Managing Team Conflict: 4 Obstacles

One of the topics people often ask me about in my manager coaching engagements is how to manage conflict on their teams or in the workplace generally.

There are many different types of conflict, not all of which is bad. In fact, healthy conflict born of many people bringing a variety of skillsets and viewpoints to a discussion can result in innovation that would not otherwise have been possible.

However, team conflict can also be demotivating and eventually lead to a toxic environment. If you are in a position of leadership, at whatever level, you will do well to create some systems for dealing with conflict in a way that is in the best interests of all concerned.

Of course, this is a huge subject, and in fact it warrants a whole Stage in The Manager’s Journey. But for now, I’ll concentrate on what I see as four common obstacles that keep people from dealing with workplace conflict effectively.

1. Considering only your own interests. If you have four people on your team and everyone is taking this attitude, then you’ll have four people digging their heels in, and the scene is set for conflict. Your job as team leader is to help everyone see the issue in the light of the team’s interests, or even the company’s interests. I’ve founds sports analogies to be quite useful in these discussions: if everyone tried to score all the goals themselves the team strategy would fall apart and they would never win any games. You, of course, must have a very clear understanding of your own team goals, and be prepared to articulate them persuasively. You must also find a way to help each person get at least a part of what they want out of the situation so that nobody will feel they lost.
2. Putting limits on the scope of discussion. Assuming you have jumped over the first hurdle and have everyone will to contribute to a useful discussion of the issue, don’t sabotage your efforts by limiting the possibilities. I love “blue sky” brainstorming sessions, in which everyone is free to put forward any and all ideas for discussion. Set a clear ground rule that nobody is allowed to squelch anyone else’s idea in the first round of simply surfacing ideas. In the next round of discussion, you’ll need to weed out the impractical ideas, but again set a ground rule that comments are to be on the ideas themselves and not personal attacks on those who propose them. No ideas should be categorized as stupid, or you can be sure that fewer ideas will be put forward in future.
3. Judging and rejecting ideas prematurely. People’s thought processes are different. Someone might think a problem through very carefully and come up with a promising solution, but their way of expressing it might not make it clear to everyone else. Ask questions that elicit more information and start a useful discussion. Of course, the solution may not be the right one, but if it has had the benefit of discussion, discarding it is less likely to offend anyone and deepen the conflict.
4. Finally, looking for only one best answer. If you work from the assumption that only one solution is the right one, it follows that you’ll have to reject others that might have had built-in possibilities. If you come up with two, or even three, possible solutions, you can then examine the pros and cons of each, and perhaps even decide on a hybrid that works perfectly for the situation.

These steps will help you work through team conflict arising from process and function discussion. Of course, there are other types of conflict that arise simply because we are all human beings with human failings — but that’s a topic for another post!

In the meantime, check out my “10 Minutes for $10 on Managing Conflict on Your Team” at http://www.mhwcom.com/pages/10minuteaudios.html