Million Dollar Listing Analysis

The effects that emotion has in shaping conflict are so crucial that I believe discussing the opening scene of Million Dollar Listing will be the most beneficial. The context of this conflict involves a professional lunch meeting between Fredrick and Michael. The most important issues surrounding this conflict involve the relevance of power, based on another parties endorsement of the others resource, as well as the role of emotion in causing reflex-like responses to conflict. After discussing these issues I will explain my suggestions on how this conflict could have been avoided and if not avoided how it could have been handled more effectively. The scene begins with the the two men meeting at a high-end restaurant in Manhattan. Even before

To combat this predisposition, Michael falls back on his father, as legitimate resource. Throughout the lunch he makes that opinion clear by acknowledging the fact that Michael’s father is a household name within their industry, but in a way that belittles Michael, and shows him that that fact does not matter to Fredrick. Fredrick’s condescending behavior puts Michael in a place of little to no power because of his refusal to endorse his resource, thus giving himself a more powerful position. I found this concept of “a relational view of power” to be very interesting because of the importance of perception and the role that communication skills can have in swaying the balance of

I will be discussing the two most relevant points; the first point in understanding how emotion shapes conflict is, “emotions occur in reaction to stimuli that threaten to interrupt, impede, enhance one’s goals” (p. 47). The second point involves, “specific behavioral tendencies or reactions are associated with emotions”(p. 47). As stated in the first point, emotions are invoked by stimuli, in the Million Dollar Listing case the stimuli that caused Michael to have an emotional response was the perception of threat. As I mentioned earlier, due to his fathers success, I believe that Michael has an inherent fear that others will see him as inadequate. He set up the lunch in a manner that, at least he believed, would shine some light on the incompatibilities of Fredrick’s and his professional relationship. Right from the start, Fredrick down-played and individualized all of Michaels arguments; instead of seeing his own behavior towards Michael as a pattern, Fredrick nitpicked each argument with the intention of lowering its legitimacy. For example when Michael brought up the wallpaper, Fredrick attacked his judgment by saying “you brought me to all the way here to talk about wallpaper”, instead of understanding that the wallpaper was just one example of the pattern of incompatibility. As discussed by Lazarus & Lazarus, (1994); Planalp, (1999) Working