statements. Training students and professionals to use PFF conflict resolution strategies has the potential to increase women's visibility in situations where they currently remain silent and to improve overall team dynamics in ways that challenge gender stereotypes.
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