Resolving Team Conflict In The Workplace

Overcome Conflict in the Workplace and Build Stronger Teams by Working With People's Differences

A strong team needs diversity. People who bring different skills, knowledge, experiences, values, attitudes and viewpoints to the table can often achieve far more than a group who are of very similar backgrounds - having a diversity of opinions and viewpoints on a team can be one of its greatest strengths. However, it is this very diversity that creates problems in teams.

When you work with others, it is inevitable that the occasional conflict in the workplace will arise. We all have our own points of view, ways of viewing a situation, ways of wanting to be communicated with, ways of being led and managed, ways of resolving problems; and given the right circumstances, these differences of opinion can escalate into a full-blown conflict in the workplace.

How you decide to handle conflicts that may come up will decide whether these conflicts will end up strengthening the team as a whole or causing a collapse.

For you the team leader, the critical question is how do you productively steer conflict? How do you enable your team members to embrace differences, and resolve them effectively, or at least with minimum damage?

Obviously, any conflict in your workplace and/or team needs to be addressed; it's just a matter of how. You need to have a plan before getting involved, lest you be drawn into an argument and end up making matters worse.

Before stepping in to help in any conflict resolution efforts - it is critical to understand that you cannot ignore:

• Emotions - which are likely to be running high
• People - they will each have different perspectives on what has happened or caused the conflict in the workplace
• Perceptions - Each party will believe that their perspective is more right than the others

The best way to begin resolving a conflict is to understand the viewpoints of those involved. The four-stage process below is a form of mediation, which can help team members to handle conflict:

Step 1: Get Agreement That There Is A Problem & It Needs Addressing

People tend to ignore the early warning signs of a brewing conflict; passing it off as not important or just one of the niggles of being in a team environment and having to compromise.

If you feel that there is a chance that it is more than a healthy debate or difference of opinions that adds to the sum of the whole, you should raise it with the team as soon as you become aware of it. Ask the team if there is any negative impact or consequences of the actions of the people involved.

If there is agreement that there is a problem - your next vital step is to get everyone who is involved in the conflict to agree to work together to resolve it. This is a good time to remind the team members of the team's vision, values, norms and goals.

Remind them that emotions are likely to be fuelling actions and behaviors that don't necessarily support the team in achieving its goals.

Step 2: Visualize & Align With The Future

Everything in this world started with a thought and belief that it could be created. So ignore this very important step of visualizing at your peril!

This is an opportunity to get the conflicted parties working together and you are actually starting the conflict resolution process - getting them to work together. Get the parties to articulate answers to these three questions:

• What is the ultimate result you want for the task at hand?
• What do you want for this relationship?
• How do you want to show up as an individual in this situation?

The third question is often best answered by the individual him or herself. However, the answers to the first two questions should be drafted and posted by the team. Your aim here is to give them a goal that they are visualizing and working toward ... one that you can keep referring back to

Step 3: Understand the Situation

With your team prepared to face up to the conflict in the workplace, you can then move on to understanding the situation at hand, as well as the point of view held by each team member.

Create Norms

Keeping in mind that emotions may be running high, another entry level task - before you get to working on the conflict - is to create some norms that will help keep you each on track if emotions should start to outpace good decisions/choices that lead to the resolution of the problem.

If things are so badly fractured between the parties that they can't even agree to norms (or the visualizing of the future) to help them through the conflict resolution process - you may need to step in and impose them. However, only do this as a final resort.

Sort Out Fact From Story

Whatever the nature of the conflict in the workplace, whether there are factions within your team supporting one side or the other or even in the case where it is each man or woman for themselves, everyone needs the opportunity to make their position clear and feel that 'the other side' understands their perspective.

We all create stories about why people do the things they do. Sometimes the stories can be accurate, but more often than not they are filled with inaccuracies, judgments, labels and more often than not self-serving distortions of the facts - that justify and excuse an individual's own poor behavior.

As the mediator in this situation it is your role to help the two parties sift fact from fiction ... truth from opinion ... assumptions from reality.

As each side lays out their perspective of the situation - be mindful to watch out for whenever someone is stating an opinion not based in fact, labeling, making an assumption or judging another person's behavior. When labeling, assumptions and judgments are happening there is little chance of a satisfactory resolution coming about. So call it when you hear it and ask the individual who made the statement to come back to a fact based discussion. This is where the preparation of norms beforehand become your very best friend! You can refer back to them and say something like "we agreed that in this conversation we would ensure that we stuck to fact and kept our personal opinions and judgments out of the conversation .... "

Allow plenty of time so that everyone feels they have had the opportunity to be heard, understood and treated with respect. As the leader and mediator in the meeting that's your role to make sure that this happens.

Step Four: Reach agreement

Once everyone understands each other's position, the team as a whole can then determine how to proceed to a course of action that gets the job/task done, keeps relationships on the up and up and that each of the parties can live with.

If there is trouble reaching a consensus agreement among the members of the team, then negotiation techniques like Nominal Group Technique, Multi-Voting or Win-Win Negotiation may be warranted in order to keep the process moving forward. Do make sure that you don't rush to use a technique just so you can all get out the door. As frustrating as it can be - taking the time to come to true consensus, can over the long term, often pay better dividends.

When the conflict has been resolved, do acknowledge everyone's contribution to a successful process of resolution. This can help to build cohesion in the team and increase their confidence in their abilities to solve problems.

Team Conflict In The Workplace - In Summary

Conflict in the workplace can be a positive thing, provided that it is managed and dealt with promptly. A signature tune of any high performance team is that team members are open to hearing other points of view and learning from them rather than allowing them to escalate into bitter disputes within the team.

Team members learn conflict resolution skills through both the careful guidance of their team leader and by being trained in the skills that enable them to communicate, interact, negotiate and provide feedback effectively. Unfortunately many organizations' don't see the value in spending money on training these so-called 'soft' skills.

This is one of the reasons that many organizations' don't become high performance ... they underestimate the value and the impact of the social system within their organization - thereby destining themselves to performance that is less effective and powerful than it could be. Hopefully that doesn't happen in your place of business - and conflict in the workplace is easily handled.