During my ten years as a newspaper reporter I must have interviewed thousands of sources. With that said, I only worked directly with one other person–my editor, and our professional interaction took place once a week or once every other week, depending on the paper’s printing schedule. I realize how lucky I am when I say I had excellent relationships with my editors which facilitated issue-free working relationships. In 2016 I made a career change that had me going from one sometimes-coworker to about 30 actual coworkers overnight (Literally. I left the newsroom after a Monday deadline and was putting my Chinese Evergreen on the windowsill of my new office next day.). In the year following, I learned more about interacting with others than I had in the previous 28 years of my life. I could likely fill up ten separate blog posts on important life skills this job is teaching me, but the most important one–without a doubt–is conflict management. Though unfortunate, the reality is you’re not going to agree with everyone on everything all of the time, and it’s also a reality that you need to find ways to work around your disagreements.
Because I’d rather sustain a non-life-threatening injury than enter into conflict, my instinct is to actually not deal with it at any point ever. Contrary to my cowardice approach, my research suggests that the number one thing to do when facing a workplace conflict is not to quietly wait it out and hope it resolves itself while anxiety eats away at you every moment of every day, but to address it. The sooner the better.
According to Joseph Grenny, co-founder of VitalSmarts, a training and organizational development company in Provo, Utah., workplace conflicts happen everywhere, and its costly to ignore them. “It’s an enormous drain on an organization,” Granny says. “Every unaddressed conflict wastes about eight hours of company time in gossip and other unproductive activities.”
In a Society for Human Resource management article “How to Resolve Workplace Conflicts,” writer Tamara Lytle points out that understanding the reasons behind workplace conflicts can help HR professionals tackle problems before—or after—a conflict becomes a face-off between departments that refuse to work together or a screaming match between colleagues. Lytle recommends to begin with realizing that a certain measure of conflict is both normal and healthy. “In fact, many believe it’s a vital ingredient to organizational success,” she writes. “Experts have found that the most effective teams are those in which members feel safe enough to disagree with one another. A culture where dissent is allowed, or even encouraged, can spur innovation, diversity of thought and better decision-making.”
In order ensure your team works out their kinks and continues running smoothly, Lytle gives us some tips to resolve a conflict, and she suggests bringing them to the table in a scheduled meeting that takes place in a neutral area and not in either of the parties’ offices or departments.
- Set ground rules. Ask all parties to treat each other with respect and to make an effort to listen and understand others’ views.
- Ask each participant to describe the conflict, including desired changes. Direct the participants to use “I” statements, not “you” statements. They should focus on specific behaviors and problems rather than people.
- Ask participants to restate what others have said.
- Summarize the conflict based on what you have heard and obtain agreement from participants.
- Brainstorm solutions. Discuss all of the options in a positive manner.
- Rule out any options that participants agree are unworkable.
- Summarize all possible options for a solution.
- Assign further analysis of each option to individual participants.
- Make sure all parties agree on the next steps.
- Close the meeting by asking participants to shake hands, apologize and thank each other for working to resolve the conflict.
Another thing to remember when dealing with workplace conflict is that everyone is on the same team and feels passionately about what they believe to be the correct way of doing things. Lytle writes that sometimes conflicts boils down to the diversity of the workplace itself. “Sometimes the heart of the problem is that people differ from each other in age, gender, ethnicity or personality type,” she writes.
To get a sense of how diverse perspectives influence people’s perceptions, Marcia Reynolds, an organizational psychiatrist with Arizona-based Covisioning LLC, created an activity in which leaders of a global company were blindfolded and were asked to describe puzzle pieces in their hands. Reynolds said their descriptions were so different that they couldn’t figure out they were all holding the same piece. “Conflict is inevitable because we’re human beings and come from different backgrounds,” Reynolds says, adding that companies need to make time to bring employees together so they can get to know each other outside of their everyday work-related interactions.
Next time you’re dealing with a workplace conflict, whether it’s your employees or you who are involved, try out Lytle’s tips when addressing it. And remember that you’re all on the same team, but you might just have different ways of looking at things. That one has been especially helpful for me.
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