Conflict at work is inevitable and part of life and yet a lot of effort goes into avoiding conflict. The hope that by avoiding it, conflict will go away seems to linger in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Conflict does not miraculously self-resolve and most often does not dissipate over time. What happens in work settings is that:
- Miscommunication increases
- Suspicion and mistrust grows
- Innocent and even innocuous actions are overly scrutinised and seen through a lens of distrust
- Team members who weren’t involved in the conflict become polarised or alienated and in prolonged conflict situations unhealthy cliques form within teams
- The focus of the team is the team and the conflict and little attention is paid to customers and the work of the team.
There are three ways to think about how organisations, teams and individuals can build the capability to resolve conflict early and constructively.
- Work practices
Build a work culture which encourages and enables differences to be raised, discussed and resolved.
- Planning and review sessions as well as regular, structured, goal-focused meetings where discussion is encouraged and input welcomed and acknowledged
- Open and judgement-free airing of views
- Clarity of agreements, acknowledgement of disagreements and a willingness to live with the issues that don’t matter too much
- Healthy commitment to making improvement and building quality that results in an improvement focus not a focus on ‘criticism’ way of problem solving.
- Skill development
It takes training and effort to develop the skills that improve communication and assist resolution of conflict. These are skills that need to be learned and practised over time. The list below of capabilities is familiar and looks easy, but harder to put consistently apply than it looks.
- Problem solving and decision making skills
- Active listening and acknowledging others’ views
- Speaking and acting clearly and assertively
- Showing empathy and support for other people (even if we disagree)
- Self-reflection and review of your reactions and responses
- Taking ownership of issues and in some cases apologising.
- Support
Sometimes issues just get too big or just too much else is going on in some-one’s life and in these circumstances support can be offered to assist people to build their capacity to address conflict.
- Personal support from manager or team leader
- Coach or mentor
- Employee assistance program.
And sometimes there needs to be outside help
If conflict is entrenched then independent support is needed to help all people involved move forward. We have been working with individuals and teams to support improved performance over many years and recognise that development programs and coaching session most often need to include the capability to resolve conflict, gain agreement and improve communication.
We have worked with leadership groups, teams and individuals to assist them to develop the capacity to resolve conflict and to facilitate resolution of conflict in teams.