As a small business owner or manager, there are times that it may seem like you are the parent in the office. Even if that’s the case, you can’t use corporal punishment, call for a timeout, force your employees to “hug it out,” or send them to their rooms to — “think about it.”
What you likely need to do in situations involving battling employees is to employ conflict resolution strategies and techniques to keep the workplace calm and productive.
What Exactly Is Conflict Resolution
Conflict resolution — is a conceptualization of methods and processes used to facilitate a peaceful ending of conflicts and retributions. Put more bluntly; it’s a way for two or more parties to find a peaceful solution to disagreements among them. These disputes may be personal, emotional, financial or political. Whet these sorts of feuds arise in the workplace, often the best course of action is a negotiated resolution to the underlying disagreement(s).
Realize & Admit That There’s a Problem Before There’s a Problem
Employees have needs and certain expectations in the workplace. Conflicts can and often do occur when needs and expectations are not met or are perceived as being ignored. True conflict resolution should take place before there is a conflict i.e., conflict avoidance.
Primary Sources of Conflict in the Workplace
- Poor management
- Unclear job roles
- Inadequate training
- Poor communication
- Poor work environment
- Lack of equal opportunities
- Bullying and harassment
Other Major Causes of Conflict in the Workplace Include:
- Personality Clashes — the cohesion of a team can be upset when a new member is introduced into an already stable mixture of personalities.
- Unrealistic Expectations — Workplace conflicts can be instigated when leadership sets unrealistic goals or ignore employee needs, i.e. arranging hours in such a way that makes it difficult or impossible for employees to attend to childcare responsibilities.
- Business Fairness — Employees undoubtedly have an idea of basic fairness. An organization’s procedures and policies should reflect basic fairness.
- Unresolved Workplace Issues — An employee might bring an important glitch in procedures affecting production, to the attention of management. If the issue is ignored, resentment could fester.
- Increase in Workload — Workplace conflicts can occur when employees feel their workload is unmanageable or the effort that they are putting forth is unappreciated.
3 Actionable Strategies for Workplace Tranquility
Identify the Origin of the Conflict
The more information you have about the cause of the conflict, the more easily you can help to resolve it. Recognize that all of us have biased fairness perceptions. Both parties to a conflict typically think they’re right (and the other side is wrong) because they quite literally can’t get out of our own heads. To get the information you need, use a series of questions to identify the cause, like, “When did you feel upset?” “Do you see a relationship between that and this incident?” “How did this incident begin?”
Look Beyond the Conflict & Avoid Escalating Tensions with Threats and Provocations
Often, it is not the situation but the perspective on the situation that causes anger to fester and ultimately leads to a shouting match or other visible — and disruptive — evidence of a conflict. The source of the conflict might be a minor problem that occurred months before, but the level of stress has grown to the point where the two parties have begun attacking each other personally instead of addressing the real problem.
Keep in mind that what started out as a minor conflict and quickly rage into a major one if either side feels their point of view is not being considered. When one side feels they’re being ignored or steamrolled, they will try to regain control by making a threat, for example saying we’ll take a dispute to court or try to ruin the other party’s business reputation. There’s a time and place for litigation, but threats and other attention-getting moves, such as take-it-or-leave-it offers, are often a mistake. People tend to respond to threats in kind, thus worsening the conflict.
Invite Both Parties to Offer Solutions to the Conflict
After getting each party’s viewpoint on the conflict, the next step is to get each to identify how the situation could be changed. Question the parties to solicit their ideas. As the mediator, you have to be an active listener, aware of every verbal nuance, as well as a good reader of body language. Just listen. You want to get the disputants to stop fighting and start cooperating, and that means steering the discussion away from finger-pointing and toward ways of resolving the conflict. In most conflicts, each combatant tends to have an inaccurate understanding of each other’s views and to see the other’s positions as more extreme than they actually are.
THE ORIGINAL STORY CAN BE FOUND HERE: MEDIUM.COM
