If you are like me, you’re probably involved in a lot of conflicts with different grades of severity in your everyday life. And if team management taught me something, it’s that conflicts still scares the hell out of most people. Conflicts management it’s a crucial and important part of every executive’s everyday work: you cannot pretend conflicts simply goes away or that they’ll not fie up. Remember that conflict is a very natural process that need to arise for a task to be done in the best possible way. Remember, we are very different human beings, and even if it could happens it’s pretty impossible that two or more people have the same idea on how something should be addressed. Maybe they could agree on the big pictures, but when it comes to details it’s simply unimaginable, and dangerous too: if everyone agree instantly on the detailed way something should be addressed, chances are that someone is not exposing his / her doubts or concerns, and this could lead to lower quality in the final output.
Please note, I’m always talking about constructive conflict: anything like toxic conflicts, bullying, verbal or physical abuse should NOT be tolerated in a work environment, ever
Running away from conflicts is anything between useless to plain stupid, because it could create a wide variety of side effects, from depriving yourself of valuable feedback to creating an avalanche of events that could easily lead to a disaster. It’s important to develop our own way to manage conflicts, because it’s something that really increase our team management skills . Also, even it it seems counter-intuitive, it’s the only way to lower stress and anxiety: don’t know about you, but for me constantly leaving with a big sword of Damocle constantly above my head it’s simply too much. Conflicts are useful and powerful and should remain in the brainstorming-zone, but if things escalates quickly I prefer to jump in before something gets too hard to address.
Obviously, theres no “wrong” or “right” way to manage a conflict, because the path could vary depending on the origin of the conflict, parts involved, possible side effects, etc. Still, it’s possible to identify a set of rules that could be applied to every situation, and that needs to be stitched on the type of person you really are: nothing identify yourself as much as how you address conflicts. I’ll share a brief summary of mine, but it’s crucial that you develop your own method, and train yourself to apply it every time it’s needed.
- Cool down first. It’s not uncommon to jump in a conflict when it already runs near the event horizon limit. Before doing anything, be sure to be the first to cool things down, using your favourite method. Everything could work from taking a coffee and talking about sport to doing some jokes or asking for advice on something else not related to the conflict’s source. Adjust your method according for your knowledge of the contestants for this to work better, and remember to do this even if it’s pretty clear who is right without even ask for further details: resolving conflicts it’s never a matter of winning or loosing, it’s more a matter of evolving a rage situation into something constructive.
- Start from the similarities. Resolving conflicts it’s no different from a date, even if the atmosphere is pretty different (or at least it should be). In a date you try to understand your partner starting from the common interests and building your way up to understand if there’s a match or not, and sometimes you need to be very careful because a wrong word can end the night real fast. Conflicts are the same: trying to move from one idea to another one is plain impossible when someone feels he / she is right. It’s better to start from the matching points, trying to let them agree on something before trying to build your way up to a common agreement between the parts.
- Both are winners. I know this can sounds tricky, but just follow me: human beings are fighters by nature, you can easily see that if you’ve ever been stuck in a traffic jam and saw how f-words flew between closed cars. It’s also true that usually, when the traffic jam resolve and the same individuals meets again at the next traffic light, they feel nervous and look down or somewhere else. That means we usually are spot fighters: we want immediate wins, but except some minor variations we came back easily to our standard sheep-like behaviour. When you finish highlighting common points, start by searching and finding the good point of both: most of the time having someone else recognising that a piece of their argument is correct will be nought for both to come back to the comfort zone and put the rage back. This s the perfect behaviour to start everything from scratch, and find the right path to the solution.
- There’s shouldn’t be a winner. Even if it sounds confusing from the previous point, it’s not uncommon that the correct solution of a conflict is in fact a mix of the two arguments. That’s why conflicts are so powerful: they allow everyone to see everything in a different light, and allow to build the way up to the perfect solution instead of someone’s solution. If you correctly applied your method to cool down and spot reward contestants, chances are you reach this point when you can actually start talking about the correct solution. There will be no more need for a “winner” but they will switch back talking about the problem and search for a solution, but with each other. At the end of the day, this is the whole point of conflicts management: switching it back to the brainstorming phase.
- Don’t be afraid of apply the same rules on yourself too. Most important and most uncommon point, but it could happen that you are involved in the conflict in first person. It’s crucial for you not to fail on this falling back to the old “I’m the boss so let’s do it as I said and let’s stop bothering”. Being a leader it’s a matter of being recognised as such, and imposing our solution as the right one without going through the same steps it’s not the smartest move ever. You can also end up recognising that the other position could be better, or deliberately choose to let the others “win” just to prove you were right in a later time. In any case, always question yourself and always apply your method, also and above all when you are directly involved.
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