How Do You Deal With Conflicts At Work?

Most people don’t rejoice in conflict, but you would think otherwise from how frequently and intensely we engage in them. From all my years working in advertising, it wasn’t the long hours or the crazy deadlines that drove me nuts as much as the attitudes of some people that made things more unpleasant than they needed to be. Disagreeing is natural but why be disagreeable? And more importantly, is there anything you can do about it?

Here are some ideas from Fred Kofman’s “Conscious Business”.

Wherever there is life, there is conflict. Every life form, from the single-cell amoeba to the gigantic blue whale, experiences conflict. We don’t have a choice as to whether we face conflicts; we can only choose how to respond to the unavoidable conflicts we experience. Conflicts can fuel grudges and misunderstandings or they can become opportunities to collaborate, deepen relationships, and express integrity.

The essential challenge of professional relationships is that while you are discovering and learning how to live with the differences between you and your boss, colleagues, employees, suppliers, customers, and others, you must simultaneously get your job done. You must cooperate and achieve concrete results in the face of environmental and interpersonal obstacles. You must collaborate with people who espouse radically different lifestyles. For most of us, this is very hard to do.

A poorly handled conflict threatens our ability to coordinate actions and produce good results. In terms of relationships, unresolved disputes lead to resentment, distrust, and complete breakdown. Finally, a mismanaged conflict can hurt people emotionally, spinning them off into despair, self-doubt, or rage.

It is easy to understand why people assume that conflicts are inherently destructive; however, the energy of conflict is not inherently destructive. The negative consequences that we observe daily stem from our inability to manage conflicts constructively. To live full, productive lives, we need to learn how to handle conflicts. Avoidance is not an option.

There are no difficult conflicts. There are only conflicts we don’t know how to resolve. Taking responsibility means recognizing that our inability to deal with a situation is derived not only from the situation itself, but from our skill as well. We call the situation difficult when we don’t know how to respond to it.

Here are some typical approaches to conflict that don’t work or make things worse:

Denial. Some people find conflicts so threatening that they decide to deny their existence. They try to pretend the conflicts away. Denial implies acting as if everything is all right when it actually is not.

Avoidance. Some people are willing to see conflicts, but they do everything in their power to steer clear of them. In the face of tense situations, they withdraw.

Surrender. When some people discover that their desires conflict with those of others, they give up. This eliminates the overt confrontation, but it never works. The person surrendering does not get her needs met. Sooner or later this causes resignation and resentment, which not only ruin the person’s mood but also undermine her relationships and jeopardize the work product.

Domination. Some people try to impose their desired solution at any cost. Initially, this strategy yields positive results on the task level, but it always causes major damage to relationships and it personally hurts those whose needs aren’t met. If people are unhappy and relationships suffer, external achievements will be short-lived.

Escalation. In this variation on domination, the person operates behind the scenes. He attempts to impose his will by lobbying an authority figure behind his counterpart’s back. This combines all the drawbacks of the domination strategy with a further aggravation: covert maneuvers encourage power games and destroy organizational integrity.

Majority. This is another variance of domination, but instead of exercising direct authority, the dominator attempts to get his way by coaxing others to vote for what he wants. Instead of lobbying an authority figure, this “soft” dominator lobbies the members of the group to gain a majority. This fosters political games and abuse of minorities.

Compromise. In a compromise, each person ends up with more than what she had, but less than what she wanted. Everybody loses a little. Meeting halfway may be better than not meeting at all, but it tends to breed mediocrity, not excellence.

Can you see yourself or people around you using any of these approaches? How well do they work?

So, what’s the alternative?

Constructive negotiation. Constructive negotiation allows people to express and understand each other’s needs and create new solutions. It addresses the issues through consensual decision-making, the relationships through mutual respect, and each individual’s self-worth through the consideration of his needs and values.

I will share more about how Constructive Negotiation works in a future post. If you find this article helpful please share it and let’s make the business world a friendlier world.