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In today’s business climate, the contrast between organizations that manage workplace conflict effectively and those that don’t is striking. Organizations with neglected, ill-defined, or immature conflict management approaches experience a variety of unwanted effects, from reduced productivity and poor decisions to information suppression and gridlock. Sometimes, these problems escalate, causing stress and division, disrupting working relationships and leading to hostility, grievances or even lawsuits.
Organizations with mature approaches to conflict, in contrast, create an environment that people perceive as fair and equitable. Different perspectives are incorporated into decisions in an environment where dissenting information flows freely.
How can leaders ensure their organizations fall into the latter group? While conflict management is a broad topic, there are a few key things that need to happen for efforts to be effective.
Related: 6 Strategies for Resolving Conflict at Work
Understanding conflict theory
As with any workplace phenomenon, leveraging conflict to achieve positive outcomes requires a common way of describing its core elements. We can start by offering a definition of conflict that differs from how people typically tend to view it. Rather than viewing conflict as inherently destructive, mature organizations define conflict as the presence of opposing opinions or concerns. This diversity of opinion, they recognize, is inherent in the human experience.
The infighting we see in organizations is just one way conflict is viewed.
Researchers Ralph Kilmann and Ken Thomas have identified five general modes that people automatically adopt when approaching a conflict (disclosure: my company sells the Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument). These can be understood in terms of how people apply varying degrees of assertiveness and cooperation.
To compete: This assertive, non-cooperative approach occurs when one party seeks a 100% victory.
Accommodating: This is a non-assertive and cooperative approach where one party lets the other get whatever it wants.
Compromising: It is a somewhat assertive and somewhat cooperative approach in which both parties get some, but not all, of what they want.
Avoid: This non-assertive and non-cooperative approach occurs when at least one party refuses to engage in the conflict.
Collaborating: This assertive but cooperative mode occurs when two or more parties adopt a problem-solving approach that takes into account the concerns of everyone involved.
Collaboration stands out because it often produces a completely new solution than the one originally intended. It requires the utmost skill and practice. And while it’s not appropriate for every scenario, it tends to be the most underutilized. Not surprisingly, organizations with a mature approach to conflict tend to use this mode more frequently.
Identify a team’s conflict culture
Because of life and work experience, background, and innate psychological and personality preferences, people tend to adopt one of these five conflict modes by default, usually without being aware of it. Likewise, they often don’t consider that there might be other approaches, slipping into the mode they find most comfortable.
Furthermore, based on the combination of its members’ conflict styles, teams and organizations have a conflict culture. When this culture is uncultured, conflict tends to be unproductive – even destructive.
Becoming aware of oneself and others, therefore, is necessary to develop competence in conflict management. Greater awareness of conflict patterns leads to a reduction in people’s tendency to immediately assume defensive or offensive positions when conflicts arise. With training and strategic development, people’s unconscious habits and assumptions become conscious and they gain perspective on their power of choice during conflict.
Furthermore, their tendencies and behaviors in dealing with conflict can now be observed, measured and improved. Teams can select the right mode for conflict, rather than defaulting to how they are used to managing it.
Before this begins, however, organizations must discover their conflict culture. For example, an organization may find that it has a bias in viewing conflict as a threat to teamwork. Others may learn that they tend to see it as a waste of time and resources to be avoided. However, others may feel that they are predisposed to see it as a threat to leadership authority and organizational stability. These perspectives can shape the culture in which employees operate, fundamentally impacting their ability to manage conflict appropriately.
To develop greater effectiveness in conflict management, we must know our starting point. First, organizations must uncover their own biases, assumptions, and perspectives on the conflict. From here the steps towards a healthier culture can begin. Next, each team must develop employee skills in self-awareness and awareness of others through strategic training and development. Teams will then need help transitioning to the new behaviors.
Related: 3 Ways to Use Conflict to Strengthen Your Startup
Selection of the best approach to the conflict
With this awareness comes the ability to choose the best conflict mode for the scenario.
Collaboration generally produces better decisions, particularly when applied to complex issues. However, it takes time, so it may be wise to reserve it for critical situations where a win-win outcome or innovative solution is required.
On the other hand, when there is not enough information to make a good decision, temporarily avoiding conflict can be beneficial. It provides an opportunity to gather data, research, or feedback from other stakeholders. Once everyone is better informed, the conflict can be revisited with a greater likelihood of a productive outcome, minimizing the risk of decisions based on misunderstanding.
Even when the optimal mode is selected, it must be implemented effectively. This involves providing a team with the skills needed to successfully deal with conflicts. These could include the ability to:
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Distinguish between people’s concerns – what they are primarily motivated to achieve – and what positions or actions they wish to take to satisfy their concerns.
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Frame an issue in terms of those concerns versus the positions initially taken by the parties involved. Collaboration, for example, requires uncovering the concerns behind people’s positions.
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Show a balance between firmness and flexibility when trying to collaborate or accommodate, especially when the other party is stuck in Competition Mode.
Reduce the cost of conflict
A final consideration is that even when conflict mode is best for the situation, it still comes at a cost. Effective conflict management involves minimizing this cost.
If a leader views the significant consequences of a conflict simply as the price to pay for making the right decision, this is a clue to his or her lack of conflict capability. A skilled leader can operate in Competition mode without provoking colleagues, in Avoidance mode without appearing to dodge important issues, or in Accommodating mode without appearing weak.
Related: How to Successfully Manage and Resolve Conflict on Your Team
Ultimately, organizations with mature conflict management get to this point because senior leadership has made it a priority and invested in their conflict management culture and their employees. Such organizations encourage a willingness to accommodate opposing points of view and the free exchange of information, and senior leadership leads by example by developing and displaying their conflict management skills.